Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Some surprising figures

According to the CSIRO, there are actually more Liberal voters who think climate change is natural than National Party voters:


That's odd - I would have guessed the percentages between those two parties would be reversed.  Maybe being on the land does help convince people climate change is real?   Or maybe not - I see that 18% of Nationals think it isn't happening at all, compared to 13% of Liberals.

But I'm not sure this should be taken too much to heart.  First, the weather people experience affects how they think about climate change, so level of concern fluctuates all the time.  And as the report notes, people's responses don't always make sense:
The CSIRO survey found some confusion among respondents. For instance, even those who thought global warming was not happening still attributed just over a third of climate change to human activity.
Those who thought there was no climate change counted friends and family as their most trusted source of information on the issue. University scientists were the most trusted source of respondents saying humans are to blame for global warming.
"Politicians were also rarely nominated as a basis for opinions, despite the strong associations that opinions had with voting behaviour," the report noted. "This aligns with recent research suggesting politicians and political parties might be more influential than [people] think."
Still, there's no doubt about it:  on the major scientific and political issue of the century, Green voters are by far the most sensible in recognizing the problem, followed by Labor.  And it would seem about half of the Liberals and Nationals are caught up in the culture/ideology war that prevents them making sensible judgement about this.  Sad.

No comments: