From today's reading, regarding survey data:
"...although Republican voters approved of [the] Kyoto [Protocol] by 54 per cent in 2001 and by 83 per cent in 2003..."
Wow, really? 54 and 83%? That seems counter-intuitively high for Republican voters. How interesting!
"...they also agreed that the United States was right not to accept Kyoto by 64 per cent in 2001 and 49 per cent in 2002 (only 37 per cent thought the decision was wrong in 2002)."
(Vezirgiannidou, 2010. "Entering the Zone of Agreement: the United States in Climate Change Negotiations", in Narlikar (ed.), Deadlocks in Multilateral Negotiations: Causes and Solutions, p. 173)
Ah, never underestimate the power of survey data to make you think you know more than you do if you don't read the whole thing or think carefully about what different constructions respondents might put on the questions than you do. For instance, apparently there's a whole segment of the US population that approves of the Kyoto Protocol... for other countries. Which is in fact totally rational, if you think about it.
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