Doubts Grow

Three recent stories (collected by GWPF) demonstrate that doubts are growing that climate-change will doom us all very soon.

At Gallup, “Water Issues Worry Americans Most, Global Warming Least”, by Lydia Saad:

At least three in four Americans surveyed in Gallup’s 2011 Environment poll say they worry a great deal or a fair amount about contamination of soil and water by toxic waste, pollution of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, pollution of drinking water, and the maintenance of the nation’s supply of fresh water for household needs.  [...]

The poll was conducted March 3-6, prior to the emergence of an earthquake- and tsunami-generated nuclear crisis in Japan that has raised Americans’ own concerns about nuclear power.

The current levels of public concern about various environmental problems are essentially unchanged from 2010.  However, Americans are less worried today than they were 10 years ago about all eight issues Gallup measured in 2001.  The decline over the past decade spans a period when the public often expressed surging concern about terrorism, the Iraq war, gas prices, and the economy.

In The Ecologist, “Only a quarter of UK population concerned about climate change”, by William McLennan:

Twice as many people in India and Japan rank climate change as one of the most important environmental issues, highlighting the challenge facing UK policymakers and climatologists.

Only a quarter of Britons believe climate change is one of the most important environmental issues facing the UK today, according to a survey conducted by Ipsos MORI and released to The Ecologist this week.

Ambivalence in the UK is in sharp contrast to Asian countries like India, South Korea and Japan where 50% of those polled consider climate change to be one of the most important environmental issues.

The MORI poll involved more than 18,000 people across the world, who were asked to choose the three most important environmental issues facing their country.  Of the 24 countries surveyed, the UK was among the least concerned about climate change, with energy security, waste disposal and overpopulation listed as the most pressing environmental issues.  Other European countries showed similar results to UK, with people in Germany and Sweden principally concerned with sources of future energy supplies.

At the BBC, Climate scepticism ‘on the rise’, BBC poll shows:

The number of British people who are sceptical about climate change is rising, a poll for BBC News suggests.

The Populus poll of 1,001 adults found 25% did not think global warming was happening, an increase of 10% since a similar poll was conducted in November.

The percentage of respondents who said climate change was a reality had fallen from 83% in November to 75% this month.

And only 26% of those asked believed climate change was happening and “now established as largely man-made”.

The findings are based on interviews carried out on 3-4 February.

In November 2009, a similar poll by Populus—commissioned by The Times—showed that 41% agreed that climate change was happening and it was largely the result of human activities.  [...]
Of the 75% of respondents who agreed that climate change was happening, one-in-three people felt that the potential consequences of living in a warming world had been exaggerated, up from one-in-five people in November.

Evidently, governments and environmentalist organisations need to spend even more money and other resources to convince sceptical people that the pseudo-scientific, doomday cult of looming-catastrophic-anthropogenic-global-warming really does require developed countries to wreck their economies and to ruin the lives of their citizens.

UPDATE:  see Anthony Watts, on the shocking news, “Democrats and Republicans increasingly divided over global warming”, and “Americans believe climate change is occurring, but disagree on why”, at WUWT.

UPDATE II:  see Michelle Grattan, of The Age, “Once-burnt public goes cold on price for carbon”.
UPDATE III (8 May, 2011):  see Robert Matthews, of The National, “The more famous the expert, the worse his predictions”.
UPDATE IV (10 May, 2011):  see Mike Haseler’s Scottish Sceptic, “Global warming is dead in the MSM”; and see Russell Cook’s “The ’96-to-present smear of skeptic scientists”.