Where is that 'people's army' of climate change denialists?

Ipsos Public Affairs of Washington, DC, conducted a random digit dial telephone survey between September 8 and September 12, 2011. Live interviewers asked questions of a national probability sample of adults aged 18 and older on landlines and cell phones. Respondents had the option to be interviewed in English or Spanish. The data were weighted to ensure that the sample composition reflects the U.S. population as documented by figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. With a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate within 3 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had the entire adult population in the U.S. been polled

Interviewers were instructed to ask to speak with the youngest household member age 18 or older who was available to be interviewed. The initial request was for the youngest male during 75% of the calls and for the youngest female in the remaining 25%. If the youngest household member was unavailable, interviewers were instructed to speak with anyone else in the household who was willing to participate.

This is what this Stanford University study found:

·         82.55% of all respondents believe that the world’s temperature has been going up in the past 100 years and that belief is held by 91.42% of the Democrats, 66.45% of the Republicans and 84.16% of the Independents polled.

·         52.74% of all those polled extremely sure or very sure that the world’s temperature has been going up and a further 34.07% somewhat sure.

·         71.52% of all respondents believe that global warming is partly or mostly caused by things people do and 72.29% believe that the world’s temperature will continue to rise over the next 100 years.

·         In all three political party categories this number who believe in the world is warming has risen since the 2010 survey. However the number who believe that people contribute to global warming has fallen by 3.80% .

The only conclusion which can be drawn from this study is that the majority of the U.S. population appear to believe that the world is warming and that anthropomorphic (human induced) global warming exists.

In 2010 the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation  (CSIRO) conducted two surveys of public opinion in relation to climate change, the Baseline and the Science in Society surveys.

In the first survey:

·         82.8% of all respondents thought that climate change is happening.

·         50.4% of those polled believe that humans are largely causing climate change and 38.1% of these think that they have already experienced moderate effects of climate change

·         Participants who intended to vote for the Greens and Labor more likely to state belief in human-induced climate change and those intending to vote Liberal, National or for the Independents, more likely to state that climate change was happening due to natural variations in Earth’s temperatures.

In the second survey:

·         63% of all respondents believe that climate change is happening now and 15% believe it will happen in the next 30 years.

Which raises the question – why does the Australian media, especially News Ltd publications, persist in implying/portraying climate change denialism as the norm in Australia and around the world?