Benny Peiser: The Reasons For Britain’s Climate Fatigue
Overwhelming Majority Of Conservative MPs Are Climate Sceptics
PRWeek, 10 September 2014 Alex Benady and John Owens Nearly three-quarters of Conservative MPs do not accept that climate change has been proven to be caused by human activity, according to a new poll.
The survey of 119 MPs from all parties was commissioned by PRWeek from Populus to establish the attitudes of parliamentarians to climate change and environmental issues as part of a special report on the subject.
Only 51 per cent of MPs agree that it is an established fact that global warming is largely man made, though there are substantial differences between parties.
Nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of Labour MPs agree that man-made global warming is now an established scientific fact compared with 30 per cent of Tory MPs.
Over half (53 per cent) of Conservative MPs agree with the statement that “it has not yet been conclusively proved that climate change is man made”.
A further 18 per cent agree that “man-made climate change is environmentalist propaganda”.
Climate change has fallen down the political agenda in the past five years, said half of all MPs, compared with 23 per cent who believe the opposite.
2) Benny Peiser: The Reasons For Britain’s Climate Fatigue
The public’s obsession with climate change, a common feature during much of the 1980s and 1990s, has been waning rapidly. The reason for growing climate fatigue is not so much a PR failure. After all, hundreds of millions are being spent each year around the world by thousands of NGOs, green energy lobbies and green government ministers.
It is rather that reality no longer corresponds with alarmist predictions that were issued just a few years ago.
The novelty of global warming and the habitual alarm have lost their original shock value. Most people have begun to take climate scares with a sizeable pinch of salt.
The climate campaign was founded on two fears: that global warming was an urgent threat that needed to be prevented imminently and at all costs; and second, that the world was running out of fossil fuels. Both assumptions turned out to be wrong.
The shale revolution means the world is swimming in abundant gas and oil. But by far the biggest problem facing the climate agenda is the global warming ‘pause’.
The average global surface temperature has not risen for 17 years, an inconvenient fact that no scientist had predicted.
If the warming standstill continues for much longer, climate scientists and models on which much of international climate policy is based will continue to haemorrhage credibility.
The climate campaign has become unpopular among voters who are hostile to green taxes and rising energy costs. Governments are seen to be unwilling to agree to drastic solutions that are detrimental to economic growth.
No communication skills can revive the success of bygone scaremongering as long as the actual climate does not conform to apocalyptic predictions made just a few years ago.
The House of Commons has a very low proportion of MPs with a science background. Add to that the Tories hatred of anything that “interferes with the market” and you have a recipe for the totally unsurprising results of the survey.
Some of the Tory right – and their friends in UKIP are plain ignorant on climate change. Tory MP Peter Lilley said that sea levels were many metres higher than now in the past (true) and so it did not matter if they were again (doh!). I debated with a UKIP candidate earlier this year who stated (seriously) that palm trees were growing on Greenland 2,000 years ago. When challenged as to his source for this gem of information he said “I saw it on TV”.
But both sides can and do play ^my best against your worst^ and look good.
“When challenged as to his source for this gem of information he said “I saw it on TV”.
Another success of the BolshieBC and the like to bumfuzzle public opinion.
If you want to look at a Conservative MP who is in favour of climate change legislation and the renewables industry, checkout the career and the lobbyist consultancy fees of Tim Yeo. He is also at the same time the chairman of the influential and supposedly impartial Commons committee on climate change. A somewhat conflicting position.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2187948/Conservative-MP-chairs-climate-committee-earns-140k-green-energy-firms.html
He was though, very thankfully deselected by his South Suffolk constituency party earlier this year. He will not be standing for parliament again.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10485742/Tim-Yeo-dropped-as-Tory-MP-by-local-party.html
“But by far the biggest problem facing the climate agenda is the global warming ‘pause’. The average global surface temperature has not risen for 17 years, an inconvenient fact that no scientist had predicted.”
Its not just that the :”pause” wasn’t predicted. Its that for 17 years its existence was DENIED. And anyone who suggested there was a pause was labeled “plain ignorant on climate change” (see above) or much worse, ipso facto.
…and these same people, these right wingers, are also mostly creationists like Glenn Beck. Woop-de-doo, they are already converted, now how do skeptics convert the rest? It’s by calling out fraud in loud anger, but the old men of skepticism haven’t got any fight in them, so colleges still get away with teaching thoughtlessness instead of critical thinking. What do they care, these soft minded pacifists, ten years from their death beds? They would rather spend time feeling superior amongst themselves than reach out to youth culture blogs and news sites, where intellectual bubbles thrive but are easily burst, were there more than a mere one or two of us going on over there to fight for reason. With so few of you being actual activists, us loud voices come off as isolated fanatics. Don’t worry, we’ll win, but many of you won’t live to see the very slow victory because you refused to engage the enemy that has declared cultural war on you. You left it to raw data maverick Goddard to call out fraud, and this Holocaust photo CIA conspiracy theorist birther merely alienated college kids instead of inspired them. Instead of actual activism you took the coward’s path of creating 500+ comments a day on Curry’s blog instead of 500 comments a day on blogs and news sites where non-skeptics might actually read them. I’m utterly disgusted by it as most of you should be disgusted with yourselves.
You are probably right, Nik … the trick is getting skeptic comments to stick in those youth culture blogs and news sites long enough to be read given the extreme level of censorship. That is a point that is consistently strongly made in all skeptic blogs.
I am probably somewhat irrational. I have been (snipped) here. My posts to the “cult blogs” never appear. The editors make sure of that.
“Nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of Labour MPs agree that man-made global warming…” Yes, we definitely identified the problem correctly. Nothing will change this persuasion’s minds on this attempted world power grab – even freezing to death in the dark. UK Conservatives were drinking the kool aid in all its flavors but pragmatism seems to still be alive and well in this group. One group wants to put an end to elections, the other wants to get re-elected.