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What a week downunder, just in case you missed it.
We’re a nation, up in arms. With three months til G-Day (when the Greens control the Senate on July 1) and the tax-based-on-a-lie likely to become legislation, the heat is on. Protests and smears are running strong. Forces are being mobilized, and people are being polarized. Yet the public is abandoning the carbon tax, and the parties who promote it.
As the mass rally movements begin the Big Scare Campaign fans responded with smears to paint the rally-goers as extreme fringe, loonies and nutters. The fringe in this case turns out to be 4 out of 5 people. Who are the “deniers”? When asked, do you support the carbon tax? One hundred and thirty thousand people said NO.
83% of the Channel Nine poll don’t want a carbon tax.
The Labor Party sent out biblical climate speaking notes to all it’s ministers — the floods and droughts are coming, oceans will rise up and wash away your home, there will be burning bushes, and the storms will kill your firstborn (or words to that effect). And they howl about Abbot running a fear campaign. Wait for the […]
Given the multimillion dollar budgets and advertising campaigns about climate change, it would be safe to assume there was a high public awareness of the most basic facts about CO2 right? But reader Gregg has taken the initiative and gone out and done a survey of 100 people and asked them a few basics and he’s made a valuable point in a prototype survey. The results tell us something about the aim of public education campaigns.
Governments and UN Agencies have enough resources to tell us that climate change will cause droughts, floods, storms, starvation, shrinking glaciers, extinctions, sea level rise, more aids victims, more wars, water shortages, rapes, terrorism, malaria, rabid bats, and biblical plagues of jellyfish (thanks to the Hooterville Gazette for the links to all those). But despite the acres of news space devoted to all these, Gregg’s quick survey suggests not many of our public servants or journalists have done much work to give the public the basic facts or to put things into perspective.
It seems that the average Australian is under the impression that there is 1000 times more CO2 in the atmosphere than there is, and that when it comes to sources of […]
The good news is that skeptics are the majority, the bad news is that we’ll all have to pay the tax anyway. The IPA commissioned a Galaxy Poll in Australia and only one third of Australians believe that man-made global warming is real. Despite the advertising, the propaganda, the Nobel Prizes, the support of major institutions, the ABC censorship of skeptical science news, and the educational indoctrination at schools, most people are unconvinced.
Despite the falling polls, today the Gillard Government committed itself to getting a “carbon price” — the nice way of saying “tax”. (Note the poll attached to that story: Do you support a carbon tax? 84% say NO.)
It’s a question of youth
From the full results it’s clear that belief is mostly a “young” naive thing, and that by the age of 30 people are waking up to the truth. Half of the 18-24 year olds think that man is to blame, but only a quarter of the over 50’s do. The old cats who’ve been there and done that are wiser to exaggerated scare campaigns. Half of the 25 -34 year old group answered that they are not sure.
It’s also a socio-economic thing. […]
In the US there are significant moves at the highest levels to limit the carbon related power-grab. (Thanks to SPPI for the heads-up.)
Perhaps this is the point where the 2010 election results start to spoil the grandiose plans that once looked inevitable? Maybe democracy can save the day?
House republicans are trying to stop funding for the EPA “climate control” at the same time as they try to limit the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases.
House GOP spending bill prohibits funding for EPA climate regs
Source: The Hill
By Andrew Restuccia – 02/11/11 07:33 PM ET A government spending bill unveiled Friday night by House Republicans would prohibit funding for Environmental Protection Agency climate regulations through September of this year.
..
7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […]
The Government says it wants a “climate expert” to sell the message to the public, and who do they pick? A small mammal expert whose predictions on the climate are so wrong any normal person would slink off in shame. But not Flannery, the Teflon prophet, reality doesn’t stick to him. How can it be that the outrageously wrong get away with it with reputations intact (and get rewarded too)? Blame the mainstream media. Blame also a government that thinks it’s a good use of public money to promote known failures.
Flannery will be paid $180,000 a year to be part-time chairman of the Gillard Government’s Climate Commission, to convince us to agree to her plans to “put a price on carbon”. In other words, he’s not an expert in climate science but in science-PR. Bolt describes how Flannery changes his PR tune to suit his employers. The man has no scruples.
He claims the “committee is independent”. But we all know that they will come to no other conclusion that to support a tax, call carbon “pollution”, and rave about all the evidence (that they can’t name specifically). That $5.6 million dollar committee is just a thinly disguised $5.6 […]
The latest Newspoll test on climate gives out almost no useful information on what Australians think about carbon emissions, but definitively shows that Newspoll survey designers didn’t think too hard about the questions. Indeed the survey is so meaningless that sometimes sceptics and unskeptics would have to both tick the same boxes. Could this be a survey-bot at work?
THINKING NOW ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE. DO YOU PERSONALLY BELIEVE OR NOT BELIEVE THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS CURRENTLY OCCURRING?
Isn’t the aim of polling to get answers that are not ambiguous?
Does “Climate Change” mean: a/ that the climate changes, or b/ that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are affecting the atmosphere?
I would have to tick YES for this question. Yes, I do think that ice-ages occur and warm periods do too, and that there is no static perfect temperature for the Earth, and that currently there is no reason to believe that the forces that have changed our climate for 4.5 billion years have suddenly, for the first time, reached a fixed unchanging stasis.
Presumably the 22% of people who ticked : “Not believe” were using definition ‘b’ above, and not the literal definition ‘a’. Instead of information […]
Australian polls have plummeted, and the credibility gap I mentioned earlier has already translated into votes. Whether people agree or disagree with the Emissions Trading Scheme, no one is impressed when a leader hypes something in the most hyperbolic and inflammatory terms, then bails suddenly, as if it was not a big deal.
The front page of The Australian today:
KEVIN Rudd’s personal standing has taken a hammering after his decision to dump his climate change policy last week, and for the first time since 2006 the Coalition has an election-winning lead.
Curiously, while the Labor Party dropped 8%, the Greens primary vote (10%) didn’t pick up a single point. The Coalition (the main opposition) gained just 3% (to 43%), so most of the rest of the disillusioned voters went to “others and independents”. All the commentators are writing it up to the “Climate” issue.
It may have taken a long time to come, but eventually things based on bullying and bluster crash to Earth. Both sides of politics could have stood taller in this if they had bothered to get a forum of advocates and skeptics together in the same room (perhaps a Royal Commissioner’s room) to politely […]
The poll of Australians commission by the Australian Climate Science Coalition is more sophisticated than the BBC poll, and shows a similar trend against the theory of man-made global catastrophe. But, perhaps not surprisingly, as with the nature of fraud and misinformation, the results also contain contradictions. It’s quicksand out there in voter-world. Half the population is no longer sold on the emissions trading scheme, but the other half is unaware of what is unfolding. A bare majority of Australians still want to do “something” to combat climate change (I wonder if the same number of people want to do “something” to combat the weather), but even those who want action don’t want to spend very much.
The full report PDF.
Table 20: ACSC Poll of Australians Jan 2010
The things we know for sure: Skepticism is growing in Australia since Climategate (and all the other gates) and the failure of Copenhagen. There is a great deal of ignorance out there on both sides of the fence. (The science communication on this topic has been poor, worse, and awful.) The population is politically split: The half that doesn’t believe in the scare […]
A new BBC poll shows a major shift in public opinion in the UK since just last November. Look at the swing. Of the 41% of people who then said the cause of climate change was “well established,” more than 1 in 4 have switched sides. These people made up the major base of the active support, yet they are now questioning the assumption that man-made gases are driving the change.
Only 26% of people think “climate change is happening, and is now established as largely man-made”; on the other hand, 25% are so skeptical, they don’t believe climate change is happening at all.
10 out of 10 based on 2 ratings […]
Did I say things were changing? The latest Rassmussen poll shows that the knowledge of falsified data is spreading fast and the polls are collapsing. Nearly 60% of Americans are now suspicious that there has been some falsification of the data.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s Very Likely. Just 26% say it’s not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data.
Only a quarter of US citizens think that scientists agree on the climate. (Possibly just the White House and it’s employees? Only a few days ago a spokesman for the Obama Government was still insisting that he didn’t think the science was “under dispute”.)
How fast that news spreads… or possibly not. (After all, before Climategate, how many polling companies thought to ask a question about scientists falsifying data?)
7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings […]
The Question: Do increasing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere pose an unacceptable risk of a catastrophic change in earth’s temperature in the future?
Of 1022 people polled, 55% agreed and 31% opposed (including the 19% who strongly opposed). Nearly half, or 45% are not convinced a catastrophe is on the way due to carbon dioxide. Source: OnlineOpinion
My sense is that the curve of opinion on this complex science is the inverse of what you would expect. Normally on a complex scientific topic, the most common answer would be neither agree nor disagree (or don’t know), and the strong opinions would taper off like a bell curve with few people being sure either way. Instead opinions are polarized. “Catastrophic” is strong language. One side here is passionately wrong.
46 % of Australians surveyed believe the Emissions Trading Scheme should be delayed.
With 3000 times as much funding supporting the side with professional PR teams, the endless repetition of the assumption that man-made carbon dioxide causes warming is becoming a liability in itself. The more the advocates for action whitewash, the more people grow suspicious. They more they bully, the more people get a gut feeling that […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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