Essay by Eric Worrall
Although media interest in climate change is crashing, apparently lots of people still want governments to act.
The Silent Majority Paradox: Why Climate Change Has Faded from the Public Debate
Over the past decade, climate change has been one of the defining topics on the political agenda and in the media. Today, however, it is increasingly pushed to the background … What is driving this shift, and what does a weakening public climate discourse mean for global action?
‘This trend is all the more striking because the underlying climate indicators continue to deteriorate’
Interest in climate issues has not disappeared, but it has become harder to sustain. A 2025 Reuters Institute study covering eight countries found that climate news consumption is strongly linked to social background, political orientation, and how much people feel overwhelmed by a constant stream of negative news. The report emphasizes that many avoid climate news not because they are indifferent, but because they are repeatedly exposed to discouraging narratives that offer no clear avenues for action. …
…
According to a 2025 Gallup survey, Americans still worry about global warming, but the topic has slipped to the very bottom of the list of environmental issues. A similar shift can be observed in Europe: while the societal relevance of climate change did not vanish overnight, public priorities have visibly changed. The 2024 Eurobarometer survey found that living costs and inflation remain among the top concerns, while environmental and climate issues have dropped compared to previous years—now ranking only fifth among day-to-day concerns.
…The media can play a key role in making the majority position visible and thereby restoring momentum for collective action. Climate change can be brought back to the centre of attention if abstract reporting is replaced by practical analyses connected to everyday life. Positive framing and showcasing examples that actually work can help transform uncertainty into a sense of agency—and passivity into participation.
Read more: https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/green/climate-change-faded-public-debate/
Sorry Kinga Debisso, but you are wrong.
Media cannot prevent the collapse of interest in climate change, because media companies which focus on covering the bottom of the list of people’s priorities go broke, as US mainstream media companies are discovering the hard way.
In addition, “living costs and inflation”, which you flag as the highest priorities, are largely being caused by climate action. Politicians who want to keep their jobs have to focus on issues people care about, which increasingly means discarding climate action.
Climate concern is a luxury issue for comfortably wealthy people who don’t have anything else to worry about. Until politicians address rising high priority concerns such as cost of living, the addressing of which will require abandoning net zero and energy transition efforts, there is no chance luxury issues like climate change will regain their former dominant position in global politics.
Skeptic groups like WUWT have won the infowar on climate change, with lots of help from the sheer stupidity of engineering dyslexic greens who near broke the global economy by pushing unworkable climate solutions.
The big Covid lie helped people wake up – after people discovered how wildly Covid had been exaggerated, large numbers of people started questioning other establishment fear narratives, including the fake climate crisis.
While there is no room for complacency, the path to victory for climate focussed groups has all but disappeared.
But don’t be too quick to pop those champagne corks, those who would exploit and rule us through our fears aren’t about to pack up and go away. There is a new fake fear story is brewing, which will need every bit as much attention from people who care about liberty as the fake climate crisis did.
The AGW scammers bought the MSM to carry their narrative and no one trusts it anymore. Too many tipping points, polar bear die off, flooded coastal cities, snow extinction, etc. came and went without being realized and they’ve had decades to get it right but instead they double down on fear of the unknown to carry their message. Add the failure and cost of wind and solar renewables and you have a losing proposition. There’s no turning back and reinventing the AGW scam.
Safe and effective.
they didn’t have to buy them – they are willing anti-capitalist co-conspirators
Even anti-capitalists need a decent paycheck if they want to live in the big city.
no one trusts it anymore
In the UK, however, the only person who has to trust it is Ed Miliband. He seems to be untouchable and not for changing.
The people who need to be convinced are the political class. Except in the US I see little sign that they are really changing or prepared to change anywhere else.
Think of the sunk costs! They are meaningless in financial appraisals, but they are politically very heavy indeed. Imagine yourself standing in front of a meeting of electors and saying, sorry we got it all wrong, all those wind turbines, we are going to have to demolish them, they never were a good idea.
And as for the climate crisis, try and change the subject. Or say that perhaps it wasn’t as bad as we thought, and that anyway, wind turbines are not really the answer to it?
No, you would not do it, and if you honorably did you would not survive politically. The only case where you’d get away with it is on day 20 of a three week winter national blackout. Then anything will fly! And blame the last government of course.
“The people who need to be convinced are the political class. Except in the US I see little sign that they are really changing or prepared to change anywhere else.”
I don’t see it, either.
It is probably going to take a serious economic/blackout crisis to jar some of these Western Democracy politicians and voters out of their climate change delusions.
If Kamala Harris were president today, half the U.S. would be on the same “Road to Ruin” as our friends in the other Western Democracies.
As an Australian skeptic of the climate change narrative and actions enforced by governments I am very thankful for the scientific support from websites such as JoNova and WUWT. They have reinforced my own thoughts on the claims of pushers of climate doom and the end of mankind.
Doomsayers who swallowed the climate change catastrophe will never admit they were wrong and so they will likely skulk in the shadows while the Trump admin clear the bureaucracies of CC believers while waiting for a chance to regroup.
JoNova is definitely one of the good guys, I was lucky enough to catch up with her in person in 2024.
There will always be a few climate worriers, but I think the majority or at least the leaders are looking to switch horses to AI fear themes. Only leftists still worry about climate change, fear of AI has bipartisan appeal.
“fear of AI has bipartisan appeal.”
That’s true. And with good reason.
I’m not so much concerned with AI wiping out the human race as I am about AI Chatbots telling a child that suicide is a viable option.
For the umpteenth time, they t isn’t Governments that need to act,
It’s individuals that control what powers their transportation…(Petrol, Diesel, Electricity)
It’s individuals that control what powers their cooking…(Gas, Electricity)
It’s individuals that control what powers their heating…(Natural Gas, Heat Pump)
It’s individuals that decide what cools their homes…(Central A/C, Heat Pump)
It’s individuals that control what generates their Electricity…(Rooftop Solar+Battery, Grid)
Government has no place in telling individuals “What to Choose” or what options should be available.
If greater than 50% of “The People” chose to drive EVs then oil would become uneconomical to extract and refine. EVs would win the day. BUT no-one prefers EVs over ICVs certainly not >50% or in 30 years EVs would already have won.
I have always contended that the first and highest priority of any government should be to protect the citizens from the government.
What was his name again? It sounds like:
King of BS.
It may take a while, but the average guy or gal with little math, science, physics, climate education, etc. will eventually begin to smell a rat. Or begin to realize something smells rotten in Denmark. It’s a gut level reaction to being endlessly fear mongered and lied to. May not be able to put it into words, but they know something is very wrong.
Should have happened in 1980 when the 180° switch
from Global Cooling to Global Warming happened.
Yes, the Failed Human-caused Global Cooling meme of the 1970’s is what got me skeptical about climate science. I’ve been skeptical of Alarmist Climate Science ever since.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Anthony Watts and the team deserve a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
I think so, too.
They have kept me sane in this insane Climate Alarmist world. 🙂
I should also include all the excellent people who make comments here and shed light on the Climate Change Science Fiction.
The really interesting a i critics on the left are raising issues about
Like you all, I don’t Feel the Bern, but these are good points of agreements with the left.
Monopolies – there is no barrier to entry other than expertise, so I think this claim is weak.
Municipal power usage – this is an issue, which Trump is seeking to address.
Municipal water usage – likewise.
Circular financing – this one actually carries weight, the financial structure of top AI companies absolutely stinks, feels very DotCom boom. I strongly suspect there will be a bust, but just as companies like Amazon survived DotCom, some AI companies will survive the coming bust.
Quadrupling costs for RAM – hopefully supply and demand will sort that out.
Offering AI for below-cost prices – absolutely, but plenty of businesses do an introductory offer to get people hooked. Forcing people to use AI – that sucks, and I strongly suspect there will be more moves towards consumer choice in this space, driven not by consumers but by corporations – corporations are nervous about data leakage due to unauthorised or uncontrolled use of AI.
Eric – no barrier to entry other than expertise? I think money would be as much if not more – I don’t see how you get into this field cheaply.
“The biggest AI companies in the world, dominating by market capitalization and infrastructure, are NVIDIA, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Meta.”
NVIDIA – “Jensen Huang is the co-founder, president, and CEO of NVIDIA, a position he has held since founding the company in 1993.”
Microsoft – Satya Nadella is the Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, a role he has held since February 2014″
Alphabet – “Sundar Pichai is the CEO of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary, Google, positions he has held since December 2019 and August 2015”
Amazon – “Andy Jassy is the President and CEO of Amazon, a position he has held since July 2021, succeeding founder Jeff Bezos”
Meta – “Mark Zuckerberg is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Meta (formerly Facebook), which he started in 2004.“
“A monopoly is a market structure where a single company or entity is the sole supplier of a particular product or service, possessing exclusive control and eliminating competition.”
Point is… if these 5 guys turn up at the same picnic are they excited to play frisbee together? Seems more like a list of competitors than players on the same team.
The person in that top cartoon whipping the dead horse should be a woman.
And isn’t it telling that when people have real things to worry about, Interest in ‘climate change’ suddenly melts away.
As Eric says, climate doomism and general environmental doomism are luxuries, like a fashion trend.
To cold, hungry people, trees are fuel, and the nearest endangered species is supper. The threat of even approaching that state will always drown out the distractions from the elite.
Trump might not see his term out through ill health but if he does his legacy of being an emotional maniac shooting from the hip rather than considered thought will leave an open goal for his opponents.
Many decisions will be over turned on day one of a Democrat administration and “climate change” restoration will be front and centre, in fact I see it will be a major point of attack pre election.
To drive a stake through the heart of the beast it was ESSENTIAL to say “where is the definitive cause and effect evidence for the claim of dangerous man made climate change as per the scientific method?” but he didn’t.
Ensuing obfuscation, indignation and frothing insults in response – anything but “here is the evidence you requested” – would confirm to the public the scowling beast has been exposed now burn the carcass
Trump was right but as ever his method lacking ….. “climate change” will definitely return.
Axios thinks Democrats are switching focus to AI rather than climate change for the 2026 election:
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/13/democrats-congress-2026-ai-policy
So I’m serious about my suggestion the climate crisis is dying, it just doesn’t have the vote pulling power it once had.
As for Trump shooting from the hip, funny how he seems to win more often than he loses. Maybe he’s smarter than his opponents believe.
I hope climate change does vanish into the long grass but very much doubt it. Polls show Trump “wins” don’t seem to register as wins for many so concluding he wins more often than he loses seems like wishful thinking
Again… huh? The guy is president of the USA.
You trust media polls?
Huh? That comment just doesn’t make sense.
Why?
By burning fossil fuels, we only return atmospheric CO2 to levels that once existed in the past, and provide for the continuation of life in the distant future.
Absolutely – we need to buffer up against the next glacial maximum.
The world is still locked in the Late Cenzoic Ice Age, overheating is not the problem.
It is fair to say that the CO2 jockeys are flogging a dead horse. The race is run and they lost because physics prevailed over religious belief again.
“Can “The Silent Majority” and Media Intervention Drag Climate Action Back onto the Global Agenda?” – The answer is Yes, with a caveat, though. Because this is an influential minority that can and might want to do that, not “The Silent Majority”. Big money is at stake, exceptionally big money. As Global Environment Outlook 7, the UN’s flagship report on the global environment, claims: “Transformation of the economic and financial systems would include delivering the estimated US$6-7 trillion per year of investment needed to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions globally by 2050”. Should this “transformation” happen there will be plenty of opportunists rushing to grab their piece of the pie. Colleagues, there is some room for hope but yet there is no room for complacency.
“Big money is at stake, exceptionally big money.”
This is the reason why windmills and industrial solar are still being promoted even though it is obvious to everyone but Miliband that they are not fit for purpose.
I tend to doubt that even Miliband believes the tale. I suspect his ambitions, like all those who seek power for its own sake, go far beyond anything to do with climate. Even if that tool is broken, I suspect he will wield it as long as it serves any purpose to that end.
Eric, this may be correct for some countries and for some circles. But for others what you see is an entrenched media and political establishment which is not for changing,
Outside the English speaking world and Germany (and to a lesser extent some of the other EU countries) global warming and net zero never took off. They just paid lip service and carried on as before.
You are probably right that its holed below the waterline in the US. Canada is hobbling towards a U-turn. The Australians here will be able to comment on events there, my impression is that they are keeping on. New Zealand seems to have turned, but who cares? This is not really the general death of the movement, though it is a real weakening. Mainly however the collapse is a US phenomenon.
Local politics matters. In the EU they are slightly relaxing their net zero measures, but not rejecting the underlying concept and objectives. There is enormous inertia in the Brussels structure. Once that machine gets started its almost impossible to turn around by external pressure. You have the Commission, which has essentially rule-by-decree powers, a Potemkin parliament which in the Bismark mode is strictly for show, and an elite that are not for turning.
At no point is there any lever which the citizenry can pull to stop or turn it, and I see no signs that the fundamental Brussels direction has changed.
The UK is worse. You have posted today the extraordinary behavior of the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband before the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, repeatedly refusing to publish his 2025 agreement with the Chinese on energy. What, you may ask, is a Parliamentary Committee for, if it can be denied access to such information? What indeed is the whole institution of Parliamentary Democracy for if Ministers have such powers?
That he tried to refuse to publish it is perhaps not surprising. That he got away with it tells you all you need to know. The UK Government does not have to hold a General Election till 2029. Until then its an elective dictatorship, Miliband is untouchable, and with him the net zero agenda. The issue is too technical for the opposition, such as it is, to make any headway with, the Government has a huge majority, and the whole apparatus of government, civil service and media is so penetrated that even if Reform get a large majority in 2029 (which is by no means certain) its going to be a huge task for them to make a change. Meanwhile local authorities and organizations all over the country are declaring a climate emergency and trying to lower their carbon footprint, and they will carry on doing this in 2030 too.
Its instructive to compare it with the gender question. It shows the nature and scale of the problem. There have been two UK court rulings, the Forstater decision and the recent decision on the Equalities Act. The first established dissent from Trans ideology as a protected opinion, which would ban discrimination based on holding it. The second held that in law in the UK the terms ‘man’ and ‘woman’ mean biological sex, so women-only facilities are lawful and males, whether trans or not, are barred from them. In addition there was the Cass Report, which led to the closure of the Tavistock gender clinic and a national ban on puberty blockers.
You might think all this would be the end of the matter, but it was not. Magazines in receipt of Ars Council grants routinely research social media histories of new contributors, and ban them if they are gender critical. Students are shunned by their peers and by university societies for holding, or even investigating (like buying a book), such views. People have been called on by the police for expressing such (perfectly legal) views, and even banned from football supporters clubs for their inconvenient social media posts. Organizations have tried to abolish single sex toilets and changing facilties, mandate pronoun announcement, even abolish ordinary vocabulary like ‘woman’, ‘mother’ or ‘breast feeding’. And the reaction of the Trans lobby to the puberty blocker ban was to apply for permission to run a clinical trial, which was granted. As if there were not ample clinical evidence about puberty blockers already from all around the world! Why not try just looking at it?
It is like the Japanese when whaling was banned, explaining that they were not doing any commercial whaling, it was just for scientific research.
I would like to believe that the climate madness is ending, but I fear that the only thing that will take it out and bury it will be a nationwide winter blackout of some major economy, lasting a few weeks as they struggle to restart without spinning reserve. I think at the moment the best candidate for a first mover is the UK. All it will take is a cold calm winter and continuation of present policies. But NY State is a close second, and then probably Germany.
Net Zero is a non-starter in most of the world. It is probably dead in most of the Western world. Renewables may be teetering toward extinction. However, The True Cause, Catastrophic Climate Change (under whatever name) will continue. “This time, we’ll do it right.”
Even the corrupt IPCC says there has been no climate change. AR6 ch 12 p l90 diagram seen below here. No change in cyclones? I mean, you have climate change with no change in cyclones? Ho ho ho. Really ?? Come on!!!
“AR6 ch 12 p l90 diagram seen below”
AR6 Chapter 12 starts at page 1767 and the pdf only goes to page 160
And there isn’t anything “below”
So an actual link to the chapter and diagram you are talking about would be great
IPPC AR6 Chapter 12
Leftists are delusional. Action on climate change didn’t “slip” to the bottom of the list of environmental issues recently. It was always at the bottom. In every poll over the last 30 years. In the U.S. and internationally. By a wide margin. Leftists and climate zealots constantly lamented that they just needed to change their messaging to convince the public that it was a big deal instead of recognizing that they, the zealots, were steeped in delusion and clinging to a narrative that defied any compelling supporting evidence. The silent majority was always against their stupidity as they berated us unceasingly in the media—dominated by similarly delusional, stupid leftists—for our uncaring, for our inability to grasp how important their delusion was. And they still do it. Truly they are among the dumbest, most concrete-skulled ideologues on the planet, incapable of introspection or understanding the mountain of scientific evidence against their pathetic bleating about an imminent human-caused global climate catastrophe that is nothing of the sort.
That’s right! Climate Change has always been at the bottom of polls.
Anyone who seriously follows the subject would know that.
The “deluded” at CNN are in total panic over the buyout. They may have to change their tune.
“Think of the CHILDREN!” Maud Flanders
Yes, in order to keep people from straying from the Climate Religion, what the media needs to do is come up with a list of “climate actions” which are relatively easy for people to do, like recycling more, driving less, and wasting less food. Also, cold showers, or two-minute hot showers, and having the house cooler in Winter and warmer in Summer, walking and biking more, and driving less. If you can make people feel like they can actually do something, then they will feel more hopeful. The goal is keeping the Climate Religion alive, after all.
Their hero told them long ago, a tactic that goes on for too long is a drag.
Maybe if the global warmists had got one – just one – prediction correct it would be different.
“The big Covid lie helped people wake up – after people discovered how wildly Covid had been exaggerated, large numbers of people started questioning other establishment fear narratives, including the fake climate crisis.”
Covid did help people wake up and distrust the MSM.
Another biggie was the coverage of Biden. MSM, including Tapper, claimed he was sharp as a tac and hid and/or ignored the footage that showed he wasn’t. They asked him softball (whiffle ball?) questions even during his first campaign when he was hiding because of covid.
Then that debate with Trump happened on the national stage. They tried to cover for him (I think they claimed he had a cold.) but everyone seeing him fumble along in real time rather through the MSM’s filters and deflections realized they’d been flat out lied to for 4 years.
The very fact that the silent majority continues to rank climate action at or near the bottom of their priorities list tells us something. It reveals that despite all the media’s distortions, exaggerations, misinformation and outright falsehoods about the climate and environment, the silent majority have smelled a rat and put the issue on the back burner or off the stove entirely and gone on with the important issues in life rather than taking unnecessary action toward a crisis that never existed in the first place.