Sunday, July 22, 2012

Gen X "Unconcerned" About Climate Change

The author of this article seems so disappointed that this would be so:
As the nation suffers through a summer of record-shattering heat, a University of Michigan report finds that Generation X is lukewarm about climate change—uninformed about the causes and unconcerned about the potential dangers.
Is the author perhaps implying that weather=climate?  The zealots always argue against that belief in the cold, snowy winters, but let's continue:
"Most Generation Xers are surprisingly disengaged, dismissive or doubtful about whether global climate change is happening and they don't spend much time worrying about it," said Jon D. Miller, author of "The Generation X Report."

The new report, the fourth in a continuing series, compares Gen X attitudes about climate change in 2009 and 2011, and describes the levels of concern Gen Xers have about different aspects of climate change, as well as their sources of information on the subject.

"We found a small but statistically significant decline between 2009 and 2011 in the level of attention and concern Generation X adults expressed about climate change," Miller said. "In 2009, about 22 percent said they followed the issue of climate change very or moderately closely. In 2011, only 16 percent said they did so."

Miller directs the Longitudinal Study of American Youth at the U-M Institute for Social Research. The study, funded by the National Science Foundation since 1986, now includes responses from approximately 4,000 Gen Xers—those born between 1961 and 1981, and now between 32 and 52 years of age.

Only about 5 percent of those surveyed in 2011 were alarmed about climate change, and another 18 percent said they were concerned about it. But 66 percent said they aren't sure that global warming is happening, and about 10 percent said they don't believe global warming is actually happening.

"This is an interesting and unexpected profile," Miller said. "Few issues engage a solid majority of adults in our busy and pluralistic society, but the climate issue appears to attract fewer committed activists—on either side—than I would have expected."
Maybe it's because people like you, Mr. Author, have lied about, exaggerated about, and politicized this issue so much that people can't take you seriously anymore.  Just a thought.

3 comments:

Karl Uppiano said...

Maybe the Gen-Xers are waiting for a scientifically valid, reproducible, testable, falsifiable hypothesis before they go all Chicken Little on us.

Schools don't teach real science anymore, but they do propagandize AGW, so maybe the Gen Yers will drink the kool-aid.

Anonymous said...

Meh. You have a society in which most people don't believe in evolution. Is it shocking that they don't believe in other science as well

Darren said...

"Most"? Sheesh.