Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t JoNova, GWPF; The USA are amongst the most skeptical of the countries surveyed (fourth from the bottom of believers).
International poll: most expect to feel impact of climate change, many think it will make us extinct
In:InternationalScience & environment
September 15, 2019, 2:00 p.m.New YouGov study of 30,000 people in 28 countries and regions uncovers noticeable differences in attitudes between East and West
Climate change may never before have been as firmly fixed in the public consciousness as it is today. With campaigner Greta Thunberg set to speak at the UN’s Climate Action Summit, a new international YouGov survey uncovers attitudes to climate change across the world.Acknowledgement of mankind’s role in the changing climate is widespread
That climate change is happening and that humanity is at least partly responsible is a view held by the majority across the world. Indians are the most likely to think that human activity is the main reason the climate is changing, at 71%.
At 35% Norwegians and Saudi Arabians are the least likely to think this, although a further 36% and 48% respectively in each country think that humanity is partially responsible for the changing climate.
…
Read more: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/science/articles-reports/2019/09/15/international-poll-most-expect-feel-impact-climate
Its not all good news for US climate skeptics.
There is another chart (see the yougov link above) which suggests slightly over half of US people surveyed think climate change will have at least “a fair amount of impact” on the economy, so there is concern.
The survey also suggests that around 50% of people surveyed in the USA believe drastic changes are required to avert climate change, with an additional 15% supporting continuation of existing climate policies. I’m not sure how that view reconciles with the 36% who believe that humans are mostly responsible for climate change.
JoNova raises concerns about the poll methodology.
Scandinavian countries are highly skeptical of anthropogenic climate change, I found this surprising; for some reason I thought they were all activists. Greta Thunberg’s Sweden is third from the bottom of the list of climate believers.
For some reason Canada doesn’t appear on the summary page. I had a look at the full report, Canada gets a few mentions but I didn’t find an explanation of why Canada’s opinions don’t appear in the summary.
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That the climate is changing…..and all the responsibility for the past ~50 years is developing countries
..and not the USA
I’ll bet there ‘s not 2 people they surveyed that know that
Until we stop letting them get away with framing the question…we’re losing
So why aren’t the U.N. Warmists insisting 3rd world countries STOP developing? Oh wait … they are … they want to STOP the burning Amazon … which is hurting primeval Stone Age Amazonian tribespeople. The UN wants us ALL to live like primeval tribespeople.
The burning of the western Amazon is not hurting any primeval people. It’s farmland more than rainforest in that area. The burning this year is way down from 10–15 years ago and only a little above the recent 5 year average. There is more rainforest today than in 1950.
The relatively increased burning is caused by the environmentalists. Biofuel production has been taking over farmland, displacing farmers and ranchers, so they seek new land. Right now is is about 2.3% but they expect it to climb to 36%. But the enviros in Brazil are exerting pressure to stop all land clearing, ignoring that there is lots of land going back to nature. [Also, many indigenous people are moving off the land to the cities, vacating slash and burn altogether.] In response to the threat of being denied land, the farmers are rushing to clear more land before the freeze is imposed.
One of the enviro solutions is to make everybody vegan so there will be need for grazing land. They create a problem and make others be the forced solution. Nice.
I’m a secondary vegan..😁!
Charles Higley – “There is more rainforest today than in 1950.“. A link would be helpful. TIA.
Why?
Fingers broken? Unable to type?
Or just trolling.
It doesn’t look like Gretta is having the effect she wanted in Scandinavia.
As to the perceived incongruity between those who think that climate change is human caused or not, and the purported need to spend public funds to mitigate any effect: There is no connection.
One can believe that a hurricane is coming and act to mitigate its damage while simultaneously understanding that humans had no responsibility for its existence.
Nobody is seriously debating whether the world has warmed slightly. The arguments are all about whether we can do anything to effect the climate, what the effects of a slightly warming planet are, and if any actions can or should be taken to mitigate any of the effects.
But, the political pressure she has created on the Swedish government has got all the green energy companies salivating over a new batch of government handouts and subsidies.
The big problem is that a very high percentage of politicians believe in AGW, while more normal, real-world people do not.
Charles, I’m not sure the pollies believe in AGW like you say. They certainly believe there are votes in it. A few more repeat surveys like this and the pollies will go quiet.
Until we stop letting them get away with framing the question…we’re losing
B I N G O !
+100
Nonsense. Look at these two files and tell me they do not prove that only a small amount of climate change is man made and most is natural and in areas where there is little or no human activity exists. Also if emissions have arrived from fossil fuel use areas it needs serious explanation as to how they managed to do it with no trace of the greenhouse effect on the way in and the spectacular heating rate in an areas where otherwise it is to say the least the sun’s warmth not very noticeable.
AMSRE_SSTAn_M.mov
Notice the most extreme Arctic region anomalies seem to occur around September.
Forget the questions, Latitude — the headline / conclusion is deceptive.
“75% of Americans believe humans are mainly or partly responsible for climate change” SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE HEADLINE !
The sub-headline should have been:
“Not that polls of ordinary people have anything to do with real science”.
This poll was a waste of time.
Humans responsible?
UAE – 52%?
Saudi Arabia – 35%?
Oman – 43%
Bahrain – 46%
Qatar – 52%
Kuwait – 52%
Hong Kong – 50% A thoroughly urban area that is unlikely to ever give up fossil fuels?
What kind of poll gets these kind of results with heavy Middle East representation?
One suspects that these numbers are from volunteer poll respondents at colleges and perhaps High Schools in urban locations. Responders, only too thrilled to respond many times.
Encouraging news. Let’s hope that the feverish idiocy regarding ‘climate change’ grinds to a halt soon. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.
It’s ironic, considering that Messrs. Gore and Hansen in the USA are regarded as the high-profile initiators of all the current hysteria. Certainly, the first time I saw a reference to the possible effects of CO2 on climate was in an American undergraduate science textbook in the mid 1970s. That time, it seems to me, is when the seeds were set for all the craziness that’s happening now.
As did I Carbon but they were talking the coming Ice Age and not coincidentally, this end of days nonsense ramped up after Ehrlichs blockbuster hit Science Fiction Novel “The Population Bomb” – oh wait they placed that in the non-fiction section at all the university libraries.
I have a college biology text that contains a squib about CO2 running up the global temperature. I’m away on vacation, otherwise I’d post the appropriate documentation.
The point being that CO2 warming has been an issue for a long time. Of course in all that time, it doesn’t seem to have produced much of an effect.
when did you go to college Steve and how do they correlate Biology to climate science? I wonder, does that trump my Earth Science College text from 1974? They did shift their hobgoblin from the coming ice age to Global warm…ahhh climate change along the way. So maybe we can triangulate the the year they shifted the narrative.
Carbon 500; it will not grind to a halt as long as there are vast amounts of money to be had for supporting the idiocy, and as long as politicians can use this “cause” as a lever for power, influence, and most important of all, more taxes. Only when these advantages are gone, will the fanfares of the “climate crusade” fade away into a bitter whimper from “failed saviours”, the great majority of whom will be white, male and elderly.
It may, one day, “fade away” – only to replaced with something else. You know this.
“There is another chart (see the yougov link above) which suggests slightly over half of US people surveyed think climate change will have at least “a fair amount of impact” on the economy, so there is concern. ”
Climate change will have a huge impact on the economy – especially from the conversion of electricity production to the inefficient renewables. Costs of power and electricity will skyrocket.
There’s the problem. What do you mean by climate change. The climate changes. The climate has always changed. Climate change has a huge effect on the economy. Warmer is Richer.
My parents survived the Dirty Thirties. I believe in natural climate change.
Warmer means longer growing seasons as well as expanding areas capable of growing crops pole ward.
What matters is whether the total area of productive land on the planet increases or decreases. As sea level rises over the next few hundred years it is hard to believe it is going to increase.
Well, the sea-level comment is your typical garbage.
‘over the next few hundred years’ – dear God.
And the expansion of productive lands also extends the other way, pushing into drier areas.
See that’s the so-often unspoken equal and opposite reaction.
What rise? Grand solar minimum will cause increased ice, lower sea levels and starvation….
How much land do you believe 12 inches of sea level rise (at the absolute most) will inundate?
Odds are sea levels will be lower at the end of the century then they are now.
“Odds are sea levels will be lower at the end of the century then they are now.”
And the winner of the most stupid comment of the day goes to…
Not to worry.
When silly Simon writes something; certainly no-one here believes it.
Another nine inches of sea level miniscule incremental rise over the next century will not endanger any arable land.
Anywhere.
Commie Bob –
I agree with you that the climate has always changed. In fact, I generally agree with most of your comments.
However, I think you stepped in it this time. After saying “warmer is richer”, you mention your parents survived the Thirties (as did mine). Of course in the U.S. , the thirties were as warmer or warmer than the present, but they were also the years of the Great Depression. Warmer was not richer.
Every rule is made to be broken. The MWP and the RWP were, by and large, much richer than the LIA. The Dirty Thirties are an example of what the climate does all by itself with no help from us at all. As you point out, the Dirty Thirties, even though they were warmer, were a miserable time.
old engineer September 18, 2019 at 12:35 pm
Of course in the U.S. , the thirties were as warmer or warmer than the present, but they were also the years of the Great Depression. Warmer was not richer.
________________________________________
Yes, the days were “warmer or warmer than the present,” –
but the nights were COLDER.
The problem was monoculture and the exhaustion of the Ogallala Aquifer.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ogallala+aquifer&oq=ogall&aqs=chrome.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ogallala+aquifer+Google+maps&oq=ogallala+aquifer+Google+maps&aqs=chrome.
Nowadays irrigation of the middle West plains + refilling the aquifer is done via the Mississipi River –
which some years runs dry ’till arriving New Mexico:
http://blog.valleyirrigation.com/valley-irrigation/us/mediaroom/growing-the-conversation-blog/blog-home/blog-post/blog/2015/10/05/supplemental-irrigation-making-a-splash-in-midwest
Joe,
There is minor distinction between actual climate change effects to the economy and effect on the economy of political machinations regarding the climate.
Higher energy prices are not being driven by changes in climate, but by politics.
I suspect any actual changes in climate will have effects on the economy like lower crop prices, which are not always beneficial.
“Higher energy prices are not being driven by changes in climate, but by politics.”
And folk wonder why most world economies are slowly grinding downwards.
Answering YES on such a poll has a virtue signalling component to it. Very few people actually want to pay to “fix” such a problem or issue.
And yet I wonder why the “believers” are not 50 points higher.
Arizona had a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2018. Tom Steyer got it on the ballot. The Attorney General required an addition to the statement to include “irrespective of the cost to consumers”. It failed by 2 to 1. The cost language part mattered, and pissed Steyer off so much he went all in against the Republican AG who squeaked out a 3% victory. The added statement regarding COST was a major reason the initiative failed by such a large margin in a blue wave selection in Arizona. Even Democrat voters care about their pocket books when it is obvious there will be higher costs TO THEMSELVES every month for years to come, they just don’t care when they think someone else will be footing the bill.
The same crap was approved in Nevada 60% to 40% the same year, also backed by Steyer, but we in Nevada had a democrat AG and governor and no “irrespective of the cost to consumers” in the proposal or the explanation included in the sample ballot. This being a constitutional amendment it will need to be approved again in 2020 to take effect. The state legislature passed unanimously, and the governor signed a bill providing the same as the ballot initiative. The democrats had control of both houses on the legislature with only one vote short of a super-majority in the Senate. The Republicans voted for it to use to oppose the constitutional amendment as unnecessary and allowing for repeal of the requirement by legislative action in the future, and as campaign fodder when electrical rates start rising as the requirements are implemented.
If true, then California will be really screwed, one less neighboring state to supply power when the renewables dont work
You have to ask the correct question. Too many times the question is: Do you believe in climate change?
So I assume there were 4 questions asked here.
Anyway, if 36 % in the USA believe humans are MOSTLY responsible for climate change that is 36% TOO MANY.
It shows what irresponsible media and “pseudo-scientists” can do.
In general, younger people in countries with hot climates are easiest to fool.
Only 30 thousand people? Why so little? Have these people been shown past solar cycles, past weather pattens, do they know of past hot/cold weather? do they know about the north/south flip? How about the weak magnetic field? Were have they got the facts to come to the conclusion that co2 is causing climate change.. al gore and his nasty money making liers are hell bent on sending us back to the dark ages…
Can’t resist posting the incomparable Sir Humphrey on polling.
https://youtu.be/G0ZZJXw4MTA
Bloody Brilliant!
Media literacy is taught in a lot of high schools across North America. That skit should be compulsory viewing in all of them.
Sadly it’s message, that opinion polls are unreliable, will not be learned. Even more insidiously this could influence the less than ethical on how to get more false ammunition for their cause.
Nowhere in the skit did the politicians even mention that this sort of manipulation is ethically WRONG!
Sir Humphrey is a snivel serpent, ethics?….
It was ever thus.
That’s also one reason why the election pols doesn’t work out correctly, most of the time.
That was beautifully appropriate, David Hartley; thanks for posting it!
My pleasure, perhaps a quote from co-author Jonathan Lynn may also strike a chord.
“there was not a single scene set in the House of Commons because government does not take place in the House of Commons. Some politics and much theatre takes place there. Government happens in private. As in all public performances, the real work is done in rehearsal, behind closed doors. Then the public and the House are shown what the government wishes them to see.”
It’s one of those parodies that (sadly?), is difficult to spot if you’ve ever had any dealings with the UK’s Government lol.
Yes, drastic measures are in order like telling urban planners that maybe just maybe their “good planning” crutch is wrong in dictating the massive number of parking spaces required for new shopping and office developments in America. We never actually paved over Vietnam as some mused during the war but we are doing it now to America. Someone get word to the planners that we don’t swarm malls the way we used to before the internet and we don’t even shop for Christmas or attend churches the way we used to. The UHI effect is very real and man made.
Jo Nova is skeptical. Well, I guess so.
Australia is near the bottom of the list, just a bit above that bastion of skepticism, Scandinavia! And if you believe that one …….
Next up, S.E. Asia, all at the top. Taiwan, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines. All hotbeds of activism, for sure.
Get This: China is more alarmist than Australia. (!!!!!) No wonder Jo Nova is skeptical.
Notably missing:
Russia and japan, neither of which buys into AGW at all.
Also missing is New Zealand, one of the all-time greats of alarmist countries. Maybe not as alarmist as India, in this poll??????
This poll might make sense if you turned it upside down.
I am calling it -Flag on the field-
FAKE NEWS
Meanwhile in India…..
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-india-invite-bids-global-073737036.html
Resourceguy LOLOL all these climate scare stories yet coal and nuclear plants are being built around the world, india, china, Australia etc etc will carry on as usual….
Yes, it doesn’t matter what this poll claims Indians believe, they are going to DO what suits them best, which is currently the cheapest fuel available. Go Coal!
Having said that, I don’t trust this poll any more than TonyL above. We all know just how sensitive poll results are to the actual phrasing of the question. I don’t currently speak any of the hundreds of languages used in India, but I bet the people running this poll don’t know many more. How many interpreters did they employ? lol.
The climate has been “changing” for 4.5 billion years….Does the majority believe otherwise ?
I found a survey which says ’33 Percent Of American Millennials Believe The Earth Is Flat’
And I found a survey indicating that 86% of responding Liberal Democrats would destroy the world to save it from humanity
Just so you know griff, the term “flat earth”is a trademark of trolls along with the creationist terms for the age of earth being less than 100K years old or whatever the number they’re using. Those trollish behaviors are especially irksome when directed at geologists with advanced degrees or others with advanced degrees in their fields.
I believe you Griff, considering the junk you normally spout.
36% believe that man is primarily responsible for the temperature increase since the end of the LIA.
33% of millenials believe that the earth is flat.
Just goes to show that the destruction of the public school system is advancing at full speed.
To participate in YouGov polls you have to answer a lot of very intrusive personal questions, information about yourself which YouGov sells to companies who then target you. People completely unconcerned about their privacy tend to be young, and possibly stupid or at least uninformed enough to give away their personal info for free. So this is a poll representing young and uninformed opinions.
This is supported by the fact that people in equatorial countries seem unaware that their climate will change least.
It’s also interesting that those icons of Leftist Socialism, the Scandinavian countries all seem to be at the bottom of the charts.
Thanks for the background info.
It depends on what you mean by ‘leftist socialism’. As far as I can tell, the Scandinavian countries have market economies and place a high value on individual autonomy. link
To my surprise, a Norwegian relative my senior has expressed skepticism and actively opposes wind energy projects.
I was referred to this study by someone who noted that the survey mthodology itself throws doubt on the numbers as it is a self-responding survey – that is people chose to respond as opposed to being approached, thus making it self-selecting. This is the wording at the bottom of the actual YOUGOV post:
“All of the surveys were conducted online, and in some countries the internet penetration is low to the point where the sample can only be said to be representative to the online population. The countries where the online population is lower than 60% of the total are China, Thailand, Vietnam, Egypt, India and Indonesia.”
You can imagine that not a lot of people will actually take the time to respond to a survey unless they are already primed to the issue.
I thought the same thing, but then I looked at the YouGov Q&A here:
https://yougov.co.uk/about/panel-methodology/research-qs/
There are a few murky weasel words in here where they say their “incentive system” is designed to prevent the self-selection problem and claim they could detect any deliberate attempt to game a poll by activist groups. It’s also not clear how they get the universe of names they poll; they talk about people “proactively recruited via other carefully-selected websites”, whatever that means. But it seems they make a fairly honest effort to be a real polling outfit, not the hokey self-selecting joke I thought.
I joined YouGov under a pseudonym, and I found they require you to answer highly intrusive survey questions which try to pin down your political positions, demographics and even psychological profile with no “I don’t want to answer” option. The “incentives” are points which you can convert to merchandise at absurd rates. You have to answer hundreds of surveys to get anything. Surveys like the one above are few and far between. Their primary focus is building a detailed profile of you.
“at absurd rates” – And this is the problem. Since you have to complete a lot of survey to get gift certificates, I believe that YouGov subscribers do what my wife and I are doing: almost every answer are complete at random. The only questions we don’t fill out randomly are those that concern us.
Another example of a poll using biased/misleading questions to get a higher percentage of the preferred result.
It takes a lot of drilling down in the results to see the actual survey question. Once the actual survey question is posted, you can see that it is highly biased with the implied presumption that CO2 is the primary cause of the current warming
Similar to the survey question that found 80+% of republicans responding that they are in favor of the “passing laws to reduce the pollution that causes global warming”
They use ambiguity, and things that are trivially true to get the answers they want, much the same way lawyers do in a courtroom. The ambiguity of the phrase “climate change” is especially useful, since even a cooling climate is “climate change”. If you spit in the ocean, that in fact does affect both SST as well as SLR. So what?
Hey, Eric, Canada does not appear in the statistics because the majority of Canadians wish it would warm up some, and Trudeau is finally realizing his doomsday fantasies aren’t selling. Remember, 80% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the USA border, and that would be what they call a clue!
Well, we know the Sen. Elizabeth Warren is fully onboard.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist)
Hmmm. I’m about twice as much Indian than Warren claimed to be (great-grandmother was half-Indian). My skepticism must come from the other Heinz 57 varieties that comprise my genetic make-up.
By the way, based on what I see in the mirror, when you combine all that DNA, what you get visually, is Opie Cunningham.
The Maybarry, cute Opie, snarky teen Richie Cunningham, or the present-day Ron “I wear a baseball cap ‘cuz I’m bald” Howard?
All three, depending on the era.
Although I don’t wear a baseball cap.
So. I guess we got, like, 4% of Progressives?
“Sorry, eh, but I don’t want to give my opinion. That’d be rude, eh.”
Just wait for the cooling.
Canadian universities are now hijacked by the climate strike minority crowd:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/climate-strike-students-ubc-1.5287855
And the CBC finds the local sympathetic professor, George Hoberg, a professor at UBC’s School of Public Policy and Global Affairs… a climate expert obviously…
Eco-totalitarism is near.
I have my own view, not covered above.
The “narrative” by the Fakestream media, politicians (Algore) and other liars is that fossil fuels are running up carbon dioxide (that part has to be at least partly true), which is re-radiating heat waves in all directions, slowing its escape to space, thus resulting in a higher equilibrium temperature. That temperature stuff has been much debunked on this site. The records that make it look that way are heavily faked. The narrative continues that the small difference produced will cause enormous damage to the biosphere and maybe even end human life.
But almost everybody on this site is a physical scientist. I am a life scientist. It has been mentioned here that carbon dioxide is the basis of photosynthesis, and it has been pointed out that geologists studied temperatures before all the screaming began to determine temperature optimum. I do not know what the best was–but “climate optimum” means a warm period, the “Eocene Climate Optimum” is defined correctly even in Wikipedia last I checked, and was six Celcius degrees warmer than present.
Today’s young geologists do not even know what the term “climate optimum” means.
The summary position of this site is that fossils have little to do with global temperature, and that strongly beneficial. I concur with that.
Yet over the long term (even Miss Donkey-mouth has admitted the twelve years was “a joke”), there really IS occurring climate change that is severely harming the biosphere. It has been going on since the start of agriculture about 14 000 years ago, and turned the Sahara and former “Fertile Crescent” into deserts. The US got its first taste of this desertification with the 1930’s Dust Bowl” and another uncomprehended lesson this year with severe flooding in the Midwest, followed magically by drought.
Agriculture as we have always known it involves plows or other tillage, and a lot of bare soil. Those two things destroy soil structure, so that the soil cannot absorb the rain at all well, and you get runoff and floods. Then the dry soil supports fewer plants, there is less transpiration from fewer leaves, thus less cloud formation, and less subsequent rain. The bare, damaged soil forms a rural heat island, which further reduces rain. So–drought. And high daytime air temperatures and low nighttime temperatures. That is the real climate change. It can be reversible in as few as three years.
The human race vanguard is learning awesome things about enhancing soil structure and improving fertility. Because YOU know so little about it, these pioneers believe the garbage about fossil fuels. That is dangerous, because fossils and only fossils increase the carrying capacity of the Earth for life. Fortunately, their rightness matters much more than their mistakes. Permaculture, Regeneration Agriculture done right, are profitable. No smashing of the economy needed.
There IS climate change, it IS dangerous, because starvation causes wars, and it IS caused primarily by humans. It is not caused by fossils–their carbon dioxide reduces the problem. The real cause is profitable and fun to fix.
I speak to lots of people here in Austria. Most are very skeptical of this Climate Change thing without any prodding. I must confess that I speak primarily to people my age and older and at our age one tends to be less panicky and more conservative. Most of those who say they believe in Climate Alarmism don’t really understand the consequences. As there is no emissions-free energy form, we must commit collective suicide as otherwise, 8 billion people living at Medieval standards will also impact the planet. Living standards will have to drop massively, life expectancy will drop massively, the poor will be even poorer, the Middle-Class will vanish. That’s not a world I want to live in – and a large majority of people agree once they come to understand the real choices.
Russia and all of eastern Europe omitted? No Mexico? Not a single Central and South American country? A lot of people live in these places.
I am convinced that the only reason “climate change” gets purchase in many countries is that Obama, in signing on to Paris, agreed to distribute $100 billion per year among whatever are called “undeveloped countries.” This excites developed countries because we are to pay more than any of them thus supporting the screw-the-USA meme. It’s the same issue that causes so many climate researchers and industrialists to sign on and stay aboard. It’s about money, who gets it, and who doesn’t.