Poll: Global Warming Worries Grow
But CBS/NY Times Survey Suggests Environment Won't Be Major Issue In 2008 Campaign
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Half want it to be a high priority for government leaders and say the government can do a lot to improve the environment. Still, the poll suggests the environment is not likely to be a major issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Nearly half of Americans believe global warming is having a serious impact now — up 14 points since 2001. Another third think the impact of global warming will be felt some time in the future. Few think it won't have a serious impact.
Three-quarters think the weather in the past few years has been stranger than usual, with global warming cited as the biggest cause.
IS GLOBAL WARMING HAVING AN IMPACT?
Now
Yes, now
Will in the future
Won't have an impact
6/2001
Yes, now
Will in the future
Won't have an impact
Both Democrats and Republicans agree that global warming is a serious problem, but Democrats are far more inclined to say it should a high priority for government.
Those who do not think global warming is having a serious impact or don't think it needs to addressed are more likely to be Republicans.
In general, Democrats are given a big edge over Republicans on environmental issues. They're seen as the party best able to protect the environment (57-14 percent); make the U.S. less dependent on foreign oil (50-24 percent); and provide the country with enough sources of energy (45-30 percent).Click here for complete results of this poll.
SHOULD GLOBAL WARMING BE A PRIORITY FOR GOVERNMENT LEADERS?
High priority
Serious problem but not high priority
Not serious
Just 33 percent approve of President Bush's handling of the environment, down from 43 percent in 2001. Only 27 percent approve of his handling of the energy situation, also down from 2001.
Still, for many Americans, the environment may not be a major issue in the 2008 campaign. Fifty-one percent they could still vote for a candidate who did not share their environmental views.
Respondents were asked about two policy measures aimed at reducing energy consumption and combat global warming. Requiring automakers to build more energy-efficient automobiles was extremely popular — favored by 92 percent of Americans. Increasing gasoline taxes was far less popular, favored by 38 percent and opposed by 58 percent.
Among other findings in the poll:
This poll was conducted among a random sample of 1052 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone April 20-24, 2007. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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See all 146 CommentsMy Website: http://www.sugarcitycane.com
As I have told Governor Schwartznegger in California I would like to have California be the sponsor state to this company. Our Environmental committment as an Environmental Energy Fuel Producer will not only stop Global Warming, but I have made the committment to use profits from selling Ethanol to be used for Universal Health Coverage for all of California Citizens. If Hillary can work things out with Obama, in which they combine efforts with Hillary running as President and Obama as V.P. since he lacks the experience, I would be willing to expand that promise for a Nationwide committment to use profits to provide Universal Health Coverage for all Americans. This idea of course would require people to buy our Ethanol in the American market place.
Let's see Exxon, or any big time company say that, do that. Let's see Bill Gates or Warren Buffet say that! It's a responsibility that all CEO's negate. I will not backdown from that promise.
But I need help in building it. I need money to create it. I need people to work for it.
Come on America...the future only waits for you to follow the right leader. God knows who you are.
http://www.sugarcitycane.com
Global warming really is a misnomer because the issue at hand is not so much about the heat, which is really the symptom, but the cause of the heating. Even the term climate change may not be appropriate because that muddles understanding and influences thinking. We we have here is a case of Atmospheric Change and perhaps a significant one.
There is widespread belief among the public, myself included till recently, that volcanic activity worldwide dominates the greenhouse gas arena. However, this is apparently not so. Volcanoes on average belch out up to 1 billion tons of CO2 per year while humans produce about 25-30 tons per year (and that increases each year). Not all that CO2 stays in the atmosphere, but perhaps as much as 40-50 percent does and once it's held aloft for a year, it tends to stay many years. In that context you have to realize that human activity is like an ongoing, slowly acclerating supervolcanoe. It's daunting to think about.
1) $0 For "A/C" in the summer, open the windows at night and close them during the day;
2) $0 recycle and buy recycled products;
3) $0 buy local products & produce;
4) $0 composting turns garbage into fertilizer and prevents formation of methane;
5) $0 unplug adapters and Standby devices;
6) $20 use a rake instead of a leaf blower;
7) $20 use a clothesline instead of the dryer- saves 5 kWh off of your electric bill;
8) $40 replace incandescents with CFLs;
9) $80 use a REEL lawnmower, which you push to cut the grass and requires no gasoline;
10) $280/ton if you have a wood burning stove, try biobricks;
11) $2.45/Gal. try to use biodiesel heating oil (B10 or B20) for your furnace/boiler;
12) ~$100/month rent a solar-electric system for your home;
13) $3-4000 get a solar hot water heater;
14) $10,000 replace drafty windows, if you can. If you cannot, use plastic ($10) or close the curtains at night ($0) during the winter;
15) $15,000 trade in the SUV for a car or even a hybrid vehicle, if you need one.
Start out with something small- and then work your way to larger items. See the lower electric bills. Item #5 accounts for up to 40% of the average residential electric bill. Everyone can do something- just a matter of will!
1) $0 For "A/C" in the summer, open the windows at night and close them during the day;
2) $0 recycle and buy recycled products;
3) $0 buy local products & produce;
4) $0 composting turns garbage into fertilizer and prevents formation of methane;
5) $0 unplug adapters and Standby devices;
6) $20 use a rake instead of a leaf blower;
7) $20 use a clothesline instead of the dryer- saves 5 kWh off of your electric bill;
8) $40 replace incandescents with CFLs;
9) $80 use a REEL lawnmower, which you push to cut the grass and requires no gasoline;
10) $280/ton if you have a wood burning stove, try biobricks;
11) $2.45/Gal. try to use biodiesel heating oil (B10 or B20) for your furnace/boiler;
12) ~$100/month rent a solar-electric system for your home;
13) $3-4000 get a solar hot water heater;
14) $10,000 replace drafty windows, if you can. If you cannot, use plastic ($10) or close the curtains at night ($0) during the winter;
15) $15,000 trade in the SUV for a car or even a hybrid vehicle, if you need one.
Start out with something small- and then work your way to larger items. See the lower electric bills. Item #5 accounts for up to 40% of the average residential electric bill. Everyone can do something- just a matter of will!
Many of your suggestions are just cost-saving measures that really have no effect on the so-called "carbon footprint" Biodiesel may actually more of a carbon burden that regular octane or other available fuels due the carbon output that results from its distillation.
The reel mower idea seems fine, but I tried that for a year after my power mower was stolen. I didn't mind the extra work, but the cut was definitely not as nice.
What is the problem with SUVs? Mine gets 25-26mpg and is improving as it gets older.
Plastic on the windows is nasty. Tried that one year to hold the heat in over the Winter. Never again. Best solution was to get an energy-efficient heat pump.
Composting, by definition is the degeneration of biological material which naturally produces methane, so I don't really see a carbon solution in that.
Anyhow, the half-life of CO2 in the atmostphere is somewhere around 40 years. This means that for every ton that we add to the atmosphere, only half is removed after 40 years. This is great news, but if we are adding it faster than it is removed, then there is an increase in concentration, and that is what we have been seeing since the 1950's.
The concentration is increasing by 1.6 ppm every year, and we are at 381 ppm. The maximum found over 800,000 years of ice core data was 280 ppm (minimum of 180 ppm). We are now 35% greater than the normal maximum, and increasing 60X faster than the fastest increase seen over the same time period.
We can still take action today, but we all need to be more efficient with the energy that we use.
Biodiesel is actually created from a facile methyl esterification reaction, not requiring too much energy (this could be proven buy powering a biodiesel reactor with its own product- if you have more product than you started with, you have saved some carbon!
SUVs- always a touchy subject. Some people do actually need an SUV, but not the number of people with them. We do have a Prius, with two kids, and we can still shop at wholesalers stores with room. 25 mpg is great for an SUV!
The reel mower does not do as pretty of a job, but it is not a carpet, it's a lawn. It is a matter of preference. For me, no gasoline is good!
Composting produces carbon dioxide when it is done aerobically (with air). When garbage is buried in a landfill, with no air, it decomposes through an anaerobic mechanism, which produces methane. Methane retains heat 23-fold more than CO2 in the atmosphere.
All of the ideas I posted can lead to a reduction in total CO2 amounts, either by conservation of some fossil fuel source or by not using it at all. Some are not for everyone.
this poll goes to show how much people dont know
Agreed, I do not condone Gore's lifestyle, but he has recently been given permission from his exclusive neighborhood to install solar panels:
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/gore.home.improvement.ap/index.html
(sorry, CBS).
This article also claims that he has been offsetting his energy usage with renewable certificate programs. Not much for conservation, however. No disagreement with you there.
I'm glad to see that we Americans can see through that smokescreen!
Posted by janem4
What is your source? Since America has consistently been running @ more than 25% of the world's consumption of energy, I find it hard to believe that China's been able to leap frog us this soon. However, since the Repugs have sent most of our manufacturing jobs to China there's always a possibility.....
Thank you for being level headed in this debate. There are others, from both sides, which can only spew their party%u2019s views.
Conservation should be done because it is the right thing to do. Extremism in either way is bad. Pollution should be taken care of for ours and the planets health.
However, in all my research, I have not seen any reason that CO2 is the main culprit for Global Warming. In approx 10,000 years the global temp zooms up to + 3 C, or a net change of 1 C per 1,000 years.
While CO2 climbs from 200 ppm to 280, or a net change of 8 ppm per 1,000 years.
Both trends appear fairly linear.
But what this implies is a meager change of 0.8 ppm per century increase in CO2 yielded a corresponding 0.1 C increase in temperature.
Our CO2 levels are going up twice that PER YEAR.
Over the last century CO2 went up 100 times more than the 0.8 ppm per century, yet yielded 1/20th of the change in temperature.
In addition, CO2 levels have always lagged temperature levels. Meaning as temperatures rise CO2 levels then rise from anywhere between 200-800 YEARS later. (See Martin Wahlen, Indermuhle et al, Monnin et al)
It doesn't matter what the subject is. You're an idiot!! The good news is I should live long enough to see your viewpoints discredited.
Congratulations, you have already lived that long! Ignore the guy, he is an idiot on all subjects.
Which is why Kyoto is a farce. If CO2 emissions were a real concern, it would have been a global policy and not excluded China, India, Mexico, etc. Manufacturing companies will only move their industry to these countries.
However, Kyoto is an economic policy that was designed to punish countries with increasing population and economies. Which basically means Canada and the US.
"In addition, CO2 levels have always lagged temperature levels. Meaning as temperatures rise CO2 levels then rise from anywhere between 200-800 YEARS later. (See Martin Wahlen, Indermuhle et al, Monnin et al)"
That is NOT a true statement. Volcanic eruptions have historically put out tremendous quantities of CO2, and global temperature subsequently increased.
You need to go back and do some more "research".
Please site proof, as I did, of your statement. The antartica ice core examinations showed that CO2 leves lagged temperature increases. Large volcano emissions can actually cool temperatures due to the particulate matter ejected.
http://www.tulane.edu/~sanelson/geol111/globalchange.htm
Volcanic Effects
Volcanoes produce several things that result in changing atmosphere and atmospheric temperatures.
CO2 produced by volcanoes adds to the greenhouse gases and MAY result in warming of the atmosphere.
Sulfur gases produced by volcanoes reflect low wavelength radiation back into space, and thus result in cooling of the atmosphere.
Dust particles injected into the atmosphere by volcanoes reflect low wavelength radiation back into space, and thus can result in cooling of the atmosphere.
Chlorine gases produced by volcanoes can contribute to ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere.
Listing a few peoples names in your post does not constitute "proof." But nice try.
The National Academy of Aciences looked at every published, peer reviewed, global warming study done in the last ten years. Every single one of them agreed on three things:
1. Global warming is real.
2. Global warming is caused by man.
3. The consequences of global warming will be catastrophic to all life on earth.
The scientific debate has long been over. The data is readily available to anyone who really wants to know the truth.
There are only a few loud-mouthed idiots and fossil fuel industry financed lyers out there trying to muddy the waters.
It's time to move on and take action to curb the coming problems.
Please site proof of the opposite.
Then Monnin et al. (2001). Studied this relationship but used CO2 data from Dome Concordia, Antarctica. They concentrated on the period that includes the most recent transition to interglacial temps Monin found that the CO2 increase lagged the start of the temperature increase by 800 years
Then Indermuhle et al. (2000) studied the relationship between temperature rise and CO2 levels from 60,000 to 20,000 years ago. He concluded that the rise in the air's CO2 content lagged shifts in air temperature. His mean value was 1,200 years.
Then Fischer et al. (1999 used ice core records from the period of the last three glacial terminations). They concluded that "the time lag of the rise in CO2 concentrations with respect to temperature change is on the order of 400 to 1000 years during all three glacial-interglacial transitions."
Martin Wahlen, a professor in the Scripps Geosciences Research Division who coauthored the paper. "What we have found is that at these periods when the climate is transitioning from a glacial to an interglacial period, the atmospheric CO2 concentrations lag behind the rise in temperature by about 600 years."
But seriously, your arguement is laughable.
1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas, as easily demonstrated in the laboratory.
2) CO2 levels are increasing, and are easily documented as anthropegenic in source.
3) Global temperatures are increasing, as a result of increasing levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
DUDE, WHAT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS?
The National Academy of Sciences looked at every published, peer reviewed, global warming study done in the last ten years. Every single one of them agreed on three things:
1. Global warming is real.
2. Global warming is caused by man.
3. The consequences of global warming will be catastrophic to all life on earth.
The scientific debate has long been over. The data is readily available to anyone who really wants to know the truth.
There are only a few loud-mouthed idiots and well paid fossil fuel industry lyers out there trying to muddy the waters.
It's time to move on and take action to curb the coming problems.
Take another look at the poll, and note that you are definitely in the MINORITY. Thank goodness there are still some rational people left in this country.
Adios. Gone fishing.
1) The globe has been warming for the past 10,000 years. So, yes I conceded that, never said it wasn't
2) Don't agree, the science doesn't show it.
3) Plant life (global biomass) has increased by 6% in the last decade. A WARM planet is usually a good thing.
As you say, CO2 emissions have risen considerably since the industrial revolution. I agree. CO2 emissions have been skyrocketing, at even greater levels in the past decade. So, why has the avg. temperature been falling over the past 9 years? Want proof:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
Pick starting and ending years, for period select Annual Temps. If you look at 1998 to 2007. Yes, it is called %u201Ccherry picking%u201D years. However, if CO2 levels are really the biggest cause, wouldn%u2019t temperatures be rising even faster, not FALLING!
onlythehack
The National Academy of Sciences looked at every published, peer reviewed, global warming study done in the last ten years. Every single one of them agreed on three things:
1. Global warming is real.
2. Global warming is caused by man.
3. The consequences of global warming will be catastrophic to all life on earth.
The scientific debate has long been over. The data is readily available to anyone who really wants to know the truth.
There are only a few loud-mouthed idiots and well paid fossil fuel industry lyers out there trying to muddy the waters.
It's time to move on and take action to curb the coming problems.
Since only Global Warming Alarmist stories are ever published on this site, it is not a wonderful fact to think that the majority of people think Anthropogenic Global Warming is real.
Did CBS publish the recent study that the world's forests have an impact on Global Warming?
Did CBS publish the finding's that Mann's "hockey stick" was debunked?
Did CBS publish the finding's that Hansen's "Smoking Gun" of ocean temperatures from 1993 to 2003 of .16 degrees and then fell 0.055 degrees Fahrenheit from 2003 to 2005. The recent decrease is a dip equal to about one-fifth of the heat gained by the ocean between 1955 and 2003?
Scare stories are just that... scary. If you don't publish the science of both sides then you are going to make your opinion based on what you hear. Most people don't do their own research.
The scientific community is united on three fundamental facts:
1. Global warming is real.
2. Global warming is caused by man.
3. The consequences of global warming will be catastrophic.
The scientific debate is over and yet the political debate rages on. Why? Because the fossil fuels industry pays hacks to spread disinformation. They stand to loose a lot as we begin to change to more responsible, sustainable ways of living on this planet.
The science is readily available to anyone who really wants to know the truth.
Pundits and fools no longer drive this discussion. The science does. It's all over but the denying.
Repeating the same information is not helpful and puts you in the same category as didntinhale.
Stating a consenus is also not a debate. I have put out statements based on studies. If you wish to oppose those statement, please site studies against mine.
onlyhack
You are just spitting into the wind my friend.
Rush Limbaugh is not a climatologist and neither are you.
The scientific community is 100% united on three fundamental facts:
1. Global warming is real.
2. Global warming is caused by man.
3. The consequences of global warming will be catastrophic to all life on the planet.
It's all over but the denying.
Ad hominems aside, consensus is not a scientific construction; it is a political construction. The Michael Mann Bristlecone pine studies that produced this global warming alarm was "peer reviewed" and accepted by "world climate experts" at the UN. They were all wrong and no one questioned this rankly amateurish reconstruction of the worlds past climate until one statistical expert asked for the math and found childish errors that even a first year student of statistical methods could catch. He found that the expert math made similar hockey sticks out of random input data. So much for "peer review" and %u201Cconsensus%u201D!
Science is never "settled" and any fool who tells you it is doesn't know the first *** thing about science. Science is always provisional and is assumed to be either incomplete or incorrect.
The scientific community is 100% united on three fundamental facts:
1. Global warming is real.
2. Global warming is caused by man.
3. The consequences of global warming will be catastrophic to all life on the planet.
It's all over but the denying.
For Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden, it was wheels up shortly after they voted in favor of legislation requiring that U.S. troops begin returning home from Iraq in the fall.
No one jet pooled, no one took commercial flights to save money, fuel or emissions.
Possible future Presidents. What a joke.
Ice ages come and go over millennia, and for the past 8,000 years, the gradual end of the last ice age has seen a natural increase in worldwide temperatures, all scientists agree. Skeptics have expressed doubt that industrial activity is to blame for world's rapidly rising temperatures.
But records show that for the past 50 years or so, the warming trend has sped up -- due, researchers said, to the atmospheric burden of greenhouse gases produced by everything industrial, from power plants burning fossil fuels to gas-guzzling cars -- and the effects are clear.
"We were stunned by the similarities between the observations that have been recorded at sea worldwide and the models that climatologists made," said Tim Barnett of the University of California's Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "The debate is over, at least for rational people. And for those who insist that the uncertainties remain too great, their argument is no longer tenable. We've nailed it."
Barnett and other experts marshaled their evidence and presented it to their colleagues for the first time at a symposium here.
For the past 40 years, Barnett said, observations by seaborne instruments have shown that the increased warming has penetrated the oceans of the world - - observations, he said, that have proved identical to computer predictions whose accuracy has been challenged by global-warming skeptics.
The most recent temperature observations, he said, fit those models with extraordinary accuracy.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/index.html
Working Group I assesses the scientific aspects of the climate system and climate change.
Working Group II assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive consequences of climate change, and options for adapting to it.
Working Group III assesses options for limiting greenhouse gas emissions and otherwise mitigating climate change.
The Task Force on National Greenhouse Gas Inventories is responsible for the IPCC National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme.
So what you really have is JUST ONE of the 4 groups that make up the IPCC that is involved with the SCIENTIFIC BASIS for Global Warming (note THEY have now dropped Global Warming and only refer to Climate Change)
Group 2 simply ASSUMES that the WG1 is correct and assesses the impact of said change.
Group 3 also ASSUMES that WG1 is correct and looks at how we could limit emissions.
Group 4 simply tracks our current emissions.
So ONLY the conclusions of the scientists in WG 1 are actually related to the SCIENCE behind GW.
To put this in perspective, there are ONLY 12 scientists that were responsible for the CRUCIAL question of Attribution (i.e. how much warming is natural vs man made) .
"Ice is in decline everywhere on the planet, and especially in the Arctic, " said Ruth Curry, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, "and there is large-scale drying throughout the Northern Hemisphere."
Ice cores drilled deep into the Greenland ice cap show that salinity of the ice at the upper layers of the cores has decreased sharply due to the incursion of fresh water draining from melting snows on the surface, she reported, and land ice and permafrost are in decline all around the Arctic. In the meantime, she said, measurements show that salinity of the ocean waters nearer the equator has increased as the rate of evaporation of warmer tropical and subtropical oceans quickens.
It may take several centuries for all the ice that covers Greenland to melt, Curry said, "but its release of fresh water will make sea-level rise a very significant issue in this century." In fact, she said, changes in the freshwater balance of the oceans has already caused severe drought conditions in America's Western states and many parts of China and other Asian countries.
Already, the physics of increased warming and the changes in ocean circulation that result are strongly affecting the entire ecology of the Arctic regions, according to Sharon L. Smith, an oceanographer and marine biologist at the University of Miami.
Personally, I think we have much more dangers facing this world at the moment.
The scientific community is 100% united on three fundamental facts:
1. Global warming is real.
2. Global warming is caused by man.
3. The consequences of global warming will be catastrophic to all life on the planet.
It's all over but the denying.
Yes, I have seen Barnett's study.
What I can say is the two charts raise more questions than they answer. What is the stanardized signal strength's relationship to temperature? what is probably the thing that makes me MOST skeptical is the almost IDENTICAL trend line of ocean temperatures to the model. Let me put it this way, it appears TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. We've been working on Global Circulation Models (GCMs) for many decades, pouring litterally millions upon millions into them and they still have a spatial resolution of only 20 X 20 X 1 Km and can at best only provide vast regional estimates of future climate (ie more warming in higher latitutudes they can predict, they can not say it will get wetter in the UK though, that is way lower then their resolution) yet this guy claims to have a model of ocean temps that has a resolution of 100 meters or less, and not only that, with less then a 50 year record to build the model with, the model almost EXACTLY matches actual changes at all 16 intervals in two different oceans even though the ocean temp profiles are quite different for the two different oceans. As the author says %u201CThe models have captured the observed warming with stunning realism.%u201D Yeah right. Anyone want to bet which came first the measured temps or the model? This appears to me to be a model built based upon OBSERVED CHANGES. What is ASSUMED is what is CAUSING the changes.
Through the study of ancient ice cores from Antarctica it is possible to compare atmospheric concentrations of the dominant greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere with temperature variations over the past 400 thousand years of the earth's history. A comparison of the two trends indicates a very tight connection between their performance, with fluctuations in one plot almost exactly mirrored in the other for more than 400 thousand years.
But suddenly in the 1800s, as the Industrial Revolution takes off, atmospheric CO2 concentrations begin an unprecedented upward climb, rising rapidly from 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) in the early 1800s to a current level of 376 ppmv, 77 ppmv above the highest concentrations previously attained in the course of the preceding 400 thousand years.
PARIS, Feb. 2 %u2014 In a grim and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is %u201Cunequivocal%u201D and that human activity is the main driver, %u201Cvery likely%u201D causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950.
%u201CIn our daily lives we all respond urgently to dangers that are much less likely than climate change to affect the future of our children,%u201D said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, which administers the panel along with the World Meteorological Organization.
They said the world was in for centuries of climbing temperatures, rising seas and shifting weather patterns %u2014 unavoidable results of the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.
But their report, released here on Friday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said warming and its harmful consequences could be substantially blunted by prompt action.
We have been over this before. Yes, CO2 levels and temperature levles rose and fell. HOWEVER, CO2 level have always trailed temperture levels. So, why would CO2 levels only rise AFTER temperature levels and continue to rise even when temperature levels fell if CO2 is the main reason for global temperature? Maybe because CO2 levels are a RESULT of temperature levels? The Global Climate is the most complex transport mechanism known to man but you want to blame one molecule.
The Bush administration, which until recently avoided directly accepting that humans were warming the planet in potentially harmful ways, embraced the findings, which had been approved by representatives from the United States and 112 other countries on Thursday night.
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