Warmism - the belief that CO2 emissions are dangerously warming the earth - gets all the propaganda support the mainstream media can offer, and yet the public stubbornly refuses to give a damn. It must be terribly frustrating for Al Gore and all the others who have hitched their wagons to this theory. Patrick Michaels outlines the problem they face at Forbes. He uses a recent example of two research papers published, one linking global warming to some new horror, and the other pointing out the evidence is inconclusive. The alarmist paper got all the media coverage. Michaels dubs this "asymmetric" coverage:

The type of global warming science reported to the public grows asymmetrically, with alarming evidence receiving far more exposure than evidence for more modest changes and impacts, or, climate-as-usual.

And what's the bottom line? People still don't give a darn.

The prestigious National Opinion Research Center (NORC), located at the University of Chicago, just released a report on what it calls "priority worries".

Given a list of 8 "problems", only 3.6 per cent of Americans rank "Environment" as their highest priority. Within a sub-list of seven environmental "problems", 19.6% rate climate change as "extremely dangerous", where it ranks fourth out of the seven.

My greener friends are convinced that this is all because of the mean old Koch brothers. But if that's true, they must have huge propaganda operations inFinland, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Flanders, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Lithuania, Latvia and France, where even lower percents rate climate change as "extremely dangerous". And they must be really active in Argentina (despite its nationalized oil companies), where environment ties for dead last among the eight issues, and only 5.9 per cent of the respondents ranked it as the most important environmental problem. (Weirdly enough, it ranks absolute lowest in Israel).

Nor have the numbers really budged much....

You might say that climate alarmism has lost its traction. The public is now inured to claims of impending disaster. Americans didn't take seriously the Obama administration rhetoric on sequester  either. Crisis fatigue has set in.

Warmism may have completely lost traction. The medicine isn't working, and increasing the dosage won't help. The poor warmists are becoming pathetic.