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Most Australians are skeptical: mankind is not main driver of the climate

The IPCC has told us in letters of fire for twenty years that humans are the dominant cause of climate change. But despite the unending propaganda 60% of Australians are not convinced. This fits with other better designed and much larger surveys by CSIRO showing that 53% of the population are skeptical, and a UK study which showed that 63% of British people were skeptical that storms and floods are probably man-made.

The IPSOS polls have been running for years, and are unashamedly pro-IPCC in leaning, but despite that obvious bias, and loaded, ambiguous questions, most Australians don’t agree that it is mainly our fault. The climate is changing but it is mainly or partly natural. IPSOS gloss over that, but if humans are responsible for less than half of “climate change” that makes Direct Action twice as useless. If natural forces caused more of the recent warming, that also reduces the scary projections.

The IPSOS Climate Change Report 2015 (Online poll, 1,063 people)

Q3: Which best describes your opinion about the causes of climate change?

Poll Australians, Climate change, 2015, belief,

Only 40% of Australians accept the IPCC position that mankind is the main cause of climate change (orange and red). | Click to enlarge. See p 5 of the report.

Like nearly all polls, this one suffers from using the loaded and confounded term “climate change”. To the person filling out the form  it could mean either “man-made global warming” or “the climate… changes“. What were those survey designers and journalists thinking?  Not about accurate English, that’s for sure.

Three percent say “there is no such thing as climate change”. But given the abuse of the term and double meaning, it could be just a protest at being asked a silly question. Are there ice-ages? Has the worlds climate been stable for 4.5 billion years?

Meaningless and loaded questions

Question 8: Who should be mainly responsible for action on climate change?

Is that the government, businesses, or Mr Sun? Seriously,  for the 60% of respondents who don’t think humans are the main driving cause of climate change, how do they answer these questions? I think the state government should hold back the tides,  the NGO’s can deal with cosmic rays, and the local council can fix the magnetic field, right?

extinction of plants and animals, koala symbolQuestion 7: “In how many years, if at all, do you think climate change will cause the following in Australia”. The list of  coming disasters was fire and brimstone 101. IPSOS were not just wondering when the reef will get damaged, but looking for the “Destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.” Then there was the extinction of plants and animals with a little symbol of a Koala head socked in the eyes.

Most of the population said that climate change is mainly or partly natural. But if we substitute the word natural in front of climate change it all gets inane.  How many years will it take for natural climate change to destroy the Barrier Reef? ANS: It hasn’t done it yet in the last 20,000 years, why should 2050 be any different?

Let’s guess what the survey designers were thinking when they wrote this? 1/ Al Gore is right and these disasters are coming. or 2/ We need the best guess long range forecasts from the punters about what the natural climate is going to do this century: droughts, floods, fire and extinctions. What do they reckon?

Push polling anyone?

Question 7 is just a measure of the success of propaganda. (See the results below). When will the “decline in farming production” occur? 51% think that’s already happening.  But what is happening (scientifically at least) is “an increase in farming production“, and a “greening of the deserts“, which are recorded in hundreds of publications, but not an option for respondents. The future on offer are all modeled projections, or events that have been occurring since time began.

Australian poll, climate change, destruction of reef, ecosystems, drought, flood

Question 7 “In how many years, if at all, do you think climate change will cause the following in Australia” | Click to enlarge.

Most of the results and conclusions depend on selective use of two different definitions of “climate change”. The results of question 4 invalidate the rest of the survey where “climate change” is taken to mean man-made climate change.

When 62% of respondents say that climate change is already causing droughts, how many of those think it’s just natural climate change causing the drought?

Click here to Download the Ipsos Climate Change Report

Yes, it is only an online poll.

See posts like: Plants suck half the CO2 out of the air around them before lunchtime each day and Wetlands like CO2 — “Gimme 700ppm” say sedge-grass.

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