But for climate campaigners, activists and anyone who wants better action on climate change, what should be done with this opportunity? I believe it would be a mistake to use the coverage of the report to try to score points in the same arguments that have dominated over the last few years. Instead, there are other approaches that could reach a wider audience, move the debate past recurring arguments, and perhaps create a basis for more useful action on climate change.

We need to stop talking about climate denial

The problem, as I see it, is that much of the debate about climate change is dominated by whether or not it’s happening, how quickly it will happen, and the meta-debate about why ‘so many people’ don’t agree with the vast majority of climate scientists. One reason this is a problem was explained by US Republican pollster Frank Luntz: he recognised the goal for opponents of government action on climate change should be “to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate”. So long as the debate is about the science of climate change – most people only hear that there is a debate, not what each side is saying – people aren’t talking about what to do about it.

But you might respond: how can we ask people to agree to action on climate change when they don’t believe it’s happening or caused by humans? It’s a logical question. But the polling shows that it’s a mistake to assume there’s a logical chain of reasoning. In fact, the debate about belief in climate change is based on two misconceptions: that people are widely and increasingly sceptical about climate change, and that their desire for action to tackle climate change depends on the extent to which they think it’s happening.

Because of these misconceptions, I think that the debate about whether or not climate change is happening is a distraction for people who care about climate change, and that we should change the subject.

The evidence is pretty clear that agreement with climate science is high and stable and that doubts about it are not increasing. The following chart is typical in showing that the same proportion now believes that climate change is real and manmade as did so before the UEA email hack. Most people think it’s real and manmade and a third think it’s real but natural; barely one person in 20 thinks it’s a fraud.

There are a couple of exceptions to this. Globescan found that environmental concerns fell this year, though that runs counter to every other poll I’ve seen. Agreement with climate science also fell before the start of the chart above, after a peak sometime around 2006 and the Stern Report.

But more important than what’s happening to those numbers is what the numbers mean. The polls suggest that what people say about their belief in climate change doesn’t have much to do with whether they want action to tackle it.

It’s such an important point I’m going to show two separate charts to demonstrate it. Firstly, a poll just after Copenhagen showed that most people who said they think climate change is natural, or not happening at all, were satisfied with a plan to reduce worldwide emissions. To put it another way, over three in five ‘climate sceptics’ want international action to tackle climate change:

Just in case that was a freak or a mistake, we tested it again in the recent Carbon Brief poll. The conclusion was similar: of those who say climate change is natural and not caused by humans, nearly half want government action to tackle it.

So the evidence is clear. Outright climate denial is low and not increasing. Most people think climate change is real and manmade. And of those who think it’s natural or not happening, many still want government action to tackle it: a logical disconnect that suggests the debate about belief in climate change has been taken more seriously than it deserves. As Chris Rose has pointed out, responses to questions about belief in climate change are often about something else – a declaration of which ‘side’ the respondent is on. It’s not a debate that climate campaigners can win in its own terms.

The question is, if not scientists’ confidence about anthropogenic climate change, what should campaigners and communicators talk about?

Stick them with the pointy end

There are two key arguments that I believe are crucial for improving the case for better action on climate change – but which I don’t see being made at the moment. The first is that climate change is very likely to hurt people in the UK: people alive now and their children. Not just through indirect effects like more expensive food and foreign political instability, but also directly, through flooding and killer heatwaves.

There are people who’ll suffer more from climate change than Brits: people living on flood plains in Bangladesh, in low-lying islands, and in the Sahel, for example. And many wonderful species will become extinct when their habitat changes. Almost everyone is sad to hear about that and agrees that someone should do something. A few internationalists and conservationists might even do something themselves.

But nothing mobilises people like something that directly affects them and their family.

The pointy end of climate change – that the UK is very likely to face more floods and more killer heatwaves – is still largely absent from the debate. It shouldn’t be. The 2003 heatwave killed 2,000 people in the UK; it is likely that summers like that will be the norm by the end of this century. But only 34% in the Carbon Brief poll recognised that climate change is likely to cause more UK summer heatwaves.

If the UK debate about climate change is to become a better basis for action, it needs to be made personal. Instead of talking about far-off people and animals, there should be much more talk about what climate change means for people in the UK.

This should include a ban among climate campaigners on references to global degrees of warming in conversations with anyone except climate change experts. The thought of the UK becoming 3° warmer sounds quite nice to me. You have to be familiar with the subject to understand what 3° means in practice: much wider variations in temperature and rainfall, with flooding and some summer days that are unbearably hot (yes, in the UK).

Essentially, what I suggest is that climate campaigners follow the example of this road safety film. Don’t just make the message about our responsibility to others, make it about what will happen to us if we don’t put it right:

We’re all in this together

The other argument that’s still missing is the one tackling the view that we shouldn’t make sacrifices for climate change because it would disadvantage us against other countries that aren’t doing the same, particularly China. It usually follows the structure: “why should we do X when China will just build Y power stations in the next week/month/year?”.

In the past, the best response to this argument was that we couldn’t persuade other countries to make sacrifices unless we showed that we were doing so ourselves – and since developed countries had been causing global warming for so much longer it made sense that we acted first.

But now the argument is much easier to rebut. It’s not true that rapidly growing countries like China are leaving the hard work on climate change to developed countries. China may be the world’s biggest emitter (though per person its emissions are still lower than the EU’s when including international transport and/or emissions from production of exported goods), but even as it industrialises it’s now using trading schemes to make it more expensive for its businesses to emit greenhouse gases.

So it shouldn’t be hard to knock back the argument that taking action on climate change puts us at a global disadvantage – and that’s before we start talking about the potential economic benefits of investing in low-carbon industries.

Change the subject

The debate about climate change has stagnated over the last three and a half years, stuck on belief in climate science. But that debate is based both on a dubious claim that scepticism is increasing and on the understandable but misplaced assumption that there’s a logical connection between belief in climate change and desire for action to tackle it.

The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report will be an opportunity for people who want action on climate change to get it back into the news and to start talking about something that feels meaningful for most people*. Partly this means neutralising the out-of-date criticism that it’s pointless for the UK to make sacrifices to reduce climate change when other countries aren’t doing the same.

But more important is to make the case that tackling climate change is a matter of self-interest for British people. This means recognising that most people are, naturally, more interested in what happens to themselves and their family than what happens to far-off people. The projected impacts of climate change for the UK – floods and killer heatwaves – are themselves serious enough to justify action: it’s time to start talking about them.

—

* The timing of the report’s publication is unhelpful for this because the first part to be published will be the report on  the physical science basis rather than those covering regional impacts or efforts to stop climate change. But that doesn’t stop climate campaigners using the opportunity to move the debate onto more useful territory.

Some of what I wrote was focused on how Labour was doing 18 months after the last election (pretty well, compared with past Oppositions). But I also looked at how to interpret Labour’s poll score two years before the next election, which means May 2013 (see below for the key chart).

To quote myself:

“Two years before an election, an opposition usually needs to be ahead by at least 12 points… In the last two years before the election, the gap between the parties has fallen by a factor of about three… So by May 2013, Labour should have a double-digit lead over the Tories if it is to be confident of winning the election”

Of the last 10 polls on UK Polling Report, seven give Labour a double-digit lead; the other three a lead of 4-8pts.

So on the face of it, the model points to an electoral tie between Labour and the Tories – which would probably mean Labour being the largest party but just short of a majority.

But there are a couple of reasons why you shouldn’t take this too seriously.

1) The model only claims to be able to predict 40% of the result of the next election. It accepts that other factors will be more important than current polls – a point made by John Rentoul in his comment on my analysis. That said, the other regression model – 18 months after the 2010 election – had better predictive power (0.59) and suggested Labour was on course for a 2pt lead, which is close to what the current model predicts.

2) The analysis mostly used polls when there were effectively only two major parties. This may make the model even less useful now. All the post-’92 election results have been better for the Opposition than the models predicted – perhaps the Lib Dems provided a home for people who in mid-term polls supported the Opposition, and in earlier elections might have then ended up voting for the Government. I don’t know what effect UKIP will have that isn’t factored into current polls, but if they’re still around they’ll be likely to similarly disrupt the model.

So, as the chart shows, Opposition leads two years before an election, especially those in the region of 10pts, are not particularly meaningful. Oppositions have had smaller leads and won; they’ve had bigger leads and lost.

If we’re to take anything from the two models, it’s that they suggest the election is looking close – but that the results depend more on what happens over the next 24 months than on how people currently say they’ll vote.

There’s been some speculation about why the polls changed. Was it because Thatcher’s death reminded a bunch of people that they loved the Tories after all; because the welfare debate hurt Labour; because Tony Blair was nasty about Ed Miliband in the New Statesman; or was it the belated unwinding of the gains that Labour made in 2012?

The reason the question of why it happened is important* is that some changes are only temporary – usually when there’s been an external news story or a well-received political setpiece. But politics news that says something new and fundamental about one party can produce a more lasting realignment. This is what happened after the omnishambles budget – and it’s what some are saying is happening to Labour with the welfare debate (in a bad way).

Firstly, on the headline numbers, there was a drop in Labour’s lead between the 12^th and 15^th April. Excluding a couple of outliers**, Labour went from 11.4 ahead in the YouGov*** polls before that weekend to 7.5 in the polls since then.  While Lib Dem and UKIP scores haven’t changed much, the Tories have gone up a couple of points and Labour have fallen about the same amount:

The detail of who has switched might give us a clue about why things have changed.

For the Tories, the main change has been a regain of people who voted Tory in 2010 but had previously planned not to do so again: up nearly 3pts on two weeks ago. If those are Tory loyalists coming home, perhaps memories of Thatcher got their blood pumping – or maybe (and this seems more believable to me) the tougher stance on welfare has reminded them why they voted Tory in the first place:

But Labour’s numbers suggest something different.  As you’d expect from the table above, 2010 Tory voters have moved away from Labour a bit, but the bigger fall has been from 2010 Lib Dem voters.  They’ve fallen 2.4 points – more than half of whom have gone to UKIP:

So the Tories have regained some of their old supporters and Labour have lost some of the 2010 Lib Dems they gained in late 2010 and early 2012.

The timing of the change fits in better with Thatcher’s death (8^th April) than with the welfare debate (start of April). It also fits in perfectly with Blair’s article (11^th April), but much though I love the Staggers, I don’t think the interest even that article attracted went much beyond political enthusiasts.

Certainly the Thatcher coverage and Cameron’s response to it could have shored up Tory support among their loyalists, so that explanation fits. But it’s hard to see how it could have sent Labour-supporting former Lib Dem voters over to UKIP.

They seem more like people looking for opposition to the status quo, but who now feel like Labour isn’t able to deliver that.  Perhaps it was the recent extra coverage UKIP are getting for the local election campaign, which reminded protest voters of another outlet and which led them to switch****.

If those two explanations are right (Tory regains because of Thatcher and Labour losses to UKIP because of coverage for the local elections) we’re looking at temporary factors, not the basis of fundamental changes in how the parties are seen. It suggests that once Thatcher’s funeral fades as a memory and UKIP fall out of the news (as they will) the numbers will drift back to where they were.

But that may not be right. The welfare debate could be behind the changes after all. Timing isn’t always so neat: it wasn’t until nearly a month after the omnishambles budget that Labour’s lead over the Tories was regularly in double figures. Even though the peak of the welfare debate was a few weeks ago, we may only be seeing its impact on the polls now – and if it is hurting Labour’s vote that would be an impact that won’t fade so quickly.

How could you tell? If the numbers revert quickly, it’s probably more to do with Thatcher and the local elections than the welfare debate. If you wanted to know right now though, you might like to ask the voters what they think: find a bunch of people who voted Lib Dem in 2010 and are now undecided between Labour and UKIP (probably other parties too) and ask them what political news they care about. You could do the same with some people who voted Tory in 2010 and are now wavering.

Either way, what this has shown is that the parties’ scores aren’t set in stone. Labour’s lead had been unusually consistent since last spring, but the last couple of weeks have shown that it can fall, even if the reasons aren’t always obvious.

* If you’re sad enough to care about political polling.

** Yes, this is cherrypicking the data. But there were only a couple of outliers and while it’s a bit dubious for the headline figures it makes sense for the next part of the calculation and means I’m using the same polls throughout.

*** Others are also showing a drop but there haven’t really been enough polls with anyone else to do the same comparison. Opinium shows a drop of about the same size, but don’t provide figures for 2010 vote.

**** UKIP’s overall score has stayed level, but within that, there’s been a drop of 2010 Tory voters (who’ve gone back to the Tories) and an increase in 2010 Labour and 2010 Lib Dem voters.

Are scientists, communicators and policymakers too preoccupied about whether people ‘believe’ in human-caused climate change or not? Polling by Carbon Brief shows that while people may not be sure whether humans are warming the planet, the majority still wants action now to abate climate change.

According to polling carried out for Carbon Brief by Opinium, 89 per cent of respondents said they believe climate change is happening. Only six  per cent said they did not believe the climate is changing.

But opinion was divided when it came to what’s causing climate change. The majority – 56 per cent – said humans are causing the warming, but a significant number – around 33 per cent – believe it’s mostly down to natural causes.

Question: Which of the following statements do you agree with most? Climate change is happening and is mostly caused by humans; Climate change is happening and is mostly caused by natural processes; Climate change is not happening.

How significant is this? We found that despite the confusion about what’s causing global warming, 67 per cent of respondents want action to abate emissions now. That’s compared to 13 per cent who said we don’t need to worry about doing anything now and 12 per cent who said it would never be a problem.

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

So whatever people’s beliefs about the causes of climate change, they still want us to do something about it.

Previous study

This result mirrors the outcome of  an Angus Reid poll, released just after the Copenhagen climate summit and the leak of climate scientists’ emails from the University of East Anglia in 2010. These events are widely reported in the media as being the cause of much skepticism in the public.

Yet even at this time, when ‘belief’ in climate change appears to have taken a knock, people still said they wanted action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Nearly two thirds of those who said they think climate change hadn’t been proven were still satisfied that countries had committed to reducing emissions under the Copenhagen Accord.

Climate effects

Carbon Brief also wanted to find out what people thought would happen to the weather in 10 years’ time as the climate warms.

Most people – 68 per cent – said there will be more rainfall as a result of climate change. The second-highest percentage – 46 per cent – said climate change would lead to colder winters. 36 and 34 per cent respectively said there would be hotter and drier summers and more summer heatwaves. 27 per cent said there would be warmer winters and 12 per cent said there would be less rainfall.

Perhaps these answers aren’t surprising.  They come after a particularly wet year: 2012 was the second-wettest on record, according to the UK Environment Agency. It’s also been an extremely cold winter, and doesn’t look set to get any warmer until the end of April, the Met Office has warned.

These results appear to mirror findings from a previous survey by researchers from the University of British Columbia, which suggested local weather conditions can influence people’s attitudes to climate change. Carbon Brief’s climate change questions are going to be issued once every six months, so we will be able to measure whether this finding applies to our questions, too.

Question: To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements about what is likely to happen in the next ten years as a result of climate change?

Note: Global warming vs climate change

We wanted to be sure whether the terms ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’ meant different things to people, so we split up some of our questions – with half answering questions on climate change and the other half answering on global warming. We found that there doesn’t appear to be much difference between the two in people’s minds.

83 per cent said they thought global warming is happening, with 52 per cent saying it’s mostly human-caused and 31 per cent saying it’s mostly natural. Only eight per cent said it’s not happening. 65 per cent said we should act now, 12 per cent said we don’t need to worry at the moment and 14 per cent said it would probably never be a problem.

Carbon Brief polling

Carbon Brief conducted a poll of over 2,000 people, asking questions about their attitudes to climate change and energy policy. We have released the full results today –  you can download our climate polling results here and the energy findings here.

Here are the tables this blog is based on:

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.

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.

A poll last year by press agency Associated Press tells a similar story. 67 per cent of those asked (in the USA) trust what scientists say about the environment either completely or a moderate amount.  21 per cent said they trusted scientists a little and 11 per cent said they didn’t trust them at all.

A survey by Living with Environmental Change differs from the bulk of survey data. It says 51 per cent of those asked said they trusted “independent scientists” to tell the truth about climate change – but only 38 per cent agreed that climate scientists can be trusted to do so, according to the results of a second question.

Carbon Brief polling

Carbon Brief conducted a poll of over 2,000 people, asking questions about their attitudes to climate change and energy policy. We have released the full results today –  you can download our climate polling results here and the energy findings here.

Here is the table this blog is based on (click image to enlarge):

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?

Even before the Carbon Brief poll, I was sceptical. The phrasing of the LWEC question – “we can trust climate scientists to tell us the truth” – is a very high bar. At a time when trust is low, expecting people to say they trust anyone to tell them the truth, without more reassurance, is asking a lot. I’m also not a fan of the way the trust question came after questions about exaggeration of climate change and agreement among scientists.

Add to this Mori’s trust index, which finds scientists are among the most trusted groups, and that trust in them has gone up over the last decade.

So I don’t think we should be particularly surprised that the new poll showed scientists are the most trusted to deliver information about climate change by a massive margin. The mistake was ever to doubt that they were.

Data from the polls will be published this week.

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.

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.

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.

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

Carbon Brief polling

Carbon Brief conducted a poll of over 2,000 people, asking questions about their attitudes to climate change and energy policy. We have released the full results today –  you can download our climate polling results  here [PDF] or  here [Excel] and the energy findings here [PDF] or here [Excel]. The questions are  here [PDF].

Here are the tables this blog post is based on:

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.

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

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.

]]> http://www.noiseofthecrowd.com/the-best-energy-and-climate-change-poll-ever/feed/ 0 http://www.noiseofthecrowd.com/if-i-coated-it-in-honey-would-you-eat-a-live-cockroach/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=if-i-coated-it-in-honey-would-you-eat-a-live-cockroach http://www.noiseofthecrowd.com/if-i-coated-it-in-honey-would-you-eat-a-live-cockroach/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2013 10:09:31 +0000 Leo http://www.noiseofthecrowd.com/?p=1424 Think of something you would never do. For the sake of an example, let’s call it eating a live cockroach. Now suppose I tell you I’ve done something to make it slightly less unappealing, perhaps coated it in honey. Would you be more or less likely to eat that cockroach?

This is a question type repeatedly used by pollsters. I’m going to show why they should stop using it, and why its results should generally be ignored.

Here’s an example. Last week, Survation did a poll for the Mirror on illegal drugs.* In that poll was a question on whether or not respondents had ever taken drugs, and another on what they would do if drugs were sold guaranteed to be free of contaminants.

The results demonstrate why questions of the format “what would you do if x happened” shouldn’t be taken at face value:

So 32% of people who’ve never taken drugs say they would be less likely to take drugs that were guaranteed not to be contaminated.

Read that again. It suggests that a third of people who’ve never taken drugs are currently a bit tempted to give them a try by the thought that the drugs they aren’t buying might contain a bit of rat poison.

Obviously this is complete rubbish. Almost all of that 32% are making a different point: they would never take drugs, and nothing the pollster can say would make them change their mind.

Logic might dictate that they should be more likely to take drugs if they were a bit safer. But they so strongly don’t want to take drugs, they will give the most negative answer they can regardless of what inducements they’re offered (this is similar to the Twitter response to Tom Chivers’ suggestion that liberals should be more likely to vote Tory because of the gay marriage legislation).

That was an easy one to spot, but sometimes the silliness of the result isn’t so obvious.

Take this Populus poll for the Times from last month, which asked how Cameron’s promise of an EU referendum would change likelihood to vote Tory. Apparently, 17% of UKIP voters are now less likely to vote Tory because of the referendum, compared with only 8% who are more likely.

This may be the same problem as the drugs poll: people who wouldn’t vote Tory are using the question to restate how extremely anti-Tory they are. Or perhaps there really was something about Cameron’s EU pledge that put off UKIP voters.

That’s the problem with this question type. Knowing that the results can be so misleading, it’s impossible to take them at face value, even if they could in principle make sense.**

So next time you see a question based on “what would you do if x happened”, think about that live cockroach. How much would it take for you to say anything except, “urrgghh! NO WAY”? A bit of honey probably isn’t going to stifle your disgust.

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* Until recently, I worked for a drug policy organisation. Anything I say here is entirely my own opinion etc.

** By the way, this is about when we’re trying to understand how many people would change their behaviour if something happened, eg “how many people would vote Tory if they held an EU referendum?”. The question type still works for ranking different options, eg “out of 10 possible policy pledges, which is the one that could win the Tories most support from Ukip?”. You wouldn’t get reliable numbers on how many people they’d win, but you’d be able to see which pledges are the most and least effective.