Red-pill time
Basic facts, details, accuracy, buried under the weight of propaganda.
Here’s a lost fact: most of the world likes fossil fuels and wants even more of it.
The world is using more fossil fuels than ever.
And this is not exactly a new trend — starting in 1765 or so. Yet despite that, nine out of ten Australians speak as though they have been trained by a renewable energy ad bureau. And in a sense they have.
A few years ago, 88% of Australians would say that fossil fuels are in decline around the world and we must invest in “alternatives”. So nine out of ten people are just wrong. Despite all that connectivity (or possibly because of it) nine out of ten people know something that is not true and has never been true during their entire lives.
Lowy institute polls show how strong the effect of propaganda is. Vale the ABC, undoing science education, and destroying the national debate every day of the week.
89% of Australians think fossil fuels are in decline. Graph. Lowy Poll
On the plus side, the more wrong the reporting, the more the real story rattles the cage. When people get red-pilled they don’t just learn that fossil fuels are still popular and important, they also learn they can’t trust the media, that consensus means nothing, and that opinion polls are often junk. There is a lot of upside here for the truth-tellers.
Would you like contradictions with that?
In question two of the same survey, eighty percent of the population say that fossil fuels cause climate change and we should reduce them. This factoid has been used to scare politicians into signing up all to all kinds of bad deals and silly laws. Yet in questions 3 and 4 we find out that two thirds of the population also agrees that we should continue to export fossil fuels to developing nations. And half the population say we have an abundant supply and should not just export them, but use them too. Evidently most people think fossil fuels are good for the economy — both ours and the third worlds.
Assuming the people who disagreed with the first two questions were the same people who agreed with using more fossil fuels (as would be consistent) that still means one third of Australians will simultaneously say they believe fossil fuels are declining and causing climate change but we should export them and use them anyway.
Jobs trumps “climate change” every time
So what do the contradictions mean? Mostly that the media is telling porkies, but also that people are telling pollsters what they think they want to hear. On top of all that, the bigger truth is that people value the economy and jobs more than the imaginary threat of climate change (which is consistent with nearly every other survey done anywhere).
Let the Red-pilling begin.
h/t Simon.
REFERENCES
Global Energy Use, OWID: https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels
EIA: US Government https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/