From Angus Reid Public Opinion:
Half of respondents in the two North American countries think climate change is a fact and is caused by emissions—fewer Britons concur.
While Canadians continue to be more likely than Americans and Britons to blame global warming on man-made emissions, they are not as unwavering about it as they were last year, a new three-country Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found.
Overall, half of Canadians (52%, -8 since October) and Americans (49%, +7) say that that global warming is a fact and is mostly caused by emissions from vehicles and industrial facilities. Only 43 per cent of Britons (-4) agree with this assessment.
In the United States, one-in-five respondents (20%, -5) think that global warming is a theory that has not yet been proven, along with 20 per cent of Britons (+2) and 14 per cent of Canadians (=).
More than half of Canadians (55%, -6) believe it is more important to protect the environment, even at the risk of hampering economic growth, while 22 per cent (+4) would prefer to foster economic growth, even at the risk of damaging the environment.
In the United States, 47 per cent of respondents (+2) would emphasize protecting the environment, while 26 per cent (-4) would foster economic growth. The biggest change since last year comes in Britain, where only 40 per cent of respondents would protect the environment (-11) and 33 per cent would prefer to foster economic growth (+11).
Full Report, Detailed Tables and Methodology (PDF)
h/t to WUWT reader JB Williamson
Two reasons why the Brits are becoming more sceptical about AGW propaganda:-
1) Three freezing cold winters in a row
2) Three miserable summers in a row (apart from a short respite in April this year).
David Walliams turned up at Lechlade last week for his charity raising swim along the length of the Thames to discover the water temperature was 15degC – unbelievably cold for the end of “summer” – and he had to swim it in a wet suit instead of swimming trunks.
The British public have seen every claim by the alarmists to be falsified over the past ten years – ie no more winter snow, deaths from heat and drought, vineyards in Scotland – and are finally getting the message that is was all a load of b…s!
With the Australian Government introducing a “Carbon Bill”, it is interesting that the Australian people (population 22 million) where not involved in this survey.
Regards
Wuwtgirl
Tallbloke said;
The last two questions split the sceptic vote. Neat way to obfuscate the conclusion that in the UK at least, the sceptics are in the majority
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Yes, a deliberate attempt to mislead and influence people to vote for agw next time by making it look as if a majority believe in climate (fraud) change. One or two more hard winters and these crooked polls will disappear.
The poll is stupid.
None of the answers is correct for me.
The correct answer:
In some periods of history global warming is a fact
in others global cooling is a fact
and for the past 15 years there seems to have been neither warming nor cooling
Not mentioned is that many Canadians might welcome a bit of global warming – and that some wishful (or wistful?) thinking is inflating the numbers.
I believe that the reason that more Brits are skeptical is because Britain is further along the AGW catastrophe, i.e. the looting and destruction of their economy. Rolling blackouts, skyrocketing energy prices, unemployment and unaffordable taxes all tend to “focus the mind”. When your children are cold and hungry, a person starts looking for answers.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Yes, but I would use the word “ironic”, in regards to China/India being the source of Canada’s salvation. However, indicators of major cooling (solar minimum, double-dip La Nina, etc) do not bode well. Canada loses big, if and when, cooling resumes. Warming is a pleasant walk in the park.
They should NEVER forget that…! EVER…! GK
Canadian belief in Global Warming is based on wishful thinking.
Oh, Bruce already said that.
I know it is going to be another long cold winter in Alberta just like last year – so another 6 cords of wood to be cut turning carbon into carbon from my carbon sink outside the back door … Those city folks in southern Ontario would think differently if they had to cut and split their own wood to keep warm at 40 below on a frosty Alberta morning.
We Brits are used to a lying government and their lackeys the BBC so the figures do not confound.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition ….three reasons
“Hugh Davis says:
September 13, 2011 at 1:45 pm
Two reasons why the Brits are becoming more sceptical about AGW propaganda:-
1) Three freezing cold winters in a row
2) Three miserable summers in a row (apart from a short respite in April this year).”
3) Huge and ever-increasing fuel bills to support a C02 tax and ‘green’ energy
I think the fact that we might all have overlooked is that the bottom three statistics in each column quite clearly show that all who were asked the questions do not believe that global warming is man made. If we add all those replies together for each country therefore we get 48 per cent in Canada, 50 per cent in the US. and 57 per cent in GB who do not support the man-made global warming argument. This makes the figures far more favourable to the sceptics viewpoint.
(I note that the statisticians have ‘lost’ 1 per cent somewhere in their figures for the US, but even when added to the ‘believers’ stats. it still doesn’t give them a majority who believe in AGW in the US)
George Lawson says:
September 14, 2011 at 3:22 am
If only public opinion could control the World! I’d pay less tax, have longer holidays and get paid more!
To coin a very british phrase – consensus? may a****!!!!
As an Australian denier I find it interesting that my fellow citizens overwhelmingly are against doing anything about AGW whether they believe in it or not!
Might be part of the ‘she’ll be right’ philosophy?
US and Canada are not paying the huge $’s to ‘fix’ global warming that the UK is, I think that is probably why people in North America are more indifferent to whether Climate change, easier to accept the general tone that is repeated, that global warming is a fact, when it does affect you, than to try to understand it. Since the media is generally lazy and controversy driven the facts generally shouldn’t get in the way of a good story of apocolypse, so the media repeat the climate warming change industry message. As Canadian Conservative’s we should be fully from past canadian occurances that the media by in large are: a) not free market focused, or informed, b) favour central planning concepts c) looking for angles to stories they favour political/human interest views rather than fact views…so in conclusion we should not be surprised that average person, being disinterested, relies largely on a media that repeats stories from biased groups and therefore North Americans view climate change with something more acceptance than UK.
I will give one more example on the controversy on Nicole Turmel, interim NDP leader, on her membership in 2 separatist parties, I was out of the country at the time, and caught a link a friend sent me of a press conference in Hamilton on-line of PM Harper, and read some blogs following press conference, and the attacks on the Conservative Party for criticizing Ms. Turmel and NDP were telling. Many criticisms were “wasn’t Stephen harper a member of a separatist party how dare he…”; “isn’t the Conservative party a merger of the separatist reform party and PC”. Now I joined the Reform party in 1988, I lived in Ontario, I was about one of first 50 members east of Manitoba and probably one of the youngest at that time, and the comments would be true if you simply relied on old press reports, that made up a story “Reform Party separtist”, pure fiction, and then other journalists used someone else’s opinion as fact, and readers used fiction as a basis for their opinion. My point conservatives tend to believe in facts, cause and effect. The left are about politics and power, how do I get what I want when I want it. It’s not about facts its about getting something by whatever means. The conservative view to assess success and the ‘statist left’ are so different, you will go crazy trying to understand on cause and effect basis, it is based upon “How do I get what I want.” Unfortunately, trying to figure out what they want is often masked by what they say they want. An insight, and I paraphrase as I understood from a book I read in the summer from author G.K. Chesterton, (1874-1936) which is: you can trust reformers because they have a goal and tell you where they want to go, but you can not trust the inherent dishonesty of progressives, they tell you they are progressives and relish in their progressiveness, but never exactly what they are progressing towards, they do not have normative, or he called “orthodox” values that are fixed and can be relied upon over time. Notice conservatives how the ‘progressives’ change over time “this is what I want or need full stop”…they get that, later “that’s not what I really wanted that was an obvious first step, now this is what I want/need”…is it? Is Global warming/climate change a cause and effect issue or a progressive issue a step to something that no one not even they are really clear on?
A message to all those Britons who would, if asked by the pollsters, have replied that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is bovine faeces : please sign one ( or both ) of the e-petitions to have the Climate Change Act 2008 repealed. http://www.gopetition.com/petition/43914.
html.http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/2035.
Note to our North American and Australian friends – we already have the CO2 regulations you are desparately trying to forestall. By the UK Govt’s own figures, the cost will be £300 pa for every man, woman and child in the country every year for 40 years, a grand total of £732 Bn. This is without taking account of opportunity costs, collateral loss of businesses / jobs, etc, nor does it factor in subsidies requested by energy generators for conventional power stations operated uncommercially as core load back up for wind farms.