Hot air has arrived before summer, as the City of Austin has paid $20,000 in public funds for a survey of the public on global warming, which asks questions such as “whether you will be affected by climate change.” It also asks respondents to say what the difference is between “global warming” and “climate change.”
This might be funny, but for the public funds involved, particularly when Austin may not have money to burn after announcing this week that sales tax revenue growth is closer to 5 percent than the 7.6 percent they projected and on which they based their lavish budget, which now might need to be scaled back. City officials are talking about trimming the police budget but yet they found money for this survey – who’s setting priorities here?
Nonetheless, Austin American-Statesman satirist John Kelso pokes plenty of great fun at this survey in his column.