Scepticism about human-caused climate change continues to increase around the world. A recent poll conducted by a group within the University of Chicago found that belief in humans causing all or most climate change had slumped in America to 49% from the 60% level recorded just five years ago. Similar falls have been recorded elsewhere, with a recent IPSOS survey covering two thirds of the world’s population revealing that nearly four people in every 10 believe climate change is mainly due to natural causes.
Perhaps the most surprising statistic from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC) survey is that 70% of Americans are unwilling to spend more than $2.50 a week to combat climate change. Nearly four in 10 Americans said they were unwilling to pay a couple of dimes. Despite decades of relentless green doomsday agitprop designed to corral populations into living under a collectivist Net Zero-ordered society, it appears that the vast majority of Americans are unwilling to pay even the chump change in their back pockets to stop the climate changing.
Surveys such as EPIC and IPSOS speak to the fundamental flaw in the ‘settled’ science surrounding the suggestion that humans burning fossil fuel are causing the climate to breakdown. The hypothesis is unproven – not a single science paper provides conclusive proof. Natural causes and the proposition that carbon dioxide becomes ‘saturated’ beyond certain atmospheric levels are more convincing explanations for scientific observations. Fears that mainstream climate science is heavily corrupted by faulty data, pseudoscientific modelling and outright political cherry-picking are becoming more widespread.
Interestingly, the recent overall fall in support for human-caused climate change in the U.S. is due to Democrats and Independents.
Scepticism levels remain high among Republicans but there have been dramatic increases among Left-leaning Democrats. Nevertheless, Democrats were found to be more likely than Republicans to be influenced by the ‘evidence’ of what is called ‘extreme’ weather (71% vs 30% for Democrats vs Republicans). This news will bring some comfort to green propogandists since the recent lack of noticeable global warming has led to a massive rise in pseudoscientific attributions of single weather events to overall climate change. Personal observations are said to influence 55% of Democrats, compared with 20% of Republicans, while appeals to higher authority play better on the Left than the Right. News coverage ranks higher for Democrats at 47% vs 20% , while scientists, most of whom go along with the ‘settled’ agenda, score 73% against just 32% for more sceptical Republicans.
EPIC also found that scepticism was rising among young people aged between 18-29 with a 17% decline in numbers who think humans play a predominant role in changing the climate. The drop was just as significant for those who graduated from college as those with a high school diploma (11%). Of considerable interest was this 17% fall compared with just a 9% drop for those aged over 60. This will concern alarmists, since the impressionable young are heavily targeted with green agitprop from an early age.
The IPSOS survey found that levels of climate scepticism were similar in all age categories. As with EPIC, it found that political leanings were decisive. In the seven countries where political input was sought, 28% of supporters of the Left turned out to be climate sceptics, compared with 50% on the Right.
Is it surprising that climate scepticism is increasing throughout the world? As noted, anthropogenic climate science rests on a shaky evidence base, which no amount of debate cancellation, modelling, invented attributions and data manipulation can hide. Over nearly 50 years, laudable environmental concerns have been hijacked to promote a collectivist, controlling political agenda. But decades of easy virtue-signalling are coming to an end, and the harsh realities of Net Zero are starting to become obvious. Claims that the green revolution will be largely painless are seen for the nonsense they are by the realistic Net Zero appraisal publicised by the Government-funded U.K. FIRES collaborative project.
According to the FIRES report, written by a number of British academics, Net Zero means just 60% of current levels of food cooking, heating and energy by 2050. Within less than 30 years there will be no beef and lamb, and all flying and shipping will have to stop. Road use will be restricted to 60% of today’s levels. There will be no cement, and the only steel available will be recycled. Norman Fenton, the recently retired Professor of Risk Information Management at Queen Mary University of London, noted that these conclusions are consistent with UN/WEF Agenda 21, the UN ‘World at 2050’ agenda and the WEF Great Reset. The latter, noted Fenton, incorporates ‘Build Back Better’ in which you’ll “own nothing and be happy”, and eat bugs instead of meat.
Another senior academic, the nuclear physicist Dr. Wallace Manheimer, recently warned that Net Zero would lead to the end of modern civilisation. The new green infrastructure will fail, cost trillions, trash large portions of the environment, and be entirely unnecessary. Manheimer noted that before fossil fuel became widely used, energy was provided by people and animals. Because so little energy was produced, “civilisation was a thin veneer atop a vast mountain of human squalour and misery, a veneer maintained by such institutions as slavery, colonialism and tyranny”.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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