Climate denial: less popular than abolishing the monarchy

I said in my previous post that talking about climate denial is a mistake for campaigners, for various reasons, including that doubts about climate science are far less widespread than usually seems to be imagined.

Without wanting to labour the point, a new international Pew poll has just shown this again. The poll listed various possible global threats, and for each asked whether respondents consider them to be major or minor threats, or not to be threats.

For UK perceptions of climate change, the poll found the biggest group to be those who consider it a major threat (about half), followed by those who say it’s a minor threat (about a third), with only a small group saying it’s not a threat:

That 13% is about the same as the proportion in the Carbon Brief poll who said “climate change will probably never be a serious problem”.

To put this in perspective, about 18% want Britain to become a republic. So the view that climate change isn’t a threat is significantly less widespread than the desire to abolish the monarchy. From the way rejection of climate science is treated as a major phenomenon, you might not have guessed.

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