According to the Times this week, a “soaring number of Britons” believe that “global warming [is] exaggerated”. The article is based on YouGov polling commissioned by the newspaper, and many of the results are quite stark. For example, whereas in March 2021, 51% of respondents supported the banning of new petrol and diesel cars to force the 'transition' to EVs, in June this year, 58% now oppose it. But much more is revealed by this piece than the statistics representing a shift in the public mood.
The poll is bad news for the Government’s green agenda, because it seems that the closer to green Utopia we get, the less the ungrateful hoi polloi are content with the destination. And, as has been consistently shown by polling throughout the era of green policymaking, support for the agenda is almost entirely dependent on respondents' belief that the policies will not affect them.
Full climate sceptics will be disappointed, for example, by the finding that, over the four years, the proportion of respondents who believe that “concerns about climate change have... been exaggerated” rises only somewhat modestly, from 16% to 25%. 61% still believe that it has not – a point I shall return to. However, 87% of respondents, up from 77%, are unwilling to see a rise in their domestic energy bills – and only 6% are positively willing to face higher energy costs to 'save the planet'.
These apparently paradoxical results, and the changes over time too, are easy to explain. For the
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
What I always find galling are the young idiots (and they always are young), who when questioned about their globe trotting adventures and whether it is at all hypocritical say it is about government action not individual behaviour. What bollocks, like the rank hypocrisy of the LibDem MP who is pushing the CAN, who toured the world for her sport and kayaked in Antarctica to publicise her arrogance
“climate change is being politicised”
Well there is science (real science based on evidence, that is falsifiable) that can inform decisions, but the decisions are political because like everything else they involve trade offs between competing interests.
But that’s not what the climate protection advocates want. As only they have both the responsibility and ability to save the planet while anybody else hasn’t, there must be no trade offs between what they want and what others may want, ie, no politicisation of climate policies. It’s either 100% them, 0% anybody else or global boiling armageddon.
“ In Spires’s view, GB News’s freedom to set its own editorial agenda, rather than to be restricted to establishment orthodoxies, has caused a change in the public understanding. “We’ve seen how that succeeded in the States”, he claims, alluding to Trump’s now very vocal climate scepticism.”
Here you have it in black and white- these people just won’t accept people making up their own minds if it means they come to incorrect conclusions. It’s the exact opposite of democracy.
Unfortunately there is still an unhealthy majority of people who will happily swallow anything fed to them by the BBC and government officials, and who feel it is somehow unpatriotic to think for themselves. We need something drastic like a total power grid blackout to shock them into thinking.
I don’t. I can easily believe that 75% of the think climate change is real and not exaggerated.
People believing one thing but acting inconsistently with those beliefs is actually the norm when it comes to collective action.
Wherever there is a collective benefit but an individual price to pay, you can almost be certain individuals will try to avoid the individual price and try to pass it on to the rest of the collective, if they can. It’s absolutely guaranteed if there is no social disgrace attached to it.
There is a reason collective action is accompanied by coercion. It’s unsustainable without coercion.
People will let their beliefs slide if it starts to cost them a lot and someone presents an alternative- especially people for whom money is tight.
There has been a massive centre right open flank in British politics since 1991.
Brexit is one result.
GB News and the Reform Party have moved into that space, with entirely predictable consequences.
The two Trump administrations in the U.S. have changed the political zeitgeist. What happens in America never stays in America.
Real science based climate opinion in the U.S. is now the establishment:
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/DOE_Critical_Review_of_Impacts_of_GHG_Emissions_on_the_US_Climate_July_2025.pdf
Britain, if only due to a big hit in the wallet, is finally slowly waking up to the stupidity, lunacy of net zero.
A’ levels in Physics and Chemistry are enough to understand how fake the Climate Emergency is, and how bonkers NET Zero policies are. They are a non-solutions to a non-problem.
Only Physics A’ level is needed to understand the Windmill Delusion, and Ed Miliband has an A’ level in Physics…
It makes you wonder.
WTF is an “environmental psychologist”?
Is the environment having a nervous breakdown too?
Its a powerful narrative that falls into pieces as soon as you start questioning the inconsistencies. It survives because the media and others keep banging the drum for it. Once you see the inconsistencies and realised its a fake, there’s no going back.
Once you have to pay the bills you soon see sense!
What has changed my mind about the severity of global warming/ greenhouse gas ‘crisis’is the research and writings of British climate scientist Peter Taylor and others he collaborates with. He has shown how warming and cooling cycles more or less concur with present atmospheric temperature with perhaps 5% additional man-made warming. IPCC modelling does not consider these natural cycles and merely averages them out
I wouldn’t say that GBNews is a hotbed of climate scepticism. OFCOM jumps on them is they present only one side of an argument except I think when it is the one side which is socially acceptable. Meaning if a climate sceptic is on they get an activist to oppose them. But I have seen Dale Vince and Donnachadh McCarthy I think it was giving their views on extreme weather and “electricity is costly because of gas” unopposed.
The AGW, man-made climate change, call it what you will hoax is dead. Awaiting the next apocalyptic control mechanism to land.
Haven’t they got another “pandemic” in the pipeline?