People involved in climate politics are always throwing polls at each other purporting to "prove" that the public likes this policy or hates that policy or wants this or doesn't want that. Everyone, at every point on the political spectrum, has a set of polls showing that the public supports their positions. I've done quite a bit of poll-pumping myself. The reality is, though, that polling on these issues tells us very little about how the politics will unfold.

To see why, let's take a look at the newly published results of Brookings' Spring 2012 National Survey of American Public Opinion on Climate Change [PDF].

Here's how the results are being pitched: The public rejects the climate policies that economists prefer -- market-based options like carbon pricing through a tax or cap-and-trade system -- and embraces the climate policies that give economists hives, namely mandates, standards, and regulations. Also, the results show a considerable partisan divide.

Couple things to say about this.

Photo by John Morton

Remember that election in 2000, when we were all wringing our hands and talking about red and blue and -- most of us anyway -- rending our garments in despair as we stood on hilltops yowling at the cruel fates which had created this divided America? Remember those days?

We were way more politically united back then. Way more.

All this time we’ve been trying to make the public understand climate change using science and logic, and it turns out we could have just made everyone wear sweaters. People's beliefs about climate change are closely tied to the temperature they've recently experienced -- so much so that, as Justin Gillis of the New York Times explains, people sitting in warmer rooms are more likely to say that global warming is a problem:

Some people answered the questions in a cubicle at a normal room temperature, and some in a cubicle that had been heated up 10 degrees with a space heater. Amazingly, the experience of being hot caused people to be more likely to say that global warming was a problem, even when logic should have told them the temperature inside a building has nothing whatsoever to do with the climate.

As I have argued previously, energy is a potential wedge issue for Democrats. The mindlessly pro-fossil, anti-renewables posture of the congressional GOP is supported only by committed Republicans. Independents are far more open to environmental concerns and far more supportive of clean energy. With the right message, delivered consistently, Democrats can bring Independents to their side.

More evidence for this thesis came yesterday in the form of a poll [PDF] commissioned by environmental groups from Geoff Garin and Allan Rivlin of Hart Research. The pollsters did 1,000 interviews, distributed among four key swing states: Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio. Their findings are quite revealing, in a number of ways.

First and most important: Despite a concerted and well-funded attack on Obama by oil companies, focused on just those key states, the majority of voters still trust the president over congressional Republicans on energy (45 to 38 percent) and jobs (44 to 39 percent). There's a well of trust from which to draw.

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has officially stated that climate change will lead to more extreme weather events -- we all sorta knew that, but it's nice to have confirmation. It turns out, though, that we weren't the only ones who knew. A survey by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication found that even in advance of the IPCC's announcement, the majority of Americans had gotten the memo that climate change contributed to this year's record-setting disasters. When asked about the claim that climate change had contributed to this year's record heat waves, 67 percent of respondants said …

  hikingartist.comAmericans tell pollsters they like clean energy, but that’s not enough to fend off the polluters. Stephen Lacey flags a poll that shows that the public feels positively about clean energy and, if given the choice, would prefer to pursue clean energy over fossil fuels. Similar positive results have been found, again and again and again, in polling about air pollution rules and the EPA. These results are notable and not widely understood, so it's absolutely to the good that clean energy journos, pundits, and advocates sing them from the rooftops. Politics is about perception and the perception that …

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  What's your worry?Elisabeth Rosenthal's big piece on climate change in the Sunday New York Times -- "Where Did Global Warming Go?" -- has been discussed by bloggers and dismantled by Joe Romm. But in that flurry of MSM explication, one interesting tidbit from the story was missed: When the British polling firm Ipsos Mori asked Americans this past summer to list their three most pressing environmental worries, "global warming/climate change" garnered only 27 percent, behind even "overpopulation." Rosenthal's phrasing is telling -- a critical environmental issue is generating even less concern than population!? -- but not surprising. What is surprising …

The debate over upcoming EPA regulations is a perfect microcosm of contemporary U.S. politics, in all its unreality and venality. Two rules in particular are in the hot seat at the moment, both of which would crack down on pollution from power plants (yes, I'm about to serve up some alphabet soup, but it'll be delicious): the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule (CSAPR), which would address smog and particulate pollution across state lines (also known as the Clean Air Transport Rule, or CATR), and Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (also known as utility MACT, for maximum achievable control technology), which would …