Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Thanks to the blog of the irrepressible Hilary Ostrov, a long-time WUWT commenter, I found out about a poll gone either horribly wrong or totally predictably depending on your point of view. It’s a global poll done by the United Nations, with over six million responses from all over the planet, and guess what?
The revealed truth is that of the sixteen choices given to people regarding what they think are the important issues in their lives, climate change is dead last. Not only that, but in every sub-category, by age, by sex, by education, by country grouping, it’s right down at the bottom of the list. NOBODY thinks it’s important.
Now, people are always saying how the US is some kind of outlier in this regard, because polls in the US always put climate change down at the bottom, whereas polls in Europe generally rate it somewhat higher. But this is a global poll, with people chiming in from all over the planet. The top fifteen countries, in order of the number of people voting, were Mexico, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Philippines, Thailand, Cameroon, United States, Ghana, Rwanda, Brazil, Jordan, and Morocco … so this appears to be truly representative of the world, which is mostly non-industrialized nations.
So the next time someone tries to claim that climate change is “the most important challenge facing the world” … point them to the website of the study, and gently inform them that the rest of the world doesn’t buy that kind of alarmist hogwash for one minute. People are not as stupid as their leaders think, folks know what’s important and what’s trivial in their lives, and trying to control the climate is definitely in the latter group.
The poll will be open until 2015, so you can register your own priorities …
My regards to everyone, I’m off for a staff Christmas dinner with the workmates of the gorgeous ex-fiancee, life is good.
w.
De Costumbre: Please have the courtesy to QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS of whatever you might disagree with. This lets us all understand the exact nature of your objection.
Thanks, Willis … and glad that you had a great evening … and may you – and your gorgeous ex-fiancée – have many, many, more!
And may the voice of the overwhelming majority prevail and proclaim – as does this survey – that “Action taken on climate change” is the very least/last thing anyone needs to worry about.
Willlis, here is your exact quote “NOBODY thinks it’s important.”
Perhaps the survey would be more accurately represented by the amended statement “NOBODY thinks it’s as important.” 🙂
I am surprided by the 11th place for Reliable Energy at Home.
Maybe too many participants “Took it for granted”.
UK respondents put it 3rd ……… from last.
That is probably because most of them already have Reliable Energy at Home, you would see a change if it becomes unreliable in any modern country and all their GCMs, Petrol Pumps, phones, games, tvs and computers stop working.
A C
Take another look at the name of the most frequently responding countries (The top fifteen countries, in order of the number of people voting, were Mexico, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Philippines, Thailand, Cameroon, United States, Ghana, Rwanda, Brazil, Jordan, and Morocco) – most of these places do not have reliable anything except corruption and terror.
Watching Al Gore on some japanese news channel and hes trying to fit the war in Syria to a recent drought.
Need to pull the Data in on that claim.Say they lost 60 percent of the farmland.that caused the civil religious strife.
Nobody stopped to ask big Al how many millions hes made from trading Carbon Credits
For the UK, >80% of opinions were provided by those with education ‘Beyond Secondary School’.
I wonder how the participants were selected?
Poll schmolls. Religion only needs believers
‘Predictably’ in the heading should read ‘predictable’.
The poll is encouraging. People see through the climate obsessed arguments and are not impressed.
Politicians who have chosen to ride the climate fear wave have been warned.
Note that the poll shows that 1.3 million people (out of 6 million) still selected climate change as an important issue.
Yes, sadly there are still quite a few brainwashed individuals out there.
But that is misleading. Consider the type of poll. You are asked to choose 6 out of 16 things.
What this says is that OUT OF THE ITEMS YOU ARE ALLOWED TO CHOOSE, “Action on Climate Change” was the LEAST chosen thing by a rather wide margin.
Something had to be on the bottom. Remember that “multiple choice” actually restricts your choices. If there had been more choices in the list, it might not even have made the top 16, or it might have gotten even fewer votes.
With this poll they can better estimate the campaign budget for moving their pet topic upward on the public priority list, in the run-up to the climate circus in Paris. It will probably not be a small budget – which will not be spent on the real priorities.
President Obama at the September 23 UN Climate Summit:
“So the climate is changing faster than our efforts to address it. The alarm bells keep ringing. Our citizens keep marching. We cannot pretend we do not hear them. We have to answer the call.”
What call was that, again?
A problem I have with this poll is that is under the auspices of the United Nations, an outfit for which I have near zero respect.
Note that spending to achieve the results people really WANT is limited by spending on those that people don’t care about.
Nearly everything above the ‘Action taken on Climate Change’ could be radically improved if we would stop ‘Action taken on Climate Change’ .
Governments “care”.
NGOs “care”.
Greenies “care”.
Government-funded “scientists” “care”.
Al Gore “cares”.
Assorted authors, actors and various carpetbaggers “care”.
Etc etc.
Their “caring” is entirely self-interested, of course. They don’t give a hoot about the planet, and certainly not how the energy policies they push for damage people, especially those who can least afford it.
The scaliwags currently in Peru haggling and negotiating is yet more of the politically and financially-motivated circus, marching ahead of its own accord, and paying no heed to what people think.
“NOBODY thinks it’s important.” By my math, 20% do. In fact, we’re currently discussion it as are others. Is 20% statistically insignificant? Who gets to decide?
Many of these are longer term issues vs. pressing daily issues (“affordable and nutritious food” and “protection against crime and violence”.
Just another poll, with little actual contribution either way. The sample size is impressive, but other than that, meh.
This poll result giving a low priority to action on global warming is consistent with the PEW RESEARCH CENTER poll dated September 23,2014 where AMERICANS gave” dealing with global warming” the second lowest priority with only 29 %rating it as a top priority among 20 topics . It was rated19th out of 20 topics. There is a significant difference(28 points) between Democrats( 64)and Re publicans (14)in rating the importance of dealing with global warming. So it seems to be strongly a political issue. The new Republican dominated House and Senate will probably make a lot of changes in the future .
Many western governments are perceived to be an elitist group largely out of touch, but far better informed, than their electorate. Whether or not the climate change lobby is right or not, this survey reinforces that perception.
The only other conclusion to be drawn is that governments see climate change as a distraction or substitute for action on more important or controversial issues. It has the benefit of being largely non-partisan, and not disprovable on political timescales.
There is an inherent ambiguity in these types of question.
Should I list the things that are currently missing/deficient in my life (and which I would like provided/improved), or should I list the things which are currently OK but would hurt the most if they were to deteriorate.
This would explain why the poll results are very dependent upon the HDI of the country.
I checked the results for Kiribati, the place that’s practically “underwater” now if you believe the newspapers. Climate change is only the 8th most important topic there.
I’m sure the magical mewthods of Cook, Lew, et al could make this result more appropriate. And of course a certain Man could turn it upside down??
“The top fifteen countries, in order of the number of people voting, were Mexico, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Philippines, Thailand, Cameroon, United States, Ghana, Rwanda, Brazil, Jordan, and Morocco … so this appears to be truly representative of the world, which is mostly non-industrialized nations.”
Let’s get a little more nuancy. I would classify the first three as semi-industrialized, as well as most of the others. I think this actually makes your point stronger. We seem to have a consensus across the entire spectrum of industrialization. What everybody wants, regardless of degree of industrialization, is a future.
“People are not as stupid as their leaders think, folks know what’s important and what’s trivial in their lives, and trying to control the climate is definitely in the latter group.”
Maybe, but it still dos not stop them allowing their tax money to fund AGW “initiatives and voting in “Green” leaning governments (and presidents)
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
I disagree that this is a “failed poll”, because the UN (and most people) care about all of these things. How many choices did people get? It’s not surprising that climate change is not among many people’s top 3 or 5, because most people have other more pressing, immediate concerns.
Barry
As several other comments have indicated, people got up to 6 choices (not 3-5).
Good to know you consider the UN to be a credible pollster. I assume you’re also ok with Saudia Arabia, Cuba and Pakistan (also Russia & Ukraine, which I thought were, uhhh, merging) on the UN human rights commission.
Is anyone going to put up a post of record dealing with the “2014 hottest evah!” claim? I know these claims are refuted every day here, but it would help if we had a specific link addressing the specific claim.
Caesar asks “what would you have me give you; bread, circuses, or the head of Biggus Dickus?”
It doesn’t matter what you choose – every vote is a vote in favour of Caesar’s governance.