Climate Sock

Polling reveals public trusts scientists most on climate

Posted in Climate Sock on April 3rd, 2013 by Leo – Comments Off on Polling reveals public trusts scientists most on climate

This post is the latest in the series on Carbon Brief’s energy and climate change poll. It was written by Ros Donald and the original was published here.

People in the UK overwhelmingly trust scientists more than any other source to give them accurate information about climate change, according to a new survey. In contrast, politicians and social media come joint last on the list.

Scientists most trusted

According to a new poll conducted for Carbon Brief by pollsters Opinium ,  69 per cent of those asked agreed that scientists and meteorologists are trustworthy sources of accurate information about climate science. Only seven per cent disagreed that scientists could be trusted to do this.

Next highest came ‘green’ charities such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, and BBC journalists and commentators, with 39 per cent and 31 per cent respectively saying they trusted these sources. But these groups divided opinion – 23 per cent don’t trust green charities, and 25 per cent think the BBC can’t be trusted to provide accurate information.

Sharing last place: politicians and social media 

While scientists topped the trust league table, politicians, blogs and social media came bottom. Only seven per cent said they considered politicians to be reliable sources of climate change information – and websites and social didn’t do any better, also scoring a seven per cent rating. 64 per cent said they didn’t think politicians could be trusted to give them accurate information, compared to 53 per cent for social media sources.

Trust Graph

Question: How trustworthy do you think the following information sources are in providing you with accurate information about climate change? 

Previous studies

Carbon Brief’s results tally closely with a previous study Ipsos Mori carried out last February for Climate Week of around 1,000 respondents. Asked whose views they trust on climate change, 66 per cent of those asked said they trust scientists the most.

In this survey, celebrities were deemed least trustworthy, with only one per cent professing trust in their views on climate change.

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Climate scientists ARE trusted – and other lessons from the new poll

Posted in Climate Sock on April 2nd, 2013 by Leo – Comments Off on Climate scientists ARE trusted – and other lessons from the new poll

Carbon Brief’s poll has tons of interesting findings – some of them covered in last week’s blogs.

But as with any apparently new information, it’s useful to put the results in the context of what we’ve seen before. How does the poll fit with what others have shown?

I’m going to pick on three places where it’s interesting to compare the new poll with previous ones.

1. Doubts about climate change aren’t rising

I’ve been banging on about this for a while. Poll after poll is showing that belief that climate change is real and man-made is at the same level it was at before Copenhagen, ‘climategate’, the UK’s cold winters, and the subsequent dip in belief.

The Carbon Brief poll adds yet more weight to this. Compared with a question asked by ICM in ’09 and last year, the results show no movement:

It really is time we stopped saying that belief in climate change is falling.

2. ‘Belief’ in climate doesn’t mean that much anyway

But when I’m not banging on about the fact that climate denial isn’t rising, I can usually be found arguing that focusing on ‘belief’ in climate change misses the point.

One of my favourite charts is from a post-Copenhagen poll that showed that, even among those who said they don’t think global warming has been proven, a majority wanted a reduction in worldwide emissions.

I’ve taken this to indicate there’s a bunch of people who respond to questions about whether they ‘believe’ in climate change as if they’re being asked “are you a tree-hugging leftie who hates business?” – so they say no to that question, but still want the government to do something about climate change.

But is that true? A question in the Carbon Brief poll supports that view, albeit not quite to the extent seen in the Copenhagen poll.

Of those who think climate change or global warming is mostly caused by natural processes (about a third of the total), 45% think that tackling climate change should still be part of the government’s economic programme:

3. There isn’t a big problem with trust in climate scientists

A poll conducted in March ’11 and reported 18 months later by LWEC found that only 38% agreed they trusted climate scientists to tell the truth about climate change.

This prompted soul-searching among those worried about public perceptions of climate change: if even climate scientists aren’t trusted, what hope is there for building support for action to tackle climate change?

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UK public blames energy companies for higher bills; is split over paying more for climate change and energy security

Posted in Climate Sock on March 28th, 2013 by Leo – Comments Off on UK public blames energy companies for higher bills; is split over paying more for climate change and energy security

This is the second in the series of posts presenting results from Carbon Brief’s energy and climate change polling. It was written by Christian Hunt and Ros Donald of Carbon Brief and was originally posted here.

Energy bills are going up, and new government analysis which examines why has reignited media attention over the price consumers pay for environmental and social policies. But despite media coverage of ‘green taxes’ on energy bills over the past two years, new polling indicates people place the blame for rising costs at the door of energy companies.

Polling conducted for Carbon Brief by Opinium indicates 48 per cent of around 2,000 respondents believe the main reason energy bills have gone up over the past few years is that energy companies have raised prices to make bigger profits.

What’s pushing energy bills up? 

We’ve written a lot about energy costs – and especially how much government policies aimed at cutting carbon emissions are adding to them – over the past two years. The last two years have seen a determined campaign by the right wing press to link rising energy bills to the government’s green policies.

This has sometimes led to exaggerated claims about the effect of environmental policies on energy bills, and the size of the claimed contribution – as well as the method for calculating it – has varied considerably. More recently the government has tried to pre-empt criticism by breaking down the cost of financing green measures like renewables, presenting them alongside other costs such as wholesale gas prices – which remain the biggest reason for recent price hikes.

We wanted to know if  media coverage of ‘green taxes’ has affected people’s opinions, so we surveyed a sample of 2,000 people to find out what they thought was contributing most to rising household energy bills – and to ask what policies consumers are willing (or otherwise) to pay for.

Asked what they think is the main reason for the increases in consumer gas and electricity prices over the last 12 months, just under half – 48 per cent –  put the blame at the door of energy companies. This result is consistent with a recent poll commissioned  – but not published – by the Sunday Times last October. In that poll, 58 per cent said energy company profits were the biggest contributor to higher energy bills.

Why -have -bills -risen

Question: What do you think is the main reason for the increases in consumer gas and electricity prices over the last 12 months? 

The second most common reason people cited was a rise in wholesale gas prices – 16 per cent said this was the most important reason why bills are going up. Wholesale gas costs contributed £390 to the average gas bill of £830 according to Ofgem’s figures for this month.

Meanwhile, seven per cent of respondents put the hike down to rising inflation, and another seven per cent blamed increased government taxes to help fund investment in renewable energy such as wind turbines.

What would you pay for green policies?

We also wanted to examine the extent to which people felt the government should prioritise spending on policies focused on cutting carbon emissions, and initiatives aimed at increasing the UK’s energy security.

The polling found a fairly even split between people who would pay more for climate change policies and those who would prefer not to.

40 per cent of respondents said the government should continue to invest in new energy sources for the foreseeable future, to help slow down climate change, even if this means energy prices rising. Meanwhile, 45 per cent said that in difficult economic times, we should be using the cheapest energy sources we can, even if they are less likely to prevent climate change.

Cheap -energy -vs -climate -action

Question: Which of the following statements regarding energy sources do you agree with most? 

Conservative voters appeared to be the most likely to support using the cheapest source of fuel: 52 per cent said they supported the cheapest fuels even if they are less likely to prevent climate change – versus 38 per cent of Conservative voters who said they would be willing to pay more for fuels that would help slow down climate change.

40 per cent of Labour voters said they’d pay more, in contrast to 49 per cent who said we should stick to the cheapest fuel source. Lib Dems were most likely to support investment in low carbon energy, even if it led to higher costs; 32 per cent said the government should choose the cheapest fuel source.

Energy security

If the question was about maintaining energy security rather than addressing climate change slightly more people appeared to be willing to pay more. 47 per cent of respondents agreed that the government should invest in new energy sources for the foreseeable future, to help reduce reliance on importing foreign fuel, even if this means energy prices rising.

In contrast, 39 per cent said the UK should use the cheapest sources of fuel, even if it means the country is more reliant on fuel imports.

Cheap -energy -vs -energy -imports

Question: Which of the following statements regarding energy sources do you agree with most? 

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Climate policy or economic recovery? Polling shows people want both, and favour investment in green industries

Posted in Climate Sock on March 28th, 2013 by Leo – Comments Off on Climate policy or economic recovery? Polling shows people want both, and favour investment in green industries

This is the first blog on the results of Carbon Brief’s energy and climate change poll. The article was written by Ros Donald and Christian Hunt of Carbon Brief, and the original is posted here.

When asked whether the government should invest money in climate change or economic growth, the largest group of respondents said they would prefer that it treated both as a priority, according to new polling.

Polling by Opinium for Carbon Brief suggests that the majority of people believe it is possible for the government to promote economic growth and tackle climate change at the same time. 41 per cent of those asked believed there was no contradiction between the two.

That’s compared to 19 per cent who believe the government should invest money into preventing climate change, even if this means a slower economic recovery. However 31 per cent said the government should be doing everything it can to promote economic growth, even if it means tackling climate change is a lower priority.

Economic -growth -vs -climate -action

Question: Which of the following statements regarding climate change do you agree with most?

Green growth

The polling also asked people where the government should be investing to promote economic growth, to test how they felt about so-called green industries – like building wind turbines and installing energy efficiency measures.

57 per cent said the government should invest more in green industries. This compares with 30 per cent who said these industries aren’t sufficiently developed to warrant government investment, and the government should focus on non-green industries.

Green -industry -vs -nongreen

Question: Thinking about ‘green’ industries, (such as the building of wind turbines or the installation of loft insulation), and the current level of investment the UK government is committing, which of the following statements do you agree with most?

It’s clear that political outlook makes a difference to how people answer this question. 45 per cent of Conservative voters said they want to see more investment in green industries, compared to 63 per cent of Labour and 68 per cent of Lib Dem voters.

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The best energy and climate change poll ever

Posted in Climate Sock on March 28th, 2013 by Leo – Comments Off on The best energy and climate change poll ever

The great thing about reporting other people’s polls is there’s always something to complain about.  The question order is biasing the responses, the weighting’s gone wrong, the answer choices don’t make sense.

So I was a bit nervous when Carbon Brief asked me to help them design a poll on energy and climate change. Who would I make snide remarks about when I saw the results?

But there was too much still to find out about what the country makes of climate change: I was never going to say no.

The results are fascinating. To go along with them, this is a brief explanation of why we set up the poll as we did and what we were hoping to find out. The full questionnaire is here.

The question order

A good poll questionnaire takes the shape of a funnel: you start from the general and get more specific.  The aim is to avoid asking anything that influences the result of later questions. For example if you want to find out how much people really care about the UK’s EU membership,  you should ask about which issues, out of any, they consider most important before you say anything about Brussels.

But sometimes you hit a problem, when you have two questions that both need to come before the ‘reveal’.

In this poll, we wanted to ask about aviation and about energy. Do people think about airport expansion in the context of climate change? Do they think about energy prices in the context of wind farms? Since both are climate change-related, neither could be fairly asked once we’d got people thinking about the environment.

Our solution: put aviation first and the energy questions in a separate poll.

Do you believe in climate change? Again?

It’s the most predictable question on the planet. But there are three reasons why it made sense to include it.

Firstly, the question has been asked in dozens of different ways. A simple three-way split (caused by humans / natural / not changing) is my favourite as it doesn’t over-complicate matters for respondents or for people understanding the results. It also allowed us to compare with previous results.

Secondly, a poll in the ‘90s found much greater concern about ‘global warming’ than about ‘climate change’. Is that still true? So we split the sample in half and showed different questions to each half. The results are surprising.

Finally, I’ve spotted before that there are lots of people who say they don’t believe in climate change but still say they want action to stop it. Can we replicate that here?  Again, an interesting result.

We also asked about how people thought the British climate is likely to change and who is trusted to give information about climate change.

Climate change or economic recovery?

The political battle about climate change is no longer whether it exists and whether we should take action to stop it. It’s now about whether taking action will require economic sacrifices, and if so, whether those sacrifices are worth making.

Campaigners, like Friends of the Earth, have been arguing that green industries are already creating jobs, and should get more support from the government.

We tested whether people believe tackling climate change should take a lower priority than promoting growth, and whether they take seriously the idea of a green recovery.

Over the next few days, Carbon Brief is publishing the full results, along with several blogs on different aspects of it (which I’ll cross-post here). I’ll be publishing a second blog next week, comparing Carbon Brief’s results to other polls on climate change. In the meantime, I’ll go back to worrying about whether we got the question order right.

The Observer is wrong: climate change denial is not becoming entrenched

Posted in Climate Sock on January 14th, 2013 by Leo – 6 Comments

I’ll begin with two questions:

What proportion of Americans say there is solid evidence that the earth is warming?

Is it: a) one quarter; b) one third; c) a half; or d) two thirds.

What has happened to that figure over the last four years?

Has it: a) fallen every year; b) stayed about the same; c) risen every year.

Judging by most conversations I have and the coverage of public views about climate change, most people would guess the answer is low and falling.

But here’s the answer, taken from the Pew Research Center’s annual polls: two thirds and rising.

Agreement in the US that the earth is warming is now higher than it’s been at any time since 2008. The research was conducted before Hurricane Sandy, so is probably higher now.

Sure, still only about half say it’s because of human activities – though that has also increased by a quarter over the last three years.

The debate about public views of climate change has changed in the US over the last few months. A number of polls in the autumn showed that the public is becoming more worried – and this was covered in the media.

But the UK lags behind. This week’s Observer included a powerful editorial, restating the evidence about current and future impacts of climate change. But it spoiled it with the line: “climate change denial is becoming entrenched in the UK, or … our media have become complacent about the issue, or both.”

Everyone I speak to about climate change seems to think this. But, purely in terms of public opinion about climate change, I can’t find any evidence to support it.

In fact, as I showed last year, concern about climate change in the UK is certainly not falling, and is probably increasing.

The polling is less extensive than it is in America, but I don’t know of a single poll that shows that the UK public are currently becoming more sceptical about climate change. The general pattern is instead that there was a one-off increase in doubts around late ’09 , which has been followed by a recovery over the years since then.

This set of YouGov polls is fairly typical:

Again, lots of people still express doubts about climate change*. But the trend is of scepticism falling, not of it increasing.

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Despite Hurricane Sandy, arguments about climate change will continue

Posted in Climate Sock, U.S. on November 3rd, 2012 by Leo – Comments Off on Despite Hurricane Sandy, arguments about climate change will continue

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, it would be surprising if opinion polls, particularly in the US, don’t show an increase in concerns about climate change. But it would be a mistake for those worried about climate change to expect that increasingly frequent extreme weather like this will settle the case in public opinion for taking action.

The relationship between disastrous weather and worries about climate change has been clearly demonstrated. In November 2000, when much of Britain flooded after the then wettest autumn on record, the storm was linked to climate change. Concern about the environment subsequently spiked in MORI’s issues index.

In 2011, a paper in Nature Climate Change demonstrated that those who have personal experience of flooding are more likely to be concerned about climate change:

The paper also showed that those who had experienced flooding saw climate change as less uncertain, and felt more confident that their actions would have an effect on climate change.

So we might think that any doubts about the likelihood and impact of climate change will very soon be blown away by the increasing frequency of storms like Sandy, and other events like heatwaves and droughts.

It’s a plausible – though grim – argument, yet I think it’s problematic on two levels.

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How DECC is wasting money on its new opinion poll

Posted in Bad polling, Climate Sock on September 9th, 2012 by Leo – 2 Comments

The Department of Energy and Climate Change has started a new tracking poll on public attitudes to a few of their issues. The first wave was out earlier this year (details and results here), and wave 2 should be out soon.

It won’t be much of a surprise that I’m generally in favour of polling. It’s important that people in government (and others with power) should know what the public think about the policies they’re making decisions about, and well-conducted opinion polls are a way of finding this out. They equalise the volume of everyone’s voices so that each opinion counts the same: media mogul or not (of course it doesn’t deal with how those opinions are formed).

DECC’s poll is on an important topic, conducted not to create headlines but so the government can better understand what the public think, so I should be in favour. But I’m increasingly of the view that it’s been badly put together and is costing too much public money.

Confusing questions

The first issue is the quality of the questions. For brevity I’m just going to focus on the two climate change questions, though there are also others I could make the same argument about.

One of the questions asks: “How concerned, if at all, are you about current climate change, sometimes referred to as ‘global warming’?”.

The problem is that word ‘current’. I think it’s intended to distinguish 20th/21st Century climate change from historical climate change: the ice ages and so on.

But when I first read the question, I understood it to mean the climate change we’re experiencing in 2012, as opposed to what we’re going to experience in 20 years’ time. Since I’m only a little concerned about the climate change we’re experiencing in 2012, I would answer the question accordingly.

I don’t know whether others would understand the question as I did, or whether they would think ‘current’ is referring to 20th/21st Century climate change. Given that, I have no idea how to interpret the results of the question, and no-one else can know either.

The other climate change question asks: “Thinking about the causes of climate change, which, if any, of the following best describes your opinion?”, which all seems fine to me.  But then the answer choices are:

  1. Climate change is entirely caused by natural processes
  2. Climate change is mainly caused by natural processes
  3. Climate change is partly caused by natural processes and partly caused by human activity
  4. Climate change is mainly caused by human activity
  5. Climate change is entirely caused by human activity
  6. I don’t think there is such a thing as climate change.
  7. Don’t know
  8. No opinion

What on earth is choice 3 supposed to be doing? If I think that climate change is mainly human but could also be a bit natural, I could pick either choice 3 or choice 4. Someone who thought it was mostly natural but a bit human could pick choice 2 or choice 3. Given these different interpretations, it’s hard to know what the data mean.

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Climate change opinion is now up to pre-Climategate levels

Posted in Climate Sock, Climategate on July 1st, 2012 by Leo – 10 Comments

Over a short period at the start of 2010, belief that climate change is real and manmade fell sharply. Since then, it recovered slightly but had remained lower than it was at the end of 2009.

But now three polls have shown that the decline has been fully reversed.

The fall in agreement with climate science was widely covered at the time. A BBC poll in February ‘10 was typical of the shift and reporting:

This fall in agreement with climate science followed ‘Climategate’, the Copenhagen Conference, and a particularly cold winter. Individually, none of these are good explanations for the fall – see here  – and I think the most likely explanation is that they together prompted a change in media tone about climate change, which then affected public attitudes.

Since then we’ve seen some evidence that concern about climate change has been increasing again. But these new polls are the first to indicate that level of belief that climate change is real and manmade has returned to where it was at the end of 2009 (note the distinction between ‘concern’ and ‘belief’: both matter, but while it’s symbolically important we shouldn’t get too hung up on ‘belief’).

Each poll asks the question in different ways:

The Guardian/ICM poll found that the proportion that thinks climate change is real and manmade is the same now as it was in December ‘09 (and credit to them for including a link to the data in the article – still unusual).

Although Dec ’09 was after ‘Climategate’ broke, it was before public opinion changed, so this is a good ‘before’ and ‘after’ comparison.

The Guardian’s analysis is that the poll shows that the economic climate has had little impact on public attitudes to global warming. I disagree with this for two reasons.

Firstly, the Guardian didn’t ask the question between Dec ’09 and June ’12, so didn’t pick up concern falling and then coming back up.

Secondly, other polls have showed that the recession took attention away from everything non-economic, including climate change.

So from this poll it looks like we’ve overcome some doubts about climate change. But to say there’s been “a remarkable pattern of stability in acceptance of climate change as established fact” isn’t likely.

The second poll, by the Sunday Times/YouGov, finds a similar pattern. Agreement that climate change is real and manmade has increased over the last two years:

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Despite the Rio+20 silence, sustainability is still a priority

Posted in Climate Sock, International on June 24th, 2012 by Leo – 2 Comments

The Rio+20 conference on sustainable development has come and gone with barely a flicker of interest in most of the UK. Other than the seriously environmentally attentive, few people will have noticed anything going on. The Prime Minister certainly doesn’t look to have suffered for his decision to stay away to focus on the Eurozone crisis.

But though it was predictable, it wasn’t inevitable that Rio would be so ignored in the UK.

It’s of course the case that the environment is a lower immediate priority for most people than the economy is. The latest Mori issues index shows just 3% identifying green problems as among the main issues facing Britain – compared with 58% choosing the economy (worth remembering that that 42% didn’t choose that either).

So by choosing not to go to Rio, Cameron was probably playing it safe. Most people were never going to notice or particularly mind.

It’s a further step in the logic that had George Osborne say last year “we are not going to save the planet by shutting down our steel mills, aluminium smelters and paper manufacturers”. Barely more than half government MPs now think that the Coalition is living up to Cameron’s pledge that it would be the “the greenest government ever”:

But despite all that, public opinion was actually quite receptive to the UK playing a major part in the negotiations at Rio.

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