Reuters Buries Key Finding in Global Warming Poll: Americans Aren’t Buying It

January 30th, 2007 11:26 AM

This is really too funny. On Monday, Reuters released the findings of an international ACNielsen Internet poll concerning global warming. As one might imagine, Reuters took the most dire assessments from the study and made them the focus of the piece.

Yet, the most startling conclusions from this survey – that only “50 percent reckoned [global warming] was caused by human activities,” and that “Americans [are] least convinced” about this – were buried deep in the article.

Instead, Reuters led with the following two paragraphs:

Thirteen percent of Americans have never heard of global warming even though their country is the world's top source of greenhouse gases, a 46-country survey showed on Monday.

The report, by ACNielsen of more than 25,000 Internet users, showed that 57 percent of people around the world considered global warming a "very serious problem" and a further 34 percent rated it a "serious problem."

However, the really interesting results were held back until the second half of the piece (emphasis mine):

The study also found that 91 percent of people had heard about global warming and 50 percent reckoned it was caused by human activities.

Hmmm. I guess that means that 50 percent don’t reckon it’s caused by human activities. Alas, here was another wonderful result that Reuters held back (emphasis mine):

People in China and Brazil were most convinced of the link to human activities and Americans least convinced.

Hmmm. Now, for those familiar with simple arithmetic principles, if 50 percent believe there is a link between global warming and human activities, but Americans are least convinced, this means that more than 50 percent of Americans aren't buying into Al Gore and the media's nonsense.

So, instead of titling this article “Survey shows 13 pct of Americans never heard of global warming,” why not have a headline, “Americans Aren’t Convinced of Link Between Global Warming and Human Activities?”

Nah. That would be too much like actually reporting the findings of this poll. We certainly couldn't have that.