Metro’s latest ‘Opt In’ transportation survey draws ire

Jobs and the economy need to be our focus, even if the environment suffers.
— Choice on a Metro Opt In survey

A Metro survey aimed at the 8,000 members of their Opt In Panel drew swift and critical reaction from active transportation advocates yesterday.

The survey was introduced as “some questions about infrastructure projects and economic growth in the Portland-metropolitan area.” Despite its intentions, the questions and phrasing rubbed some Opt In members the wrong way and they went to Twitter to share their reactions.

Paul Manson, a former environmental and sustainability planner at Parametrix, who’s now working on a PhD on public affairs and policy from Portland State University, had this reaction:

Matthew Arnold, an urban planner/designer with Portland firm SERA Architects, as well as Chair of the City’s Bicycle Advisory Committee, also shared thoughts on the survey:

Steve Bozzone, a citizen activist with Active Right of Way and board member of the Willamette Pedestrian Coalition tweeted about the survey several times. Here’s one of them:

What’s all the fuss about?

I’m a member of the Opt In panel and just finished the survey myself. I agree. There are some poorly phrased questions and false dichotomies.

My first quibble was with this question:

When it comes to transportation improvements in the region, which should be the top focus? (Select one)
– Bicycle lanes
– Sidewalks
– Light rail
– Regional roads and highways
– Neighborhood streets
– Don’t know

This question is troubling because the term “bicycle lanes” doesn’t accurately reflect the type of bicycling facilities we currently build. Bike lanes are 1990s technology and have been proven in many cases to be inadequate and unpopular — even with people who ride bikes! These days we build neighborhood greenways and cycle tracks and complete street projects. I want to see more and improved bike access in our region, but I don’t think “bike lanes” should be our “top focus.” Hopefully Metro won’t read results of this survey as meaning people don’t support bicycling.

The question also perpetuates divisiveness within transportation advocacy circles (a growing issue as budgets tighten). Our “top focus” should be roads and highways that give people choices in how they move around and that have adequate access for all modes depending on the roadway type and land use context.

And then there was this question: “Which of the following comes closest to your opinion? (Select one)”

– Environmental sustainability should be the region’s top priority, and businesses and individuals must learn to adapt to this priority. This needs to be our focus, even if our economy suffers.

– Improving the economy, creating family-wage jobs, and making the region more attractive to businesses is more important than environmental sustainability. Jobs and the economy need to be our focus, even if the environment suffers.

Who says that doing what’s good for the earth must be doing what’s bad for the economy?

One of the final questions asks people to choose between a good economic future for our children or a good environment for them to live in.

Why is Metro trying to make people pick sides in a battle where there are no winners?

Jim Middaugh, communications director for Metro defends the survey. “We’re attempting to provoke a bit and help decision makers get a sense of where different segments of the population are on these things.” On Twitter, he responded directly to criticisms by saying that the “Forced choice” the survey presents is a “technique to get at underlying values.” And he added that, “Metro gets that things aren’t black and white.”

“We’re trying to see how people are leaning… If you put a grey zone in there, it’s not as informative.”

There are options in the survey allowing people to choose “Neither” or “Don’t know” and to leave their own comments (and Middaugh said they’ll publish all the comments they receive); but the phrasing and choices show a troubling perspective at Metro. I hope they’re careful with what they extrapolate from this survey.

Did you take the survey? What do you think?

Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Founder of BikePortland (in 2005). Father of three. North Portlander. Basketball lover. Car owner and driver. If you have questions or feedback about this site or my work, feel free to contact me at @jonathan_maus on Twitter, via email at maus.jonathan@gmail.com, or phone/text at 503-706-8804. Also, if you read and appreciate this site, please become a supporter.

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John Beaston
John Beaston
12 years ago

I took the survey and didn’t let them force a choice. You can “strongly disagree” with all of them and explain your reasons in the comments section and tell them the option you would “strongly AGREE” with.

G
G
12 years ago
Reply to  John Beaston

The choices given to me were frequently not choices that I agreed with, and I “Strongly Disagreed” with almost all of them and then I wrote in what I did want. It went something like:

“We should be talking as much about the highway expansion project as we talk about the bridge.
We should not expand the highway.
We should not rebuild the bridge.

If a bridge does get built against the wishes of every neighborhood, there should not be any more than 6 lanes on a new bridge (matching the highway on either side. There should definitely be HOV lanes, tolls, MAX, and a seperated wide bicycle/ walking path over a new bridge, and a toll on 1-205. We don’t need to wait for construction of a wider highway or a bridge to add HOV lanes and tolls now.

Let’s encourage active transportation and not encourage induced demand of driving.”

9watts
9watts
12 years ago

It is maddening how badly worded many surveys are these days. The one put out by the Oregon Global Warming Task Force was equally unfortunate in its wordings.

“Who says that doing what’s good for the earth must be doing what’s bad for the economy?”

While the dichotomization in the survey above was needlessly clunky, the fact is we really need to finally have a broad discussion about the economy vs environment trope. It is not a simple matter of green-jobs-and-all-will-be-well anymore. We have some tough choices to make, particularly around how we define and understand our economy.

After all the economy isn’t even working for people much less the environment. I’d have a hard time picking ‘the economy’ in a survey like that if by ‘the economy’ they mean what we have now. But this gets us pretty far afield, interesting though the place may be, from transportation.

Paring this knotty mess back to essentials it is pretty clear that everything that isn’t based on fossil fuels is going to be a winner (bicycling, pedestrian infrastructure). But since we haven’t had the public broad-based discussion about the underlying factors that are making this the new normal, it is hard to see how a little opt-in survey with ill-conceived questions is going to advance any discussion.

Chris I
Chris I
12 years ago

I took this survey last night and had similar thoughts. Had to explain many answers in the comments section:

For the question about reducing road/highway congestion with alternatives like cycling infrastructure, MAX, and highway expansion:
“None of the above methods will have a significant impact on congestion because of induced demand. There will always be road congestion, what we need are alternative modes of transportation that enable us to avoid driving”

For the question about growth vs. the environment:
“It is possible to grow without adversely affecting the environment; it should not be one or the other. Smart growth in our region is better than unplanned growth elsewhere.”

9watts
9watts
12 years ago
Reply to  Chris I

“It is possible to grow without adversely affecting the environment; it should not be one or the other.”
This is a familiar assertion, Chris I, but do you have an example?
It is my understanding that growth (as distinct from other, better measures of social or even economic health) is in fact incommensurate with everything we hold dear/know to correspond with our continued vitality. Adding the suffix ‘smart’ does not change this fact.

If instead of ‘growth’ we were to say ‘economic vitality’ or something then perhaps we’d get somewhere, but growth is no longer a useful trope.

Paul Johnson
Paul Johnson
12 years ago
Reply to  9watts

No kidding. It’s time we got past thinking that our economy can grow relative to cost of living (it can’t), or that population growth is a good thing (it’s not).

q`Tzal
q`Tzal
12 years ago
Reply to  9watts

It is telling that we in America equate sustaining our economic way of life with the necessity of economic growth. This is most prevalent characteristic of a pyramid scheme: to go nowhere we must grow.

That growth comes at the expense of others. Take low value resources (land, forest, the poor), exploit them and extract profit.

The Internet has helped the most underprivileged worldwide understand that they are at the bottom of that pyramid of falsely promised wealth.
I’m hoping for the Singularity instead of the foreboding planet-wide slaughter of the rich; I’d much rather be in a borg collective than the king of a pile of embers.

NF
NF
12 years ago

The “Regional roads and highways” vs. other priorities really bothered me. Shouldn’t our regional roads (aka arterial streets) be the most complete, most safe, and most accommodating?

I got the feeling they used that category to symbolize ‘increased auto capacity’ and I had to clarify my thoughts in the comments section.

Justin
12 years ago
Reply to  NF

Exactly. Also, the lack of “freeways” as a choice was a big oversight; the survey is going to catch people’s dislike for freeways in the “regional roads and highways” option, when most people support complete-street arterials that also go into this category.

Paul Johnson
Paul Johnson
12 years ago

I got that survey and didn’t complete it when I realized that they were basically asking the urban-planning equivalent of “have you quit beating your wife yet?”

q`Tzal
q`Tzal
12 years ago
Reply to  Paul Johnson

I stole that question when I did the survey.
I slapped them with it in the hopes that someones neurons fire for a few seconds.

I hope my last survey comment wasn’t too insulting:

Kids vs Environment
“Economic Growth for Future Jobs” is directly dependent upon “Limits on Growth to Preserve Environment”.
The inability of elected officials to see this is why governments in Oregon should NOT be allowed to pursue policies that specifically promote “green jobs”.
The concept is honorable but is seemingly an impossible target for the government to hit; this is also a moving target. Consequently those in government now are unqualified to make these decisions.

sorebore
sorebore
12 years ago
Reply to  Paul Johnson

hahahaha! awesome, Paul!!

Aaronf
Aaronf
12 years ago

Here’s what happened.  You guys all signed up to do a survey for people who aren’t interested in the truth.  Maybe they are interested in finding palatable answers to give people, I don’t know.  If they were interested in the truth they would fund a study that would survey a random sample of people.  It’s not that hard. 

In the last article on the opt in crowd, Ben acknowledged that the panel is “not currently under-representative of more politically conservative residents.”  I’m glad we can start on common ground.  My problem is that the amount of distortion caused by self selected survey participants is unmeasurable.  People should not make any important decisions based on data from these participants.  The post right above Ben’s addressed this.

So, to take something unmeasurable and use it as a flag to wave for more funding towards any pet cause (even active transport) is either intellectually lazy or dishonest, in my opinion.  What makes me sad is that I imagine that this is effective as a means to secure funding for more projects, and since the projects themselves are good, people start rationalizing using bogus numbers. 

I’m all for active transport, but you can’t seriously propose that the solution to the problems with a non-measurable study is that a representative sample of people need to self select and come find METRO, as Ben proposed.  That’s preposterous. 

So, when you’re dealing with someone who justifies spending their time shuffling literally meaningless numbers around… you might have to answer some stupid questions.  This reminds me of the skit I heard Jello Biafra do about buying soda from a moose diarrhea salesman… only to be disappointed when the soda does not taste good.  Don’t waste your time on these surveys!

Steve
Steve
12 years ago
Reply to  Aaronf

Are you saying that Voting is invalid then too, because those people can’t be representative of the population as a whole, because they are the ones who just “showed up”?

I hate to break it to you but that’s how a democracy works: government by the people who show up, for the people who show up.

9watts
9watts
12 years ago
Reply to  Steve

“I hate to break it to you but that’s how a democracy works: government by the people who show up, for the people who show up.”

I hate to break it to you but the Occupy folks have a different interpretation of how our democracy doesn’t work:
60+% of us show up to vote, but the 1% who paid for the party still always get what they want.

Steve
Steve
12 years ago
Reply to  9watts

Ok, fair. But to then turn around and say, “well I’m not going to Vote because it doesn’t do anything” is just false and falling back into Black and White thinking.
Refusing to even use the means that are available to you, even if they are overshadowed by the means of another, is to play victim.
Opt In, in my opinion, up to this point has been very even handed in its questions. Opt In participation is nearly double that of phone surveys, and much more than that of Town Halls which pretty much everyone can’t or won’t come to.
I love this country because of its founding ideals: for example, freedom of speech is a resource for us as citizens to enjoy and use to make our country better.
Good job Metro, for, in general, trying new ways to effectively and actually engage residents in what they think. I wish more governments did that.

9watts
9watts
12 years ago
Reply to  Steve

“But to then turn around and say, “well I’m not going to Vote because it doesn’t do anything” is just false and falling back into Black and White thinking.”

I don’t think I said that. In fact when I last had a chance to fill out a stupid and misleading questionnaire I did and protested vociferously to the representative of the survey design team standing by eagerly awaiting my filled out form. It is a crap shoot, and because I know we can do better, deserve better, should hold ourselves to a higher standard, this seems like a big waste of time and taxpayers’ money.

sorebore
sorebore
12 years ago
Reply to  9watts

Amen!

Aaronf
Aaronf
12 years ago
Reply to  Steve

Steve

I’ll begin with a passage from the Opt In FAQ:

Why was Opt In developed?

“Gathering public input requires new tools and techniques. We’ve heard from people loud and clear: “Do a better job listening, gathering opinions, and connecting with regular people, not just special interest groups and lobbyists. Evening meetings and information booths at community events don’t cut it. ” Responding to this request is what Opt In is all about. Opt In lets you provide feedback at your convenience, and gives you an opportunity to tell us your priorities.”

According to the Opt In FAQ, they exist as a means of gathering the opinions of “regular people.”  I think it is not very controversial to say that this isn’t happening.  Ben from Opt In acknowledged this when he posted in the last story about Opt In.  His proposed solution was basically that the regular people should find out about the survey and do it.

I doubt that the people who they heard from “loud and clear” before they wrote the FAQ would agree that the 4,000 people in the area willing to fill out the survey represent these “regular people” who are not “special interest groups or lobbyists.”

Imagine the differences between the transportation policies you would get if you asked folks at a neighborhood meeting vs. a random sample.  The goal of this project is supposedly to get more normal people involved with the process, so that a dialogue with normal people can be expanded, and the squeakiest wheels aren’t the only ones that get oiled. 

Your characterization of democracy as a forum where the people “who show up” help themselves out is actually pretty distasteful to me.  In my humble opinion, a well run Democracy would take into account the hopes and dreams and needs of people who don’t have time to fill out a survey… even though it’s way easier to just mollify special interests.

Steve
Steve
12 years ago
Reply to  Aaronf

Just noticed this at the top of every Opt In survey, in the “Statement of Limitations” section: “This type of online research is a form of public engagement and is not statistically reliable.”
like Voting.

Ross Williams
Ross Williams
12 years ago

This is not a “forced choice” survey to get information about the public’s wishes, its a political survey designed for messaging.

The real issue with transportation is whether transportation investments should focus on “complete streets” that serve motorists, pedestrians, cyclists and transit users or concentrate on creating streets that best serve individual motorists with faster speeds.

The question with the environment is “Which is more important, short term job creation and immediate economic growth, or long term protection of an environment that creates an attractive, thriving community. ”

These are the real “forced choices” and I think many people on both sides of these issues would find it easy to make a choice.

As for the usefulness of a survey like this. There isn’t any. It can only be misused for propaganda purposes.

Brian E
Brian E
12 years ago

I’ll support any program that –Helps to reduce the amount of money spent on foreign fuel and uses the money saved to make local purchases.

Elliot
Elliot
12 years ago

Jim Middaugh, pushing people into the comment box because of unpalatable preprogrammed responses won’t get you the information you want… unless you’re going to read and process all the comments? This is clearly unrealistic. In fact, that’s the opposite of what multiple choice survey is about. You want people to be able to select a choice – the point is to be able to quantify the results, in order to *avoid* having to digest endless qualitative input.

Yes, the problem with Opt In is that (surprise!) you have to Opt In. If every commenter on BikePortland has taken the survey, you’re getting a result that’s representative of the regional population. Skewing the survey isn’t the way to make up for a skewed respondent base.

Dave Thomson
Dave Thomson
12 years ago

If you look at the results of previous opt-in surveys i think you will find that the folks who self-select to join Opt-In tend to be more progressive than the area as a whole and tend to support active transportation, parks, and other “government supported” services that conservatives hate so much. I complete these because they are used by Metro to support their decisions, and this is a good opportunity to skew that support in the right direction. This is not intended to be a representative survey, but a way for Metro to see what people who care enough to provide input want. Refusing to take the survey because you think it is slanted just removes your input from the process.

9watts
9watts
12 years ago
Reply to  Dave Thomson

“Refusing to take the survey because you think it is slanted just removes your input from the process.”

It is not that simple, unfortunately.
If the process is fundamentally flawed, it is not clear what is accomplished by ‘providing input.’
You also have to believe that the people evaluating the questionnaire and their imagined audiences are smarter than the folks who wrote the questions(!)

Alan 1.0
Alan 1.0
12 years ago

I hope this isn’t paraphrased too badly: “We’re attempting to provoke a bit… [The ‘Forced choice’ the survey presents is a] technique to get at underlying values. Metro gets that things aren’t black and white.” Jim Middaugh, Metro Communications Director

So, political issues are not polarized enough, already, and that survey needs to further provoke those schisms in order to…uh…what, exactly?

q`Tzal
q`Tzal
12 years ago
Reply to  Alan 1.0

This OptIn survey brought to you by the staff writers at the Oregonian – where peace is controversial and war is business.

Sonia Connolly
12 years ago

I opted out of the optin surveys on the first or second one because they’re so badly phrased. It was clear they intended to force an agenda rather than solicit feedback.

sd
sd
12 years ago

Glad to hear I am not the only who thought the phrasing was ridiculous and amateur at best. After taking the survey, I am concerned about the current Hughes-Metro agenda and how the surveys are truly used. It would be nice to know what is driving the process. The Metro defense of the phrasing is a defense of incompetence.

J-R
J-R
12 years ago

The survey is an embarrassment. It’s full of false choices and puts everything in a black or white context despite what Jim M says. For an agency that claims to be on the cutting edge, this dropped Metro to the bottom of my respect-for-local governments list. No matter the results it will cause greater conflict between cyclists and motorists, urban vrs rural, environmentalists vrs job growth, etc. Shame on you, Metro.

GlowBoy
GlowBoy
12 years ago

I filled out the survey, and added lots of comments about the false dichotomies being presented. I don’t kid myself that my comments will necessarily get read — from what I know about survey taking, they often get ignored if the poll results are clear or fit the survey-takers’ agenda. If they don’t, then they start reading the comments to try to discern the intent of the poll respondents. I suspect that will be the case with this one, because the poorly worded questions will produce a muddy response at best.

Ryno Dan
Ryno Dan
12 years ago

Are you ever presented results from a “survey” that don’t make sense. This is why. The “answers” were pre-ordained.

Xathras
Xathras
12 years ago

My problem with the jobs or environment question was that your choices were to Agree Strongly or Agree Somewhat with both statements (no disagree options). I used the comment at that point to tell them it was a blatant push-poll question, and if they have any integrity, they’ll throw the results of that survey out, and start over with one that doesn’t choose the answers for you.

JonM
JonM
12 years ago

Interesting comments here – near universal support for reducing freedom and liberty by imposing one’s preferences on others that would require taking more money from people that you don’t like. I so class warfare and Marxism well represented. What is it with this blogging community that trends towards statistics and coercion? Kinda like progressives and eugenics and population control…

q`Tzal
q`Tzal
12 years ago
Reply to  JonM

You may not agree with methodology or implementation but you can’t argue with the goal and the consequences of not slowing population growth in some way.

I’d really like to believe that the human race is capable of reducing it’s child births in a rational and predictable manner.
No, really.
Unfortunately intelligence is not favored by the reproductive process nor evolution, only the mindless ability to pop out progeny like a rabbit.

But don’t worry: those food riots in Tunisia and Algeria can easily occur here soon and when they do you will be begging for Big Brother’s Birth control plan.

In the mean time please tell all your God fearin` constituents that “be fruitful and multiply” plays in to the devil’s plan now. There are too many people on this planet and any “good person” that has more than 2 children is not considering the negative impact that child’s mere presence will have on the quality of life of every other child.

Choice or edict: you make the call.
That is your freedom.

Paul Johnson
Paul Johnson
12 years ago
Reply to  JonM

What’s conservative or progressive about hate and neglecting the public commons? Why does the hard right always spout off about the red scare whenever someone talks about actually using this government by us, to work for us? Joe McCarthy’s dead, but his cult of personality sadly isn’t…

Matthew Arnold
12 years ago

As the bike / bridge stuff has been well-covered here, I thought I’d mention one other disturbing aspect… Did anyone notice that one set of questions seemed to be a referendum on the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail project? Some truly bizarre wording considering that project has been in the works for years, already has its funding set, and broke ground last Spring.

Oh, and for the record, J. Maus, I’m not an architect. I’m an urban designer / planner.

Justin
12 years ago

While it’s true that many questions used a forced-choice scale, he should realize that this fact isn’t what people are angry about. People are angry about poorly worded questions that produce meaningless results.

k.
k.
12 years ago

Didn’t anybody really read Middaugh’s explanation? He admitted the questions as phrased represented a false choice but he very succinctly stated why they did that. There’s nothing wrong with that in a survey. Of course they have to analyze the responses correctly but there’s no reason at this point to think they wont, is there? This is the way surveys and statistics work people. Get a grip.

9watts
9watts
12 years ago
Reply to  k.

“This is the way surveys and statistics work people. Get a grip.”

Well, increasingly you are correct. This is the way (badly designed) surveys do work, but that is no excuse.
A survey, any survey can be designed well, or not. If the respondents feel they are being asked to make a false choice, are second guessing the questioner, feel compelled to add lots of explanatory notes in the margins, then these are all very familiar signs that the folks designing the survey did not know what they were doing. Yes it happens all the time but no it doesn’t have to.

Carter
Carter
12 years ago

I took that survey, and one of my impressions was that it was written by someone who didn’t know how to write survey questions and had questionable writing skills to boot.

When they used extreme cases to try to discern my underlying values, I chose “Don’t know” and put my opinion in the comment box. If I agree with an extreme-sounding alternative, I don’t know if they are going to see it as my tendency or as my absolute conviction. How can they tell the difference?

I thought it was a poor survey and I told them so in the comments.

JonM
JonM
12 years ago

Cant argue with the goal and consequences of slowing population growth? So anti-intellectual of you, and thanks for revealing your true colors. .. Of course, there’s no valid or legitimate disagreement with you, right?
Did I detect some weak distinction between rational and predictable population control and say, was China’s one child policy? What would that look like? And what is not rational and predictable about that one child policy?
Love the jab at god-fearing folk… Any resistance to your ideas can only be a product of religious brainwashing right? Such arrogance and condescension is truly a mark of a real progressive. You a eugenics fan? Lol…
Food riots in Tunisia or Angola are hardly caused by over population… Drought, political corruption, tribal warfare… You’re off track here…

q`Tzal
You may not agree with methodology or implementation but you can’t argue with the goal and the consequences of not slowing population growth in some way.
I’d really like to believe that the human race is capable of reducing it’s child births in a rational and predictable manner.
No, really.
Unfortunately intelligence is not favored by the reproductive process nor evolution, only the mindless ability to pop out progeny like a rabbit.
But don’t worry: those food riots in Tunisia and Algeria can easily occur here soon and when they do you will be begging for Big Brother’s Birth control plan.
In the mean time please tell all your God fearin` constituents that “be fruitful and multiply” plays in to the devil’s plan now. There are too many people on this planet and any “good person” that has more than 2 children is not considering the negative impact that child’s mere presence will have on the quality of life of every other child.
Choice or edict: you make the call.
That is your freedom.
Recommended 1

q`Tzal
q`Tzal
12 years ago
Reply to  JonM

Go and bury your head back in the sand.
Your personal actions have no bearing on anything else that occurs anywhere else in the entire world.
The entire planet exists to serve YOUR freedom.
Your personal freedom is more important than the life or freedom of any single or any group of people.

This is America and you have freedom of religion and it seems you ascribe to the quickest growing religion in America in the last few decades: The Church of Anti-Science and Anti-Logic.
This religion’s foundations seem to be that:
() any scientist is lying
() any intellectual is evil
() all unprovable faith is more important than verified facts.
() all government is evil
() might makes right
() freedom of religion as long as it is ours
() freedom of speech as long as it doesn’t conflict with ours.
() everything was better in the past
() nothing new is good

JonM
JonM
12 years ago

Oh… You’re merely using the govt as a tool… Riiiight! Rather the prior commenters were condemning the perceived ignorance of their neighbors to do the right thing. Of course the right thing is always to be imposed lest the unwashed keep their cars and freedom to travel as they will. Whether via confiscation, and regulations, and taxation… You’ll impose uour preferences on unarguable conclusions of population, climate, etc. Spare me…

Paul Johnson
What’s conservative or progressive about hate and neglecting the public commons? Why does the hard right always spout off about the red scare whenever someone talks about actually using this government by us, to work for us? Joe McCarthy’s dead, but his cult of personality sadly isn’t…
Recommended 1

Paul Johnson
Paul Johnson
12 years ago
Reply to  JonM

What’s so free about being dependent on a one ton machine that requires fuel imported from someplace else to get around? Seriously, straw man is made out of straw. Get a cogent argument and you might be able to articulate an objection that’s actually rational.

spare_wheel
spare_wheel
12 years ago
Reply to  JonM

Although production has been decreasing for years, China, India, and Brazil are consuming oil at an ever faster pace. Despite a massive global slowdown, oil is still at $100 a barrel. Prices of gas are going to rocket up when we experience a genuine recovery.

Warming of polar ice is triggering release of methane at levels not even imagined by climate scientists. Permafrost is thawing faster than climate models predicted resulting in massive releases of stored carbon. Our oceans are acidifying at unprecedented rates disrupting the primary atmospheric C02 buffering mechanism.

Your way of life is going to get a very hard slap in the face — and far sooner than you believe.

q`Tzal
q`Tzal
12 years ago
Reply to  JonM

The rights of every individual American to Life, Liberty, Happiness and all the others is
AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN
constrained when the exercise of the individual’s rights impinge upon another individual’s rights.

What has changed in the last century is that we are slowly becoming aware of the fact that individual actions actually do affect the whole. Everything we do has an impact on others; no one person exists in a vacuum.

Nerdo
Nerdo
12 years ago

So wait, they spend 76K on optin and know that the information they get is an ecco chamber for progressives? That is according to their own news post. They have been saying for some time that the results are skewed and everyone knows this. How does 76k get them anything? Why not just tap other sources of input from around the web where there is broader cross section of people? No willpower to take a risk?