MICHAEL BASTASCH
9:46 AM 11/25/2015
While 97 percent of scientists may agree mankind is driving global warming, 97 percent of Americans don’t seem to care about the issue when stacked up against other concerns such as terrorism or the economy, according to a recent Fox News poll.
A November Fox News poll of more than 1,000 registered voters found that only 3 percent listed “climate change” as the most important issue facing the country today, down from 5 percent in August. Americans were much more worried about terrorism, the economy and immigration than global warming.
By same logic, using the same data from the poll, 98% of Americans aren’t worried about taxes or abortion and 76% aren’t worried about terrorism. I guess we can just stop worrying about those issues too!
The key word, John V, is “worried”. 97% not worried? I’d say that was probably accurate.
Read the poll. The question actually asked was: “Which one of the following is the most important issue facing the country today?” Respondents got to pick one issue only. So taking the fact that only 3% picked climate change as the number one issue, and then turning that into the headline “97% of Americans aren’t worried about climate change”, completely mis-states the meaning behind the poll. Using the same data, I could write a headline just as “truthful” that said “Americans are 1.5x more worried about climate change than taxes”, since 3% picked climate change and 2% picked taxes. Do I think that’s actually true? No way! Just like I don’t think it’s true that 97% of Americans aren’t “worried” about climate change. The poll did not ask whether the person was “worried” about climate change. Thus, it’s disingenuous to present the results as if it did.