Monday, February 09, 2009

Climate Change Denial again

Pondering Climate Change denial again. Government is officially convinced of the danger of Global Heating, but is faffing around, talking the talk, but are not walking the walk, not even crawling the crawl. No that's probably not true; they are crawling to the oil companies and motor manufacturers.

Problem is that the general public, due to a massive failure of the media to communicate the facts clearly, are not convinced of the real threat of global heating. Climate change appears as the least prioritised of political issues in polls, although poll results are inconsistent; for instance, a 20,000 survey in 21 nations showed a 3/4 majority in favour of more renewable energy

Ipsos MORI polled 1,039 adults [in the UK] and found that six out of 10 agreed that 'many scientific experts still question if humans are contributing to climate change', and that four out of 10 'sometimes think climate change might not be as bad as people say'. In both cases, another 20 per cent were not convinced either way. Despite this, three quarters still professed to be concerned about climate change.

Those most worried were more likely to have a degree, be in social classes A or B, have a higher income, said Phil Downing, Ipsos MORI's head of environmental research.



It is worth reading the original results.

They reflect real confusion in the mind of the voters. It is clear that the economy is the main worry for the people, naturally, and also there is a clear majority in favour of more renewable energy, which makes it all the more important that we keep the Green New Deal at the forefront of our campaigning.

We also need to be out there contradicting the global warming denialists. Melanie Phillips is the main media denialist in the UK: here is her latest diatribe. The comment slot is full of unpleasant denialist insults. My advice is just ignore the crap, (to exchange insults with a denialist is a useless as trying to have a manure competition with an elephant) and address the argument that Melanie is deploying. Go to here or here to pick up the refutation.

To be doing this may seem tedious - we want to be discussing solutions, not the basic problem, but it is necessary, because we have to carry this argument on the street and broadcasting stations. We have to take the people with us, in order to get the changes we need.

Obama in his inauguration address asked the people to help him. This is one thing we could do: equip ourselves to counter the doubt that climate change denialists are infiltrating in the public mind.

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