Essay by Eric Worrall
According to Professor Michelle Baddeley, even voters who support openly climate skeptic parties believe politicians should invest in renewables and CO2 emissions reduction.
Almost 90% of us now believe climate change is a problem – across all political persuasions
Published: May 17, 2022 5.59am AEST
Michelle Baddeley
Associate Dean Research/Professor in Economics, UTS Business School, University of Technology SydneyIf a week is a long time in politics, three years is an eternity. Since the 2019 election, Australia has endured devastating megafires and unprecedented floods. Meanwhile, news of extreme weather such as India and Pakistan’s horrific heatwaves has poured in. And international pressure to act on climate change is growing.
Perhaps in response, Australian views of climate change have become less partisan. A new poll my colleagues and I organised of around 1,100 Australians found almost 90% now believe climate change is a problem. That’s an average across the political spectrum, from the Greens to One Nation.
Not only that, but almost 80% of us are optimistic, believing it’s possible for Australia to halve its emissions by 2030.
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In our 2022 poll, views converged. Now, similar proportions of left- and right-leaning voters rate highly the need for government action on environmental damage and climate change.
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In short, we found concern for the environment is nearly universal. Fully 94% of all voters believe environmental damage is a problem and 89% believe climate change is a problem.
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Read more: https://theconversation.com/almost-90-of-us-now-believe-climate-change-is-a-problem-across-all-political-persuasions-183038
I highlighted One Nation in the quote above. To give you an idea of the absurdity of the claim that even One Nation voters prioritise climate action, check out One Nation’s climate policy;
Climate
One Nation believes Australia should withdraw from the United Nations Paris Agreement signed in 2016.
Australia has committed to the deepest and most savage carbon emission cuts in the world on a per person basis. This commitment is predicted to slow the Australian economy with enormous job losses. In our view, this economic suicide cannot be justified on the evidence put forward by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
We know that the majority of people believe in man-made global warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. This belief is reinforced by media coverage of events like forest fires and droughts, but government policy needs to rest on the evidence and there is a growing concern about the evidence on which the claims of man-made global warming rests.
It is just too easy to allow our memories, often unreliable, to accept the often repeated claims that it has never been hotter. Given the economic costs, we believe we need to listen to the evidence.
It is the evidence we should take regard of when making policy. The history of science is that it’s the evidence that counts.
We have confidence in evidence when the experiment can be repeated and the same results are achieved.
We have confidence in science when the evidence is consistent with the theory and that theory predicts events in the future.
Scientists predicted global warming would lead to extremes of weather, which would be more intense and more frequent, but despite media reports extreme weather events were more common prior to 1960 than at any time since.
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Read more: https://www.onenation.org.au/climate
How about One Nation’s views on Net Zero?
Net Zero Common Sense
Pauline Hanson December 03, 2021
Labor never learns…
Labor has doubled down on its threats to destroy jobs and the Australian economy by taking yet another radical emission reduction target to the next Federal election.
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.
In pledging to reduce emissions by 43% by 2030, it’s abundantly clear that Anthony Albanese has obviously learned nothing from the 2019 Federal election, when Queensland voters played the decisive role in delivering a stunning defeat to Bill Shorten in a contest Labor stupidly thought it could not lose.
With the Morrison-Joyce government caving in to international pressure aiming for net-zero emissions by 2050, the choices for Queensland and Australian voters at the next election are narrowing.
Only Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is working to protect Australian jobs, mining, manufacturing, and agriculture from the predations of green-left international climate zealots who attack easy targets like Australia while letting the world’s largest emitter by far—communist China—get away with increasing emissions at an annual rate greater than our entire national total.
One Nation needs your support at the next Federal election to win the balance of power and prevent Labor, the Coalition and the Greens from sacrificing our jobs and the Australian economy on the altar of climate change.
When will Australia wake up to the fact that climate change is pseudo-speak for global wealth transfer? And it’s not to our benefit.
Source: https://www.onenation.org.au/net_zero_common_sense
How do these unequivocally climate skeptic party policy positions reconcile with Professor Baddeley’s claim of strong support for climate action, even amongst One Nation voters?
It is possible Professor Michelle Baddeley believes One Nation voters are so dumb they don’t understand that One Nation are hardline climate skeptics.
But doesn’t it seem more likely that Professor Baddeley’s poll somehow failed to capture the genuine views of voters? At the very least it seems likely One Nation voters at least do not think climate action is a priority, compared to other issues.
We have all seen a series of increasingly absurd claims about popular demand for climate action, especially in the leadup to Australia’s federal election this Saturday, but in my opinion Professor Baddeley’s claim of near universal strong support for climate action truly jumps the shark.
Solar is big business in Australia which is rooted in a rebate subsidy system.
https://www.canstarblue.com.au/solar/solar-rebates-currently-available/#nsw
https://au.renogy.com/blog/solar-panel-incentives-and-rebates-in-australia/#:~:text=As%20of%20May%202021%2C%20a,at%20the%20point%20of%20sale.
Solar in Australia might make sense since it is mostly sunny. Sunny or not, cashing out subsidies or making a profit on subsidized businesses always make sense from a money stand point skeptic or not. If I am cashing out or profiting from a subsidized industry and my local economy is benefiting, skeptic or not how can I not support it as a climate solution. Wouldn’t I want to say whatever to protect the cash flow. The whole deal is completely political
What I want to know:
Are people happy with the solar battery system in their home?
How much does their home based solar system make them independent from grid delivered electricity?
Jeff, we have a standard rooftop solar on the Sunshine Coast that has allowed us to not have an electricity bill for 4 years whilst sending most of the power generated back to the grid with a minimal subsidy. We don’t have a battery, because they are still costly and inefficient plus I understand the lithium ones are a fire hazard. So whilst we may not have recovered our initial investment in solar, the overall economics remain marginal, depending on grid power costs in future.
This is the only kind of renewables power I support, however I am against the government mandated priority acceptance of rooftop solar over baseload generator power from our coal fired stations in Queensland, We need them operating as efficiently as possible not just as standby sources to even out the grid, as this will reduce the power costs to everyone who doesn’t have solar to rely on.
Regarding the climate change scam related to CO2 atmospheric warming, observational science is already proved that water vapour the main GHG via clouds, controls or moderates infra red radiation from the sun and back to space, CO2 has a minor greenhouse effect at current levels and will have less at higher levels. Therefore, the whole fossil fuel emissions and Net Zero business is in scientific terms total bollocks!
We Aussies are really going to regret our lack of modern investment in our fossil fuel dominant power system, instead embracing the lunacy of so called cheap ,but unreliable scaled up renewable power. The cleanup, replacement and disposable costs for all these new systems remain unknown, I guess we will find out over the next 10-15 years.
My friend has a solar / electric system which he loves, he only has to turn on the grid after a string of cloudy days.
My biggest concern with his setup is the 20kg of Lithium he keeps in his pantry.
I am tempted to go solar / battery, the growing instability of the grid supply is a concern. But for now I’ll rely on my Dewalt backup generator.
9 out of 10 people having concerns about environmental degredation is probably a good number. How many of those concerned about CO2 being the primary cause of degredation is a whole different and complex issue. It is likely that “littering” is the primary enviro-concern for 6 of the 9……
Consensus is the fool’s path. My own counsel I will keep.
A camel is a horse designed by a committee.
Perhaps, but without the context of other priorities? Environment is a concern, but only after the top 10 priorities have been dealt with. Climate and environmental priorities are lower in most other countries.
79% believe halving emissions by 2030 is possible? Good luck. The funny part is 95% believe OTHER people should do their part. 85% believe there should be stronger regulations towards manufacturing EV batteries (mining). Yeah, let’s make one that more expensive.
No one asked if we should ramp up some new oil and gas industries the world has never seen before. Manufacturing 100’s of millions of EV chargers, and inverters. Lets really get the wheels of carbon turning in order to micro-manage every watt.
After seeing how Aussies allowed their government to behave during the plandemic, I think they deserve the worst government they can get for a while.
This does seem to be a constant with socialists.
They are convinced that they know what you are thinking, better than you do.
And it is the reason they fail. Central planners can never anticipate the myriad schemes people will use to avoid their absurd policies. So, they never achieve any stated goal.
After witnessing the mess government made of the covid issue why on earth would anybody want the government in charge of anything. Complete incompetence, led by liars and cheats who blame misfortune on everyone except themselves. Bureaucrats and administrators disgust me. Before you say they aren’t all bad let me ask you where are the good ones standing up to the liars and cheats?
“Perhaps in response, Australian views of climate change have become less partisan. A new poll my colleagues and I organised of around 1,100 Australians found almost 90% now believe climate change is a problem.”
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Here we go again, a science-based polling question asked of members of the public who are (sadly) mostly not scientifically literate.
Like asking the cleaning and maintenance staff at a hospital their opinions on heart surgery procedures. CO2-based CAGW narrative grossly oversimplifies a very complex and chaotic system that is climate.
These polls are about as reliable as the BoM temperature records.
“It’s an Ill wind that blows no-one any good”. The same can be said of wildfires
https://youtu.be/EivYWt9GAI4
Neither the fires or the floods were unprecedented, that’s wrong or they cant read a history book or they live in giant cities like Sydney where they go from their air conditioned homes to their air conditioned cars to their air conditioned office and back again and claim to know what climate is.
Voters in Australia think we are doing OK. But they also understand that the rest of the world doesn’t really care. China for example. Note that they don’t really want to do too much themselves. Other people should sacrifice. The lack of understanding as to what is necessary to meet targets is at pandemic levels. The sacrifice and cost aren’t realised. Even though even the csiro has stated a trillion dollar cost, it hasn’t sunk in. They don’t realise it affects every aspect and corner of their lives and the economy. Agriculture, transport, food, clothes Building and construction. Everything will be harder and more costly. In many cases alternatives will be limited. Corporations are jumping on the band wagon. A major supermarket company coles gloated they were aiming for “zero emissions” , taking out the “net”. I wrote to them saying I will be holding them to that. They have no clue.
Australia seems like a nice place to build a big inland sea. There and the Sahara.
Junk survey.
If we can assume a ’10’ is full support then we can clearly see that not all Green voters ‘fully support’ the survey concepts.
So, quoting the same ‘research study’:
“New Research(tm) has exposed a critical split in the priorities of Green Voters on key environmental issues!”
For Griff.
Early December 2019 I was caring for a friend in palliative care who died in early January of inoperable lung cancer, she never smoked. Sitting with her in an age care facility room there were bushfires inside our coastal town, to one side, to the distant right, further north on the same street all major bushfires, Rural Fire Service fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft flying constantly for many hours to extinguish the bushfires.
Out of town Mid Coast New South Wales were much larger bushfires that destroyed many homes, farm sheds and fences, but much more of the district with no bushfires. In Queensland, various other districts of New South Wales and in Victoria there were major bushfires.
The total areas burnt were actually a small part of Australia, yet dangerous and frightening for people who experienced the bushfires up close.
And by February-March 2020 there was very heavy rainfall and flooding natural disasters.
States of the Commonwealth of Australia are responsible for fighting fires including bushfires, and dealing with all other natural disasters that take place from time to time. State Emergency Service (SES) and State Rural Fire Service (RFS) are two volunteer groups that have a small number of full time employees and all funded via State Government budgets, with assistance from the Federal Government, a funding example for 2018/19 was part contribution for a new Boeing 737 tanker-fire bomber aircraft to join the RFS Air Wing.
To call a climate emergency for bushfire seasons or floods, even cyclones, is nonsense. The climate zone here has been hot and dry mostly for 130,000 years or more, rainforests replaced by eucalypts that tolerate dry conditions, and today just 3 per cent of forest is rainforest.
Griff doesn’t bother with facts.
The whole premise of this article is false. The data has been collected on an ABC website. Anyone who visits them ABC website is probably 90 % likely to vote Green Left. So the sample is automatically skewed way to the Left. It is not a true random sample. Ignore it.
Unfortunately there are now more voters (young and old) who believe that the bushfires and floods are unprecedented and a result of climate change. All down to people being too lazy to think for themselves and do a quick Google.
If this poll is accurate then Bonhoeffer’s observation becomes truly scary. “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless.”
One pseudo-science practitioner (economist) tackles another pseudo-science (“climate science”) using a butter knife to carve a beef roast.
I am still waiting for the Climate Change crowd to explain how they plan to control the sun, ocean currents, axial tilt, winds, clouds etc
It’s a biased poll conducted by an obviously partisan professor for political purposes, probably taking its sample from a biased audience and misrepresenting it to the author’s needs. Her conclusion:
Read more: How do the major parties rate on climate policies? We asked 5 experts
That’s a promising sign, if the next government can use this groundswell to bring in policies that would substantially accelerate our progress towards net zero emissions, and tackle our many other environmental threats.
In recent years, Australia has gained a reputation for dragging its heels on climate action. This survey shows that there is a real, significant appetite for action across the spectrum of Australian voters.
Since when does a “poll” state a conclusion which is so clearly polemical.