“… and resistance to sustainability surcharges is a consequence of recession.”
Adam Corner writes in New Scientist:
This year’s British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey comes complete with gloomy headlines on public opinion about climate change. Compared with surveys in 1993 and 2000, concern about the seriousness of environmental threats has decreased, and the number of people saying they were willing to pay more for environmentally friendly services has dropped significantly.
Against a backdrop of economic woes, the finding that people are less keen to pay a sustainability surcharge should be no surprise. More intriguing is the explanation offered for the receding concern about the threat posed by climate change. The survey’s authors suggest that the lingering effects of the 2009 Climategate affair – the release by climate sceptics of private emails between climate researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) – has knocked people’s trust in climate science…
Read the rest of Corner’s article including is laughable effort to brush off Climategate 2.0.
A pithy and pointed comment, DP. As a non-scientist, but with a life-long interest in climate change, and the capacity to bore any and every acquaintance on the topic, the one constant I have observed is the manifest igonorance and lack of curiosity by otherwise intelligent and informed lay-people. And where they have a view, it is informed by their political leaning. Lefties take the Al Gore side and lust for a return to the dark ages. Right wing old codgers like myself treat it largely as yet another scare to make the population biddable. As she who must be obeyed always remarks “People have been trying to frighten me all my life”.
DP is so right: to seek vox pop opinion on climate, when the vast majority don’t even understand the difference between weather and climate, is an exercise in either futility or manipulation. I would love to do a social survey in this neck of the wood on Quantum Mechanics. 95% of respondents would agree they are the best car service garage in the neighbourhood.
Corporate Disinformation Media really seized on those e-mails
What were the recent polls on Special Relativity or Quantum Mechanics? Oh right, there aren’t any because they are scientific issues. Polls are for political issues.