Global warming: It IS political
Republicans cooler to warming than Democrats, survey says.
On this dreary day with rain imminent, if you were to ask people if it's been raining more around here lately, our guess is they would say "yes."
Which raises an overarching question: Why would you bother asking when you and the people you question could simply look it up?
The National Weather Service records would show that 2011 was the wettest year in Philadelphia on record and that the last several years overall have been quite wet. These are facts that we have published and posted.
Which brings us to a poll released by the Brookings Institution that assessed "belief" in global warming.
It found that about 62 percent of those surveyed do believe the world is getting warmer. What really stopped us was that 78 percent of Democrats are hot on warming, and only 47 percent of Republicans.
Again, we ask, why bother asking such a question, when one could easily consult one of the world temperature databases, such as the National Climate Data Center's, or NASA's satellite data to get a quantifiable answer.
The answer by the way is clear; The world has become warmer in the last 30 years overall, albeit with irregularities.
Precisely how much humans have to do with it, whether it is going to continue, and whether it will have catastrophic consquences are critical questions.
We predict that the answers will take decades to play out, regardless of what Democrats or Republicans or crypto non-ethnic voters in battleground states believe.