A recent poll by the National Wildlife Federation, which counts more than 420,000 members across 42 states, found that 66 percent of hunters and anglers surveyed believed that global warming was already occurring.
A Gallup poll in March 2009 found that only 53 percent of the general population shared the same view.
People who spend a lot of their time outdoors are more likely to see the obvious — the climate is changing and invasive species like the bark beetle are ravaging the West. That’s a key point of this piece in the NYT blog, Green Inc:
More than 13,000 hunters and anglers from across the country joined a “virtual town hall” teleconference on Tuesday to hear a discussion of the impact of climate change on fish and wildlife populations, and to voice their support for federal action to limit carbon emissions.
The call was hosted by the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund, American Hunters and Shooters, and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.
“It’s very important in my opinion that we do pass the climate change bill,” said Ted Roosevelt IV, a prominent conservationist and the great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, during the phone call.
The virtual meeting is part of a recent wave of climate activism by national hunting and fishing groups, whose conservative-leaning membership has expressed growing concern with the impacts of climate change on wildlife.
It’s great to see a broader group of the population starting to engage in what will be the central issue of our time. But then, for outdoorsmen and -women, the changes driven by human emissions are all-but-impossible to miss:
With their pastime bringing them close to the landscape, hunters and anglers are encountering changes in nature associated with the onset of climate change, from alteration in the seasons and the migratory patterns of animals, to increasingly intense wildfires across broad the West.
“We’re already seeing the effects from climate change,” said George Cooper, the president of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership.
John Warner, a former Republican senator from Virginia who co-sponsored an unsuccessful carbon cap-and-trade bill with Senator Joseph Lieberman in 2007, recounted his own personal encounter with the impacts of climate change during the call.
Mr. Warner, a lifelong hunter and fisherman, described working for the Forest Service in the Idaho panhandle in the 1940s, in “pristine forests” where streams teemed with fish.
When he returned to Idaho several years ago, he said, he found the same forests decimated by the invasion of the pine beetle, whose spread has been linked in part to rising temperatures in winter.
“It was one of the saddest trips of my life,” said Mr. Warner.
Responding to a question from a hunter in Michigan about the prospects for Republican support for climate change legislation recently introduced in the Senate, Mr. Warner said he was hopeful the bill would receive bipartisan support, which may be crucial to its passage.
“I think we’re going to see Republican participation,” he said. “It would be a tragic situation for a bill to move through strictly on a partisan basis.”
One goal of hunting and fishing groups is to secure dedicated funding for state wildlife agencies for “adaptive management” practices, which aim to reduce the impact of climate change on wildlife and wilderness areas.
The Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill contains provisions establishing a National Adaptation Council and National Climate Change Adaptation Program. Funding would come from a portion of proceeds from the sale of emission permits.
Chris Wood, the chief operating officer of Trout Unlimited, a sport fishing group with more than 140,000 members in 400 chapters across the country, said most members support the group’s lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill in support of climate legislation “” though he has received a few angry letters.
“In a couple of cases it’s been vocal,” he said. “It’s been incidental to the support that we’ve been getting from the vast majority of members who are concerned about this.”
If we don’t act fast enough, human-caused climate change will wipe out the majority of species on land and sea, and turn a livable climate into “Hell and High Water.”
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Ducks Unlimited.
Hunters and a huge wetland conservation group.
See what they have to say about climate change.
It’s happening and we’re doing it.
errrr..this poll was done in July 2008, not exactly recent is it?
[JR: Errrr. That was a direct quote from the New York Times. And for long-term trends, July 2008 is fairly recent.]
I’m a DU member, a farmer, and spend a great deal of time outdoors.
I doubt if anyone can tell the the cause of habitat loss from climate change due to man versus natural causes. Especially in the short time frame most humans have to make observations. Decades long trends in weather hardly can be called climate change.
This is just ridiculous to claim the outdoor community can tell what is human-caused. You hurt the credibility of your other arguments and positions by making these kind of improbable and unprovable claims.
[JR: I didn't see they could see what is human-caused. I said they can see the changes, which are human-caused.
You hurt your credibility when you attack a straw man. Observation tells us the climate is changing. Science tells us the changes are human-caused.]
How many people believe Elvis is alive? What annoys me is that there never has been any argument as to whether the climate is changing, because that has always been happening. It is the cause that is debatable.
“A scientific scandal is casting a shadow over a number of recent peer-reviewed climate papers.
At least eight papers purporting to reconstruct the historical temperature record times may need to be revisited, with significant implications for contemporary climate studies, the basis of the IPCC’s assessments. A number of these involve senior climatologists at the British climate research centre CRU at the University East Anglia. In every case, peer review failed to pick up the errors.
At issue is the use of tree rings as a temperature proxy, or dendrochronology. Using statistical techniques, researchers take the ring data to create a “reconstruction” of historical temperature anomalies. But trees are a highly controversial indicator of temperature, since the rings principally record Co2, and also record humidity, rainfall, nutrient intake and other local factors.”
Do read the rest.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/29/yamal_scandal/
Judy, that Register is misinformation. The entire arty is riddled with factual errors. And this latest stunt (for which the ‘dogged mathematician’ was shown to have the data all along) has already blown over.
HTH.
Best,
D
‘Judy Cross’,
Don’t get your science from sideshow tech blogs – especially ones with a long history of anti-science propaganda and denial – you’ll end up misinformed and looking rather stupid.
Ah. In light of DavidCOG’s comment, let me amend my comment slightly:
Surely the use of ‘Bishop Hill’ as a credible source is a big clue.
Best,
D
The climate is in a constant state of change.
The amount total CO2 in the atmosphere has been proved to be too small to make a significant temperature difference. That is documented science.
Tree rings are a valuable tool when the report keeps the statistical relevance intact. These measurements are valuable at trends monitoring 10 degree temperature swings. But the variability of other factors(humidity, rainfall, sunspots,etc.) dictates that predicting past temperatures less than 5 degree changes is not valuable (much less .2 degrees). Most man-made land based temperature measuing devices more than 50 years old are not even accurate to within .3 degrees.
Yes, we need to study our environment and we could be doing damage through a variety of activities. But CO2 emissions have been proven time and time again to not be the cause. Stop the Copenhagen madness and start looking for solutions to real problems.
Stephen wrote: “The amount total CO2 in the atmosphere has been proved to be too small to make a significant temperature difference. That is documented science.”
That is a blatant lie. The only question raised by your comment is whether you are a deliberate liar, or an ignorant dupe.
Stephen:
Decision-makers have heard these long-ago refuted talking points for a long time, and they no longer have resonance. Decision-makers know they are hooey. That is why we are voting on ACES, China and India have a pact, California has AB32 and SB375, multiple RGGIs in our country, and so on.
Nonetheless, despite all this, the reality-based community encourages all denialists and pseudoskeptics to continue to parrot these ridiculous talking points. Not only does repetition turn into truth, but decision-makers know them already! Keep up the good work, folks! Yay changing climate! Yay surfacestationpictures! Sign another astroturf letter, please! Yay! Whoo-hoo!
Best,
D
there is no question the planet is getting warmer. Forget about models, forget about the satellites, forget about predictions. Just look at what is happening right now, on the ground.
Glaciers around the world are melting, and the arctic is expected to be ice free within 20 years. Last year, the summer ice was at its lowest level ever. All across the northern latitudes, the permafrost in melting, putting large quantities of methane into the atmosphere. There is only one thing that melts ice, and it’s happening all around the world.
The only real question, is whether this is just part of the natural cycle, or are our actions the cause.
Looking at the past record, and based on the tilt of earth’s axis, and earth’s orbit around the sun, we should actually be headed towards an ice age. And for the last 1500 years, that’s where we were going. At least up until the industrial revolution.
Where we are outside the natural cycle, is that for the first time – ever – we are taking carbon that has been stored deep in the earth for 150 million years +, and pumping it into the atmosphere to cool and heat our homes and businesses, and run our vehicles.
For those that don’t think we can affect the atmosphere, you only have to look at what we have done and are doing to the aquatic system. We now have dead zones exceeding 5000 square miles at the mouth of the Mississippi, aver 1000 miles of streams without aquatic life all across the Appalachians, and fish kills all around the USA. Clearly, we have had a significant adverse effect on the aquatic system. And we’re doing the same thing to the atmosphere, jeopardizing life on this planet.
It has been known for over 150 years that putting more CO2 into the atmosphere would cause the planet to heat up. In 1890, a Swedish chemist by the name of Svante Arrhenius predicted that if CO2 concentrations were to double (from the level back then of 280ppm), the planet’s temperature would increase by about 4-11 degrees, depending on latitude. This is remarkably close to what climate scientists today have predicted. His only error was that he thought it would take us 3000 years to double CO2 levels. We’re going to do it in 100 years.
Those of us who understand and believe in science puzzle over why some of our fellow Americans simply don’t believe global warming is happening, or could happen. I believe the answer lies in a Paul Simon song, part of which says, “A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”