Climate Sock

A couple of months ago, EDF Energy put out a poll by YouGov which appeared to show that resistance to new nuclear power stations has decreased. Now, the new Understanding Risk/MORI poll covers much of the same ground about nuclear power, and shows some similar and interesting results.

Between them, the polls shed some light both on where the public stand in terms of different power options, and on the impact of arguments that make nuclear seem more attractive.

Interestingly, the Understanding Risk poll largely validates the results from EDF’s poll. While the latter may have been paid for by a company with something of an interest in a pro-nuclear result, the question structure didn’t seem particularly stacked to produce a result they wanted – and largely matched the results from Understanding Risk.

The polls are useful for understanding public attitudes towards nuclear power in two ways: they indicate how people regard nuclear at the moment, and they also help show the impact of arguments for nuclear power.

At a basic level, nuclear power is currently pretty much the least popular form of power generation in the UK. When asked favourability towards different sources, it comes in at the bottom of the pile – around the same place as both coal and gas.

Similarly, there is strong local opposition to the construction of new nuclear power stations. While three in four claim they would support wind farms being built within five miles of their home, only a quarter say the same about a new nuclear station.

However, the polls also show that this opposition is relatively soft. The arguments for nuclear power can change these attitudes quite strongly.

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Two years ago last month, Defra released their report on the UK population’s attitudes and responses to climate change. It’s a detailed analysis that separates the country into seven different groups, defined by what they think about climate change, and what they’d be likely to do about it.

It’s exactly the kind of tool that climate campaigners need, to understand better how different people feel about climate change and low-carbon behaviours. Yet it doesn’t seem to have made tidal waves beyond government circles.

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A few months ago, the pro-aviation campaign group, Flying Matters, released results from their poll of voters in marginal seats, showing strong opposition to the then-forthcoming increase in Airline Passenger Duty.

An industry poll showing that people don’t like taxes imposed on their industry isn’t particularly interesting. It’s not unusual either: aviation is an area where almost all the polling seems to be pretty unconvincing, with questionnaires structured to lead respondents to answer a particular way. In fact, I’m yet to see only one interesting and credible finding in the various reported polls.

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HSBC have recently released the third wave of their Climate Confidence Monitor, part of their sustainability programme. The research is an annual tracker of attitudes towards climate change in 12 countries, covering a spread of developed and emerging states.

While the research isn’t particularly ambitious, it pulls out some interesting findings about the role of the individual and of government in tackling climate change. And it suggests that there may be something worrying building in the way people are seeing climate change and the responsibility for dealing with it. read more »

I was frustratingly far from an Internet connection when I heard the news that a Times/Populus poll had found that only 41% of Britons think that global warming is man-made. Clearly I’d missed something dramatic that had brought about such a radical change in how people see climate change (and this was before any UEA emails came out).

Bear in mind that the sort of numbers we’re used to seeing on this question are between 80-90% thinking that climate change/global warming is at least partly man-made (see for example MORI’s Tipping Point report). A drop of this magnitude sounded pretty fishy to me. So was it a shonky poll, or had opinions really changed that much? read more »

Coverage of the recent report by IPPR on public attitudes to climate change gets short shrift from Tim Holmes on Climate Safety. The issue is that while the IPPR report is based on research entirely among a specific sub-group of the population – selected for having a certain outlook – the IPPR’s press around the report represented the findings as applying to the general population.

This spin was repeated in media coverage of the report. In an Ecologist article (reproduced in the Guardian) headlined “Public bored by climate change, says IPPR”, the opening sentence, “the general public are resentful, cynical and resigned when it comes to the issue of climate change, according to an IPPR report” is an outright misrepresentation of the research. read more »