PrintOctober 27, 2009
Halloween Scare: More Americans believe in Ghosts than Manmade Global Warming
That’s right – while only 36% of Americans believe the living and breathing can warm the planet, 37% believe the dead and gone can stick around and haunt houses. And what’s truly scary about these figures is the inverted lessons learned by the site reporting them.
Apparently spooked by last week’s Pew report which revealed a decaying number of green-brainwashed eco-zombies roaming the land, Care2, a Liberal activist website, exhumed a 4 year old Gallup Poll that found more Americans believed then in haunted houses than do now that we’ve turned the planet into a frightening greenhouse.
And while most would recognize in this a condemnation of the evidence presented for anthropogenic climate change, Care2 instead sees a failure in media penetration. I kid you not.
Just before slipping into an erratic rant about evolution and the need to educate church-going Republicans, the piece suggests that the popularity of haunted houses as a TV and movie theme may explain the public’s acceptance. Perhaps the trick-or-glacial-retreat crowd needs more “movies dealing with the human causes of climate change” to “sway public opinion.”
Better yet, Care2 suggests, why not combine the two themes: [my emphasis]
“Or perhaps we could just use Jason as the spokesperson for cap and trade legislation.”
Smashing idea! They want to sell their unpopular position with scary movies narrated by iconic creepy characters blaming humans for climate change.
I invite anyone not way ahead of me on this one to reread the previous paragraph.
Okay, so the Gory 2006 horror flick, An Inconvenient Truth, which deemed carbon-dioxide a more threatening menace than any blood-thirsty knife-wielding zombie, did indeed convert a vast number into obedient Gorebots. That year, Pew found 77% of Americans believed the planet was warming and 47% believed that warming to be manmade.
But since then, those numbers have sunk to 57% and 36%, respectively. And there’s little doubt that the ongoing debunkings of Gore’s frightening images, including those of millions drowning in 20-foot-high waves of melting glaciers, stranded polar bears and historic hurricane violence, have played a significant role in cooling the heated hype.
Truth be told, fear of the paranormal, while typical among children, tends to abate as all but the most impressionable mature to realize just how silly such anxieties really are. As such, I suspect that were Gallup to now retest its haunted house numbers four years later, they’d find essentially the same percentage of adults still believing.
Which is exactly why the Pew numbers are much more likely to shrink than expand in response to more childishness.
So bring on more scare-tactics. I doubt they'll stand a ghost of a chance.
