British public conviction about the threat of climate change has declined sharply after months of questions over the science and growing disillusionment with government action, a leading poll has found.
The proportion of British adults who believe climate change is “definitely” a reality has dropped from 44 percent to 31 percent in the last year, according to the latest survey by Ipsos Mori.
Overall, about nine in 10 people questioned still appear to accept that some degree of global warming is happening.
But the steep drop in those who have no doubts could mean it will be harder to persuade the public to support action to curb the problem, particularly with higher prices for energy and other goods.
The poll also found a significant drop in those who said climate change was caused by human activities. A year ago this number was one in three, but this year just one in five people believe global warming to be caused by people, said Edward Langley, Ipsos Mori’s head of environment research.
“It’s going to be a hard sell to make people make changes to their behavior unless there’s something else in it for them, [such as] energy efficiency measures saving money on fuel bills,” Langley said. “It’s a hard sell to tell people not to fly off for weekends away if you’re not wholly convinced by the links. Even people who are [convinced] still do it.”
The latest poll, taken at the end of last month, followed two months of allegations that said climate scientists might have manipulated and withheld data, and the inclusion of a flawed statement on Himalayan glaciers in the influential 2007 report on the science and impact of climate change by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
However, whether or not these events are behind the increased public uncertainty is in doubt.
Russ Lidstone, chief executive of the advertising agency Euro RSCG, which commissioned the Ipsos Mori survey, said the research among consumers found “great cynicism now as a result of questions in popular culture and regarding the credibility of IPCC data.”
But a recent poll for the BBC suggested these events had had less influence on UK public opinion than had the cold British winter.
The poll questioned more than 1,000 people in Britain on their views on climate change: 31 percent of those polled said climate change was definitely happening, 29 percent said “it’s looking like it could be a reality”, and another 31 percent said the problem was exaggerated, a category that had risen by 50 percent compared with a year ago. Only 6 percent said climate change was not happening at all and 3 percent said they did not know.
The UK energy and climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, who recently called on the public to ignore the “siren voices” of climate skeptics, said the poll illustrated the scale of the task of building public support for action.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS