A new poll of 17 nations by YouGov shows that of nine major types of world issues, climate change ranks third in terms of concern. People are most concerned about terrorism and poverty, followed by climate change, which ranks ahead of armed conflict, economic instability, population growth, diseases, energy scarcity and nuclear weapons. Relative to the rest of the world, the people of UK, Saudi Arabia, and US showed the least concern for climate.
Of course, in Michael Bastasch's coverage of the poll, he ignores most of the information and cherry picks one number out of a relational chart comparing nine issues across seventeen countries to make it seem as though Americans are dismissive of climate change. With a title that overtly misrepresents the findings (in fairness, possibly written by an editor and not by Bastasch), the Daily Caller claims that, "91% of Americans Aren’t Worried About Global Warming."
Only problem with this is, the poll didn't ask respondents whether they were worried, but rather, what issues they considered to be "serious" and "the most serious." So, Bastash is effectively saying that because only 9% of Americans rated climate change as "the most serious" issue, it’s okay to claim the country isn’t worried about it at all. This isn’t the first time the Daily Caller has pulled this sort of bait-and-switch. In fact, Bastasch cites a past story of his where he discusses a Fox News poll and similarly misrepresents data about relative concern to say Americans don’t care at all.
Getting back to the findings, another interesting datapoint is that only 3.4% of Americans rated "energy scarcity" as the most serious issue. Yet this phrase (or its counterpart, “energy poverty”) is routinely invoked to promote various pro-fossil policies, like lifting the export ban or encouraging fracking.
So, to hide the fact that climate concerns are more than twice that of the opposite position, and to avoid the fact that climate change is a huge concern globally, Bastasch stakes his credibility on readers not clicking through to the primary source and does a very careful dance around the poll itself.
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