Climate Change Weekly #478: Backlash, Polls Confirm Climate Change Is Low-Priority Issue

From Heartland Daily News

H. Sterling Burnett

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IN THIS ISSUE:

  • Backlash, Polls Confirm Climate Change Is Low-Priority Issue
  • Podcast of the Week: Hottest Day in 120,000 Years? That’s a Joke, Right?
  • Electric Cars ‘Unsafe at Any or No Speed,’ Cost More to Repair
  • Scotland Cut Down Millions of Trees for Wind Farms
  • Video of the Week: Heat Waves, Fires, and Climate, Oh My!
  • Climate Comedy
  • Recommended Sites

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Backlash, Polls Confirm Climate Change Is Low-Priority Issue

global climate poll

Opinion polls and the actions of countries around the globe prove once again climate change ranks behind most other issues in the public’s mind and certainly behind the economy.

A story in the Washington Post (WaPo) notes that even amid the media’s blitzkrieg of climate alarm surrounding the present heatwave, most people are not clamoring for radical climate action:

If proponents of climate policies thought this year’s scorching summer temperatures and extreme weather events would propel the world to embrace rapid action to lower greenhouse gas emissions, they were sorely mistaken. If there is to be any hope that governments might address this issue, they will need a new strategy.

Around the world, nations are choosing to prioritize economic growth and national interest over climate policy.

Which countries seem to be prioritizing their national interests and people’s well-being over climate change, according to WaPo? China, India, Indonesia, and various countries in the European Union, to name a few. Although China, India, and other developing countries clamoring for economic growth have long talked the talk about climate policies, they have never walked the walk. Instead, they consistently increase their fossil fuel use even in the face of heat waves, hurricanes, and droughts. They recognize that such weather events are natural and the best defense is wealth.

The surprise for some is Europe, long the leader in clamoring for climate action. Climate-driven energy and farm policies are bringing protests, and climate protesters are facing sometimes-violent backlash. Right-of-center governments are coming to power there, and new parties are forming to represent the interests of people dependent on fossil fuels—and they are winning government seats. Governments are listening and watering down or backing off their climate commitments or timetables and boosting fossil fuel use and production. From Germany to Ireland to Italy, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom, climate action is taking a back seat to other priorities.

In some countries, new governments less committed to radical climate action are taking power. In other countries, governments fearing economic decline and a loss of political power are responding to heat waves and other weather events not with a greater commitment to fighting climate change but with proposals to water down existing climate commitments. Heat or no heat, governments are cooling on climate action.

Polls show most of the public supports a focus on matters other than the “existential threat” climate change supposedly poses.

In the United Kingdom, for example, Yougov.com, a Britain-based international internet market research and data analytics company, conducted a brief, one-question survey on behalf of CAR 26, a UK-based organization that campaigns for informed and rational analysis of climate matters, and my own Heartland Institute.

In 2021, CAR sponsored a survey which asked, “To what extent would you support or oppose having ‘eco-lockdowns’ (lockdowns for environmental reasons) in the future for the UK to meet its Net Zero Carbon targets?” At the time, 39 percent of those who had an opinion on the matter strongly supported COVID-19-style lockdowns to fight climate change, with government forcibly keeping people home and cutting their energy use.

Despite two additional years of accelerated fearmongering by climate-profiteering elites and their lapdogs in the mainstream media, the number of those surveyed who strongly support eco-lockdowns has fallen by 20 percent in a new survey in 2023, with the decline in support most significant among those who identify themselves as politically liberal. The survey also showed strong opposition to government lockdowns to meet net-zero targets has increased from 62 percent to 64 percent.

Should that surprise anyone? I think not, based on a recent survey conducted in the United States.

The Quinnipiac University Polling Institute asked Americans whether they were concerned about climate change, among other questions. Forty-two percent of those polled said they were very concerned, and 25 percent were somewhat concerned. The remaining third of those surveyed were either not so concerned (12 percent) or not concerned at all (20 percent). The poll surveyed 2,056 adults 18 years and older, with 1,809 describing themselves as registered voters.

The media hype has worked in the United States. Despite copious amounts of data showing extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, and hurricanes have not increased in number or severity in recent decades, 60 percent of those surveyed “think that the extreme weather events in the United States over the past few years are related to climate change.”

Even so, most those surveyed did not believe climate change would affect them or anyone in their families.

Do these questions tell us much? Not really. The average voter or survey respondent can be, and likely is, concerned or very concerned about a variety of issues. There are things that affect them every day, such as crime, taxes, and jobs, and more esoteric or tangential concerns such as the state of democracy, educational achievement, gender equity, and, yes, climate change. Where the rubber meets the road is where any particular social or political concern ranks in comparison with other issues. On that question, climate change ranks dead last.

Quinnipiac states,

When registered voters were given a list of eight issues and asked which is the most important to them in deciding who to vote for in the election for president, 31 percent of voters say the economy and 29 percent say preserving democracy in the United States. Seven percent say abortion, 7 percent say gun violence, 6 percent say immigration, 6 percent say health care, 6 percent say racial inequality, and 5 percent say climate change.

There you have it. What some people call the defining issue and greatest challenge facing humanity in our time, climate change, ranks dead last. I’ve never heard anyone refer to immigration or economic decline as an existential threat, yet they both rank higher than climate change as what survey respondents feel is most important, with the economy being the top concern for more than six times as many people as consider climate change the biggest issue.

Quinnipiac’s survey is not an outlier. Poll after poll shows climate change ranks last or near last among the issues that most concern voters or poll respondents. I’ve covered this multiple times at Climate Change Weeklyhere and here, for example.

Not only does climate change rank low in every survey’s list of concerns, poll after poll also shows the public isn’t willing to substantially change how they live or pay very much to fight climate change, regardless of how worried they say they are about it or how immediate and impactful they think it may be.

Polling data, the very public backlash against increasingly disruptive climate protests, and the public anger about high energy prices, government limits on travel and lifestyle choices, and failing energy infrastructure, as displayed during recent local and general elections across Europe, may account for why European politicians are backtracking on their carbon dioxide cutting goals and timetables.

Let’s hope U.S. politicians get the hint before we follow Europe—or California—too far down the road to economic perdition.

SourceThe Washington PostQuinnipiacCAR 26


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Climate at a Glance for Teachers and Students Heartland Institute

Podcast of the Week

Is a day this July the hottest day in 120,000 years? Of course not. Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Anthony Watts was a guest this week on KTRH Radio, Houston’s Morning News with Sharon and Jim to debunk that ridiculous claim. Anthony also talks about how and why alarmists have changed the term “global warming” to “climate change,” which means you can blame every bit of extreme weather on human activity. That’s also a claim not backed up by science.

Subscribe to the Environment & Climate News podcast on Apple PodcastsiHeartSpotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And be sure to leave a positive review!


Electric Cars ‘Unsafe at Any or No Speed,’ Cost More to Repair

driving electric vehicle ev

Insurers and the U.K. government are warning auto repair shops, scrap yards, and towing services to isolate or quarantine electric vehicles that have been in accidents, because they might spontaneously combust.

Government guidelines recommend electric vehicles with damaged batteries be “quarantined”—stored at least 15 meters away from other vehicles—because of the risk of battery fires.

The Telegraph reports, “Damaged batteries pose a risk of ‘thermal runaway’ where the energy stored in the battery releases rapidly, creating temperatures of up to 400C.”

Damaged vehicles’ combustibility could lead to higher insurance premiums: the insurance industry expects the additional costs to store damaged electric vehicles in special facilities could top 900 million pounds annually. Under Transportation Department guidelines, as many as 100 gasoline or diesel-fueled cars can be stored in the amount of space that just two damaged electric vehicles should occupy.

There is even worse news from insurers.

“Claims for damaged electric cars cost insurers 25 [percent] more than their petrol counterparts, the report found,” The Telegraph reports. “Electric vehicles also take 14 [percent] longer to repair.

“Rapidly depreciating values mean the cost of replacing a battery outweighs the cost of the car after just one year, leaving insurers no choice but to scrap the car, … a report by automotive risk firm Thatcham Research said,” The Telegraph reports.

Sources: Climate-Science PressThe Telegraph (behind paywall)


Heartland’s Must-read Climate Sites

climate realism website heartland institute

Scotland Cut Down Millions of Trees for Wind Farms

scotland clear cutting trees

Through most stages of their lives, trees are carbon sinks, and planting trees is commonly touted as part of the solution to preventing supposedly catastrophic climate change. In Scotland, however, trees are being cut down to make room for intermittently operating wind turbines, pitting one “climate solution” against another.

To clear the ground for wind turbines, an estimated 15.7 million trees have been removed since 2000 on land controlled by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), according to Scottish Governments Rural Affairs Secretary Mairi Gougeon, The Telegraph reports. That is an average of more than 1,700 trees destroyed each day.

In a letter to members of the Scottish Parliament, Gougeon said wind farm operators are expected to undertake “compensatory planting elsewhere,” but she provided neither guarantees that replanting has taken or will take place, and she cited no data indicating it had been done or where and in what amount any replanting had occurred.

Theoretically, Scotland already hosts enough wind turbines to satisfy more than half the entire United Kingdom’s total current electric power demand, yet the ruling Scottish National Party wants to add more than double the present amount of wind power, under new rules that relax environmental restrictions and expedite permitting under looser planning conditions.

“The John Muir Trust, a conservation charity, has warned the new threshold for allowing wind farm companies to build turbines on wild land is so low that it appears impossible for them not to meet it,” said The Telegraph.

Liam Kerr, a Tory member of the Scottish Parliament, told The Telegraph he was surprised by Gougeon’s letter.

“Most people will be astonished to see the number of trees cut down to make way for wind farms,” said Kerr. “I’ve been contacted many times by rural communities all over the country questioning the location of these developments, sharing legitimate concerns not just about the visual impact but also damage to wildlife and business.

“Now we learn there’s significant damage when it comes to trees,” Kerr said.

Parliament and the ruling government should be more aware of and transparent about the “significant costs” incurred by the push for larger and greater numbers of industrial wind facilities, Kerr told the Telegraph.

Source: The Telegraph


Video of the Week

If you turn the news, you’d probably think parts of the Earth are literally on fire. The corporate media continues pushing the narrative that temperatures are the highest ever, but it’s simply not true.

For this episode of Climate Change RoundtableSteve Milloy, founder of JunkScience.com, joins the show to lend his talents shredding the alarmist media narrative. Steve joins host Anthony Watts and panelists Linnea Lueken and H. Sterling Burnett to highlight the media’s false predictions over the years, reveal data that destroys today’s narrative, and discuss particulate matter in the air. Environmentalists say that there is a serious threat to human health from particulate matter in the air — usually PM 2.5 — but is it really as big an issue as they claim?

Watch every episode of The Heartland Institute’s Climate Change Roundtable show LIVE every Friday at 1 p.m. CT.


Climate Comedy

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via Cartoons by Josh


Recommended Sites

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Environment & Climate NewsWatts Up With That
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CFACTCO2 Coalition
Climate Change DispatchNet Zero Watch (UK)
GlobalWarming.org (Cooler Heads)Climate Audit
Dr. Roy SpencerNo Tricks Zone
Climate Etc. (Judith Curry)JoNova
Master ResourceCornwall Alliance (Cal Beisner)
International Climate Science CoalitionScience and Environmental Policy Project 
CAR26.orgGelbspan Files
1000Frolley (YouTube)Climate Policy at Heritage
Power for USAGlobal Warming at Cato
Science and Public Policy InstituteClimate Change Reconsidered NIPCC)
Climate in Review (C. Jeffery Small)Real Science (Tony Heller)
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Nick Stokes
July 28, 2023 10:09 pm

There’s a bit more to be said about the Quinnipiac poll of Americans:

When registered voters were given a list of eight issues and asked which is the most important to them in deciding who to vote for in the election for president, 31 percent of voters say the economy and 29 percent say preserving democracy in the United States. Seven percent say abortion, 7 percent say gun violence, 6 percent say immigration, 6 percent say health care, 6 percent say racial inequality, and 5 percent say climate change.”

preserving democracy in the United States” Hmm

Simon
Reply to  Nick Stokes
July 28, 2023 11:26 pm

I saw that too. Very interesting and very sensible that they should be concerned given the stuff that’s happened recently.

Reply to  Simon
July 29, 2023 2:08 am

Suddenly you agree that “climate change” is not happening recently.

Was that an accident ?

How many feet do you have in your mouth at the moment ?

two?? or are some of your comrades helping you. !

And yes, democracy is most certainly at threat from the Democrats.

Dave Fair
Reply to  bnice2000
July 29, 2023 5:32 pm

The actual threat is to Representative Democracy. Given the widespread civics ignorance of the Low Information Voter many (most?) don’t even know we are a Constitutional Republic where all power is retained by the people and exercised by their elected representatives under a constitution that severely limits the power of the government.

To obtain immediate personal gratification many people would give government the power to direct their daily lives. The Leftists have whipped up such hate that some people are willing to destroy the Supreme Court, the very body that protects their constitutional rights.

MarkW
Reply to  Simon
July 29, 2023 11:09 am

With all the evidence of corruption of Biden and his family, and the depths to which the DOJ, FBI and other government agencies have been corrupted, you are right, people should be concerned.

Simon
Reply to  MarkW
July 29, 2023 1:01 pm

OK once again…. if you have evidence that Joe Biden is corrupt then let’s see it? Your last smoking gun turned out to be an Israeli fraudster. Your man (Connie Trump) on the other hand seems to have instructed his workers to destroy evidence on his server. Oh how the world turns given he was so critical of Hillary for doing the same thing. But thats Connie for you. Do as I say, not as I do.
And Trumps latest effort to use the courts is perhaps his funniest yet. He is such a winner…. except he he isn’t.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/us-canada/300938920/judge-throws-out-donald-trumps-big-lie-defamation-lawsuit-against-cnn

Duane
Reply to  Simon
July 30, 2023 3:54 am

GOP members of both houses of Congress as well as a Federal judge have already publicly exposed fraud committed by the Biden family and Biden’s corrupted Dept of Justice. The former in numerous documents already released concerning direct eyewitness statements and emails, and the latter in utterly rejecting the attempted plea deal coverup of Biden’s crimes.

You are being obtuse, obviously so.

No trials have taken place yet to fully prove out charges against the Biden’s, which their corrupted DOJ have been furiously working to avoid, but their days in court are coming. There is easily enough evidence in the public domain to proceed to a criminal trial of the younger Biden, and impeachment proceedings against both the President and his corrupted Attorney General and FBI Director.

You know damn well that if it was a Republican in the White House and Dems were in control of the House, your guys would already have voted to impeach, just as they did twice with Trump. Turnabout is fair play.

The bottom line is, if you don’t want to be impeached by the opposition for corrupt acts, then don’t commit corrupt acts.

Simon
Reply to  Duane
July 30, 2023 1:23 pm

GOP members of both houses of Congress as well as a Federal judge have already publicly exposed fraud committed by the Biden family and Biden’s corrupted Dept of Justice. The former in numerous documents already released concerning direct eyewitness statements and emails, and the latter in utterly rejecting the attempted plea deal coverup of Biden’s crimes.”

I’ve watched those stage shows. If they have any evidence against Joe then charge him like the Dems are Trump. But they wont because they don’t. Simple.

“There is easily enough evidence in the public domain to proceed to a criminal trial of the younger Biden,”
Last time I looked Hunter B was not any part of the government. And I wonder whether you would be so keen to see Trump go to jail for tax evasion like you are Hunter. We will find out it seems.

“The bottom line is, if you don’t want to be impeached by the opposition for corrupt acts, then don’t commit corrupt acts.”

Agree 100%

Reply to  Nick Stokes
July 28, 2023 11:37 pm

Yes Nick.. Democracy….

…. not socialist totalitarianism, and Democratic vote rigging…. that you worship.

Climate Change …. DEAD LAST..

Get over it !!

commieBob
Reply to  Nick Stokes
July 28, 2023 11:57 pm

“preserving democracy” I’m not surprised.

Gallup has an ongoing poll: What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today? link The number one problem is: “The government/Poor leadership” Twenty percent of Americans think that’s the nation’s most important problem.
I agree. It feels like the majority of politicians, in both parties, are certifiably insane. That doesn’t fill me with optimism.

As for climate change, it’s lumped in with “Environment/Pollution/Climate change” and those issues together come in eighteenth at 2%.

Most Americans don’t give a rats ass about the problems that get the most media attention. It’s like the loonies have the microphone and they’re totally out of touch with reality.

ethical voter
Reply to  commieBob
July 29, 2023 4:32 pm

“preserving democracy” IMO is not the problem. Democracy is not an absolute thing. A better approach would be to improve the quality of democracy. This would best be done by simply voting for better people as representatives. What rises to the top of political parties should ring alarm bells to call out that something is seriously wrong with the system.

If a voter were to vote for an independent (individual) the first thing they will notice is that there can no credible policy to buy votes. Instead the voter is left with only the personal qualities of the candidate. This should lead to better representatives who have their freedom to be swayed by intellect, commonsense and conscience. Ultimately, when such representatives cast their own votes, decisions will be carried by the majority. This is how democracy works.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
July 29, 2023 7:17 am

In reality, there’s far less than 5% worried about the climate non problem – when you find it difficult to heat, or eat, there is no place for frivolous fantasies that would make it harder for you to heat, or eat

Reply to  Nick Stokes
July 29, 2023 7:26 am

The really interesting and illuminating thing is the 5% on climate change after 30 or so years of attempts to induce panic about the issue. The signs are that in the US and the UK we are reaching peak climate in voter opinion. And the signs from the UK are that politicians are starting to realize this and are starting to draw policy conclusions.

The underlying situation is that its becoming clear that the green policies are prodigiously expensive and mostly impossible to implement, and anyway, useless in having any effect on global warming.

Take the UK as a for instance. With the EV move, you have the issue of far higher prices for the vehicles, very few recharge points, very long refuel times, issues with batteries in case of minor accidents (and also spontaneous ignition of EV batteries, lack of enough grid capacity to charge anything like the numbers of EVs the policy is aiming for. And the move anyway cannot be shown to even make much difference to UK CO2 emissions.

With the attempt to take everyone to heat pumps you have growing anecdotes that they simply don’t work in UK houses. But even if they did, there aren’t enough installers, and even if there were, there is not enough capacity in the grid to run them. Along with charging the EVs.

Then you have the move to wind generation. No prospect of getting the required numbers of turbines installed, and even could you get them installed, no provision in the plans for dealing with intermittency.

The crazed idea of moving residential gas use to electricity while at the same time converting the gas grid to hydrogen? Hydrogen is now gradually being admitted to be a non starter.

Its becoming clear that whatever the results of seriously attempting Net Zero may be, they will not be life as usual. Life will become more expensive, less convenient, and many aspects of life and work as we know them plain impossible.

This is finally getting through to the politicians. We have Tony Blair, a man, whatever you think of him, with a finger on the pulse of the electorate. Blair is now publicly talking about the futility of the UK trying to make any impact on climate change, because its too small an emitter. He and the the media more widely are starting to draw attention to the growing emissions from China. He and the media are also starting to talk about lowering the burden on ordinary people.

They keep paying lip service to the notion of a global climate problem, but notice how the vocabulary has changed. Its now a ‘problem’, not a crisis, when politicians talk about it. Only in the Guardian and the BBC is there a climate emergency, global heating or boiling. Its being talked down.

You also have the reaction of the political class to the Uxbridge by-election on the London ULEZ plan. This was a fairly trivial election result in itself, what’s interesting is the panic which it has caused among politicians on green issues and particularly on Net Zero issues. Why has it had so great an effect? Because they know its the tip of a very large iceberg.

Its now for the first time looking as if the politicians are going to blink. Its clear that if they don’t, there will be a social and economic disaster accompanied by a mass voter revolt that will make Brexit seem like a tea party.

Yes, the 5% is a pretty decent sign that we are going over the curve of peak climate. At last!

Dave Fair
Reply to  Nick Stokes
July 29, 2023 5:20 pm

“Preserving democracy” is the code word for rigging the Supreme Court such that Leftist priorities overwhelm the Constitution. 29% of voters would rather vote themselves more goodies and give the government more power over them in exchange.

I’d reword the question to “preserving the Republic” so we would see how many people are really fooled by The Big Guy 10% Joe Brandon and his boys saying the Supreme Court is a threat to U.S. democracy.

It is telling that the polling organization would choose a Democrat Party campaign slogan as one of its questions. And Leftist pundits are wondering why Americans are placing less and less trust in our governmental institutions.

The more we go down the Crackhunter IRS/FBI/DOJ rat hole the more we see government agents openly helping the president’s son:

1) The Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss abruptly and without explanation stopped pursuing extension of the statute of limitations on Crackhunter’s felony tax evasion charges.
2) California and DC U.S. Attorneys refused to allow felony charges against Crackhunter to be brought in their jurisdictions and the Attorney General Merrick Garland would not give Weiss authority to charge him in those jurisdictions.
3) The DOJ didn’t even charge Crackhunter with the felony gun charge, allowing him pretrial diversion (no record of a felony charge) if he pled on the two misdemeanor charges.
4) The phony and unconstitutional plea deal was only stopped by an honest judge at the last moment.
5) Legal experts insist that a regular citizen can’t get a plea deal like that.
6) Add to the list on your own.

Reply to  Nick Stokes
July 29, 2023 10:30 pm

You may be unaware of it, but these days, among the leftists who control the media and polling organizations such as Quinnipiac, “democracy” is a shorthand coded phrase denoting “one party control of government by the Democratic Party.”

It has nothing to do with what the word means in common parlance.
And yeah, the US is a constitutional republic, not a democracy.

Mr.
July 28, 2023 10:12 pm

That much- cited “authority – the U.N. – also found that climate change rated last (16th out of 16 most important life issues for millions of survey respondents all over the world).

So it’s kinda puzzling then that nobody from the UN or the WEF ever cites this survey these days.

If they ever did . . .

strativarius
July 29, 2023 12:00 am

“”Focus group for the Guardian made up of Chipping Barnet and Don Valley residents backs net zero policies””
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/29/i-realise-how-serious-it-is-voters-in-england-support-action-on-climate-crisis

Well, I’m convinced… not

strativarius
July 29, 2023 2:57 am

Prediction!

My comment will appear in 5 or 6 hours….

Tom Johnson
July 29, 2023 3:08 am

Hottest day in 120,000 years???

Even if it is, we’re living in the freaking Ice Age. That’s sort of like being ‘the tallest midget’.

strativarius
Reply to  Tom Johnson
July 29, 2023 4:17 am

Og the sage took temperature readings 120,000 years ago….

Dave Fair
Reply to  strativarius
July 29, 2023 5:57 pm

Funny, Og was able to make a thermometer 30,000 years before he could make a specialized fishing tool and 108,000 years before he learned to raise food. He’s damned lucky he survived the 110,000-year glacial period. How old is he now?

bobpjones
July 29, 2023 3:19 am

As we know, a car transport ship, bound for the far east with c 3000 cars on board, of which 500 were EVs, has caught fire. The fire started in one of the EVs, as reported by an eyewitness.

One person has died, seven injured. Firefighters cannot board, so two firefighting boats are hosing down the sides of the transporter, to keep it cool and prevent sinking. The boat has been towed away from the shipping lanes.

However, nothing in the MSM about this problem.

Furthermore, Allianz Commercial, has reported that in the last five years, they have lost 64 ships carrying EVs, or lithium batteries.

rah
Reply to  bobpjones
July 29, 2023 7:58 am

And Bloomberg failed to mention the details of death and injury and what started the fire in this story.

Burning Car Carrier With 500 EVs Aboard May Be Towed on Weekend (msn.com)

And the AP fails to mention that an eyewitness said the fire was started by an EV.
Burning cargo ship off Dutch coast will be towed to a new location after flames and smoke subsided (msn.com)

July 29, 2023 4:44 am

You know that guy carrying the sandwich placards extoling the “The World is Ending”? People learned that tomorrow’s demise never comes. Same with the oceans boiling and the extermination of humans. It never comes, it never seems to change so much that we can detect it in our daily lives.

Winters are cold, summers are hot, that is all there is.

Somehow people never learn the parable of the boy crying wolf. It always seems best to keep yelling so that maybe someday, people will wake up and believe you. A word of warning, that doesn’t work for long.

Politicians are starting to learn this. People care more about their own economics than something that may or may not happen. Journalists have yet to learn it. They need copy to justify their existence so day after day, they cry wolf. Its effects are diminishing, just like with the boy warning about a wolf.

About time. The realization of a scam can’t come soon enough.

July 29, 2023 7:13 am

My only surprise is that climate captures 5% of peoples concerns – in reality, it’s far, far less, but that’s polls for you

rah
Reply to  Energywise
July 29, 2023 8:00 am

This despite the constant hype, “Climate Change” remains at the bottom of the list of major concerns for the people. Not hard to figure out. It does not take critical thinking to understand that when it is becoming ever harder to live a middle class life due to inflation that issues not directly related to obtaining or maintaining a descent quality of life go to the back of the bus.

Dave Fair
Reply to  rah
July 29, 2023 9:17 pm

Climate change is an effete Leftist elite issue. They don’t see it or our efforts to combat it as impacting their lives negatively.

Fran
Reply to  Energywise
July 29, 2023 9:34 am

That 5% is mostly people who believe it is the socially desirable response.

MarkW
Reply to  Fran
July 29, 2023 11:17 am

Now tell them how much their concern over global warming is going to cost them. Then see how much that support drops.

AGW is Not Science
Reply to  Energywise
July 30, 2023 7:53 pm

If the “survey” of biggest concerns allowed you to make up your own list, “climate change” wouldn’t even MAKE the list at all for most people (and rightly so).

July 29, 2023 12:51 pm

If I did surveys or polls, I might have ranked “Climate Change” highly, depending on how the question was phrased.
Not because I think the climate doing what the climate naturally doing and has always done is a problem.
The attempts to stop and use it as an excuse to mess with #1 and #2 are the problem!

July 29, 2023 12:53 pm

If they are not going to allow for proper forest management, they might as well cut them down, before they burn. Or get destroyed by insects.
Imagine the benefits that would have accrued if those places that burned in California had instead been harvested for lumber?
Same for forests now burning in Canada…which are expected to keep burning until weather puts them out, as that country has no ability to do so.
How much lumber is going to waste?
It must be a lot.
it has to be better to harvest trees that let them sit unused and unmanaged until something destroys them.
Maybe those specific forests in Scotland are immune from any of those harms, disease, insects, fire, windstorms, etc, that will eventually destroy most forests in most places (and of course then allow for new growth to occur, rejuvenating the ecosystems.), IDK.
I am certainly no fan of bird choppers, but it looks like those trees were harvested, not just plowed under or something stupid like that. Which is the best thing to do with timber and with forests…use them. In a planned and well managed fashion.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Nicholas McGinley
July 29, 2023 9:18 pm

But you can’t grow back trees where the industrial wind installations are.

Reply to  Dave Fair
July 29, 2023 10:40 pm

I think those turbines will not last long, and I doubt they are going to be replaced in perpetuity.
Not saying it is good news, but I have not had a problem with harvesting forests since I saw how many ways entire forests can be destroyed.
Hurricane Hugo was the first wake up call/epiphany I had in this regard.

In a few hours, more timber was destroyed than had been harvested in the entire US in some long number of years combined, do not recall the exact interval, but it was a shocking number.
Plus I have seen entire forests grow up in my lifetime, since college, when someone died for instance, and cow pasture or hay field was no longer being grazed or mowed.
Granted, it goes faster in Florida than some other places, but they grow fast.

I think the animals they will kill is a far bigger issue, and I think we do better to select our battles.

Duane
July 29, 2023 1:05 pm

The morons in the media who foolishly believe that hyping summertime heat waves as portending THE END OF THE WORLD think the average news consumer is dumber than they are … which is an error.

Virtually everybody, at least every sentient human being more that 20 years old, realizes that in temperate zones that experience four seasons, if gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter. “Big effing deal” … and anyone familiar at all with history also knows that it has always been that way. Even during the depths of the Little Ice Age in the 16th century Northern Europe still experienced summer heat waves that sent people who could afford it to travel to the high country to cool down. Even in England.

Reply to  Duane
July 29, 2023 2:37 pm

Reminds me of the “Ozone Hole” hype.
In the Northern Hemisphere during winter, we heard about Arctic Ozone Hole expanding.
When winter passed, we heard about the Antarctic hole expanding.
Why? Because Ozone in the upper atmosphere is formed by direct Sunlight.
Natural.

AGW is Not Science
Reply to  Gunga Din
July 31, 2023 4:42 am

Yet look at the damage they cause economically with their hype. The “ozone hole” stupidity was used to ban a superior and inexpensive (and about to get more so) refrigerant, freon. We have since gone through a series of lesser refrigerants, all in some effort (SUPPOSEDLY) to “save us” from imaginary, hyped environmental “harms” of one sort or another.

It (along with similar debacle, like the banning of ddt) gave the powerful their blueprint for control by hype based on junk science.

Dave Fair
Reply to  Duane
July 29, 2023 9:21 pm

And you can’t keep the dial at 11 forever. Eventually the young grow up. Unless they are personally profiteering off the climate change scam they will eventually see the pattern of unending, never-changing hysteria.

Edward Katz
July 29, 2023 2:28 pm

Governments and industries are probably even less concerned than their citizens because the International Energy Agency reports that global coal consumption reached an all-time high last year, and is on track to stay at or near these levels in 2023. Furthermore demand from 2 of the 3 leading emitters, China and India grew by another 5-plus % in the first half of this year. So who’s really concerned about taking climate action? It’s not the developing world, that’s certain.

July 29, 2023 8:13 pm

I find it amazing that “abortion” rates so highly. It shows that a lot of people have no concept of issues over which politicians can do nothing except waste their time vote smuckering…