Slide in climate change belief is a temporary glitch

The guardian.co.uk , Monday, March 15, 2010
Correspondent :
It has taken a perfect storm of snow, scientific doubt and political failure to dent public acceptance of the reality of global warming - but these factors will pass

A long, hard winter has turned some people against believing in climate change.

Is the world warming and are we causing it? The number of people confidently saying yes to that question has slipped sharply over recent weeks, if opinion polls on both sides of the Atlantic are to be believed. That looks like bad news for those arguing that major changes to how we travel, power our homes and feed ourselves are needed to avoid catastrophe.

Yet a longer-term take on the data shows that interpreting the results as a collapse in confidence in climate science due to the release of the University of East Anglia emails or mistakes by the UN's climate body is not sustainable – or at least a long way from the full story. The data shows just how overwhelmingly British people accept climate change is happening and how resolute those views have been – at least until now. And even in the more sceptical US 63% of people believe that global warming has already begun or will do so in their lifetime.

First, the US Gallup poll released yesterday shows the proportion of Americans who think the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated has risen seven percentage points in a year to 48%. What's more interesting is that it is the fourth year in a row the figure has risen, from 30% in 2006, suggesting recent events are not the sole cause of shifting attitudes. Gallup, like all pollsters, can only speculate on the reasons for the shift, but does say intriguingly that the issue is becoming increasingly bipartisan.

An Ipsos-Mori poll in the UK released in February showed those thinking climate change is "definitely" happening had fallen from 44% to 31% in the year to the middle of January. A Populus poll for the BBC conducted on 3-4 February revealed that 25% of people didn't think global warming was happening, up from 15% in November.

Look at that the other way round and the Ipsos-Mori poll showed 91% of people accepted climate change was happening, and the Populus poll 75%. The difference is probably due to the former poll not including people over 65, who are significantly more sceptical, while the latter was conducted at the peak of negative news coverage about climate science. As ever with polls, the different phrasing of questions matters too.

Nonetheless, confidence has fallen. Why? An obvious factor is the recent public relations disaster suffered by climate scientists, including both the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia and the false claim that all Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035, which was included in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But this is unlikely to be the whole story, as only 57% of those polled by Populus had heard these stories. Far more – 83% – had heard about, and were experiencing, an exceptionally cold winter. That's a pretty tangible opinion former, even if it is wrong, given the crucial difference between week-to-week weather and decade-to decade climate.

However, even chilly weather can only be part of the story. Unpublished polling by the Guardian/Observer in February 2009 – another very cold snap – showed no shift in opinions on global warming at all, compared to previous years back to 2005, with the vast majority thinking it was happening.

A last factor to consider is the farce at Copenhagen, when over 115 world leaders gathered and failed to deliver the global deal they had said was essential, perhaps suggesting to people that fears over warming were overblown. The Populus poll found 61% of people had seen the Copenhagen summit in the news.

So it seems it took a perfect storm of snow, scientific doubt and political failure to dent public acceptance of the reality of global warming by about 10%.

For greens that could be encouraging, as all those factors will fade. For sceptics, it's more likely to be worrying, as they have never had it so good in recent years. And people still rate the environment and climate change above some other headline-grabbing issues. The Ipsos-Mori poll indicates that, as "issues facing you and your family", environment rates higher than education and roughly level with crime and immigration.

Looking forward, the critical category will be those people who accept climate change is occurring but think natural cycles – not humans - are more likely the cause. That position allows people to reject green measures as futile. The size of that group is large, perhaps 30-50%, but varies a lot between polls, probably due to different questions. The IPcC's landmark 2007 report concluded that it was 90% certain that we are causing warming. Whether people can be persuaded of that may be the key to whether meaningful action on climate change actually happens.

 
SOURCE : http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/mar/12/climate-change-belief-polls
 


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