The Daily Caller (TDC) posted an article, titled “Turns Out Americans Really Don’t Care About Climate Change After All,” which reviewed CNN coverage of a recent Gallup poll showing that most Americans are not very worried about climate change, even amidst the push from climate alarmists to attribute the deadly Texas floods to climate change. [emphasis, links added]
The Daily Caller is correct that flooding is not unprecedented, and that this trend in climate change concern has held for quite some time.
TDC describes how CNN’s senior data reporter, Harry Enten, expressed quite a bit of concern about a new Gallup poll on climate change and natural disasters.
The poll itself found that the percentage of Americans “greatly worried” about climate change has declined by six percentage points since 2020, down to just 40 percent.
TDC explains that the new poll “emerged as many liberals, including Democrat members of Congress, have attempted to blame climate change and President Donald Trump for the devastating flood in Central Texas.”
Enten said that “climate activists have not successfully made the case to the American people,” which indeed appears to be the case, since the polling shows the percentage of people who are worried about climate change has not changed since 2000.
Real-world data shows extreme weather across the board is not increasing in frequency or intensity.
Enten says this is “despite all of these horrible weather events,” but it seems Americans know that every instance of bad weather cannot be attributed to climate change.
As Climate Realism has pointed out numerous times, real-world data shows extreme weather across the board is not increasing in frequency or intensity.
However, due to the massive coverage of almost every severe weather event by mass media, and instant video by citizens and storm chasers alike, there’s a false perception that severe weather has increased.
Further, improvements in Doppler radar technology and communication systems (cell phones, for example) have made it easier to detect and report severe weather events compared to just 30 years ago.
The enhanced [forecasting and coverage] capability leads to a higher frequency of warnings and reports, creating the impression of increased activity, according to the UND Scholarly Commons.
The 21st century is by far the best time to be alive in terms of survivability from natural disasters. Over just the last 100 years, human deaths attributed to weather-related disasters around the world have declined by over 99 percent. (See figure below)
Notably, the Gallup polls also showed that only 27 percent of Democrats believed their homes would be impacted by climate change.
This is remarkable considering the sheer quantity of alarmist messaging from mainstream media, government officials, entertainment media, and activists over the past decades.
Governments, activists, and media have probably poured billions of dollars into spreading climate alarmist messaging, only to see concern drop.
These results are not surprising. There were signs that public concern was dropping; in 2024, a Monmouth University survey asked Americans if they saw climate change as a “very serious” issue, and those numbers also indicated that fewer people were concerned compared to levels of concern in 2020.
In that study, there exists a very sharp decline among people in the 18–34-year-old range, people who grew up with some of the most intense public propaganda in school and media. Their level of concern dropped by 17 points between 2021 and 2024.
TDC also rightly calls out the media’s attempts to attribute the deadly Texas floods to climate change, stating simply that deadly flooding is not unprecedented in the U.S., and “some of the worst floods in the U.S. happened over a century ago.”
This is true, and likewise, flooding was not unknown to the Guadalupe River, which data show has seen fewer and smaller extremes in flooding compared to previous decades.
This was good, succinct coverage of recent Gallup polling and connection to the alarmism surrounding the tragic Texas flooding events from this summer from The Daily Caller.
Kudos to them from Climate Realism, and hopefully, more outlets will write reasoned and data-based coverage like it going forward, as fewer Americans have patience for alarmist propaganda.
Top image via Daily Caller News/Rumble screencap
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