If you distrust different polls ranking Hillary and Donald as scariest presidential choices, how about conflicting surveys comparing people more afraid of clowns than global warming?
According to an Oct. 15-17 Vox Morning Consult poll of 1,999 Americans, clown fright beat out climate sweats by 42 percent versus 32 percent. Vox followed up on an Oct. 11 Chapman University poll of 1,511 which awarded the terror tribute to climate calamity over clown phobia by 32.3 percent versus 7.8 percent.
Incidentally, these Chapman ranking differences narrow to only a 2.4 percent when adding people who are "afraid or very afraid" of zombies (10.2 percent), and ghosts (8.9 percent).
Those averages flip to a comparative 4.4 percent net climate ranking deficit when including still another 10.2 percent who fear strangers in general.
Whereas the VOX ranked clown fear second only to that of government corruption (60.6 percent), Chapman placed climate change in a tie for 17th among things that Americans worry most about. Other major anxieties included not having enough money for the future (39.9 percent), terrorism (38.5 percent) and Obamacare (35.5 percent).
Why the calamitous clown consternation?
Well it seems that since August of this year more than 100 U.S. sightings have reported highly suspicious and creepy red-nosed figures holding black balloons in empty parking lots and menacing motorists on remote country roads during wee morning hours.
Many have even been seen hanging around fast food restaurants frequented by impressionable children during broad daylight.
Zachary Crockett at Vox.com notes that clown fear ranked highest among those in age groups between 18 and 54. Sixty-two percent of those aged 18-29 reported being somewhere between "very afraid" and "a little afraid." Fifty-four percent of those between ages of 30-44 shared this range of views; followed by 40 percent of the 45-50 year-old responders.
Apparently by ages of 55-64 most people have encountered enough insipid clowns in their daily lives to fear them less . . . only 30 percent really caring much one way or another.
After age 65 only about one-quarter give a damn. It’s unclear, however, whether this observed age-related indifference also applies as readily to the climate alarm circus variety.
Regarding polls, a 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that individual opinions regarding global warming and other environmental issues are sharply divided between two political "typology groups." Republicans, including those they designated as "steadfast conservatives" and "business conservatives" tended to be skeptical about any reasons for global warming concern and regulatory imperatives, while liberal groups ("solid liberals" and the "next generation left") tend to hold opposite views.
Overall, while 61 percent of the public believed there is solid evidence that the average temperature on Earth has warmed "over the past few decades," 35 percent disagreed.
Among the majority, 40 percent thought that this warming was primarily caused by human activity, and 18 percent attributed it to natural patterns.
I will interject here that I believe that both opinions are partly right.
Although satellite records show no warming for nearly two decades (other than naturally-occurring El Nino events in 1998 and 2014-2016), few should dispute that warming has been occurring in fits and starts since the five-century-long "Little Ice Age" ended in the mid-1800s . . . before the Industrial Revolution brought the world smoke stacks and SUVs.
Whereas 75 percent of the steadfast conservatives and 71 percent of business conservatives doubted that solid evidence of warming existed, 91 percent of solid liberals stated that the Earth is warming, with 78 percent attributing this to human activity.
Nearly three-quarters of all conservatives believed that the country has already gone too far in regulatory efforts to control climate, compared with 96 percent of solid liberals who disagreed.
A small 56 percent majority of the total public believed that “stricter environmental laws are worth the cost," while nearly four in 10 stated that tougher environmental laws and regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy. Ninety-three percent of solid liberals and 81 percent of next generation left respondents held the first view, while steadfast (85 percent) and business conservatives (84 percent) expressed the latter.
While no poll I am familiar with correlates political orientations with clown fear, anecdotal evidence suggests that liberals appear to exhibit highest levels of complacency.
Take divergent views towards Ronald McDonald and Al Gore for example.
Some conservatives even speculate that without the red wig, lipstick and baggy pants they are secretly the same individual.
Before dismissing this as merely another scary right wing conspiracy theory, perhaps remember that many also doubted Clark Kent’s true identity as Superman.
Besides, why should liberals be offended? Haven’t both superheroes similarly worked to save the planet from evil humans?
The main challenge, as I see it, is figuring out how Ronald, unlike Clark, manages to change into his Al costume in small telephone booths.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is the author of “Scared Witless: Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom”(2015) and “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax” (2012). Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.
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