The other day I glanced at an article in The Guardian that made this rather startling claim.
Climate more urgent than economy, say voters
The Guardian 02/07/2008
This surprised me, as other polling evidence that I have seen suggests that the vast majority of the UK public are by no means convinced that human caused global warming is taking place. I’ve posted about Ipsos Mori opinion polls that show this here, here, and here.
Any suggestion that The Guardain’s startling headline had merely been the work of an overenthusiastic sub-editor in a hurry was dispelled by the first paragraph of the article.
Voters think that taking action against climate change matters more than tackling the global economic downturn, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. The results, which will delight green campaigners, suggest that support for environmental action is not collapsing as feared in the face of possible recession.
At the end of the article there was a series of pie charts that seemed to bear out these claims, but again I did no more than glance at them. Knowing the enthusiasm with which The Guardian has embraced the cause of climate catastrophe, the unworthy thought crossed my mind that they might have rigged the question in order to get a predetermined answer, but only for a moment. ICM is a respectable company and The Guardian is not a down market tabloid. Instead of digging deeper I just made a mental note that there was now an opinion poll that seemed to be bucking the trend and moved on to other things.
About a week later I was involved in a discussion on the Climate Audit message board and happened to post a link to The Guarian’s article. A sharp-eyed commenter using the name ChrisWright drew my attention to a couple of things that I should have spotted.
Firstly, the captions of the all-important pie charts indicate that the questions used by ICM referred specifically to ‘the environment’ and not to climate change.
Secondly, when I returned to The Guardian article for a more careful look, I noticed that ‘Guardian/ICM poll‘ was a hot link. Clicking on it revealed what the poll questions actually were.
Q.1 Bearing in mind growing global economic problems on the one hand growing environmental problems including global warming on the other, where do you think the governments main priorities should now lie?Q.2 Generally speaking would you support or oppose the introduction of green taxes, designed to discourage things that are harmful to the environment?
Q.3 Do you think green taxes should be introduced irrespective of present economic problems or should the government delay the introduction of any green taxes, or not introduce them at all?
Q.4 Often consumers are faced with a choice between a more expensive but environmentally friendly choice, and a cheaper alternative that is not so environmentally friendly. Thinking about people you know, given the recent rise in the cost of living do you think they are now more likely to choose..? [list of options]
Climate change only gets one passing reference in the first question; the emphasis of the poll is entirely on the ‘the environment’. There is absolutely no reason to suppose that people see these two terms as being synonymous, and why would they do so? It is quite possible to be concerned about pollution or wasteful use of natural resources and still not be convinced that humans are now changing the climate.
If ICM’s questions had actually asked about climate change, do you think that the pollsters would have got the same response, or that there would have been any ‘delight’ among green campaigners at the results? I’ll leave it to you to decide whether this article – in a leading national broadsheet newspaper – is blatantly and cynically misleading, and why the editors might think that such deception is acceptable.
There’s a lot to be noted here – I’ll try to keep it short.
(1) It’s always important to take care interpreting polls where questions are prefaced (as here) by “bearing in mind”. The effect is to assume the respondent agrees with something with which he/she may not really agree. To understand how respondents really felt, there should have been earlier questions along the lines “Do you agree that (a) economic and (b) environmental problems are growing?” followed by a further question (for those who say Yes to (b)) “Do you agree that global warming is one of those growing environmental problems?” (Even better would be not to suggest anything but to ask for examples of growing environmental problems that worried them. The polls you refer to suggest few would specify global warming.) Only then could later responses be put into proper context.
(2) The first question refers to “global warming” (as an example of an environmental problem) not, as you say (and the Guardian states) to “climate change”. But you’re right: thereafter the questions refer to “the environment”. Thus someone who is unconvinced that global warming is harmful to the environment (i.e. most people according to the polls you cite) but worried, say, about air pollution could well vote Yes to Question 2.
(3) The answer to Question 3 is interesting: a small majority of people may feel (Q1) that environmental problems should be a government priority but that does not translate into supporting “green” taxes: 30% say introduce such taxes anyway compared to 31% who say they should not be introduced at all and 36% who say “not yet”. As the Guardian correctly notes that is a problem for the Government.
Robin:
Referring to your third point, I wonder to what extent people pay lip service to AGW alarmism – even in an opinion poll – because it is politically correct and fashionable to do so, but reveal their innate scepticism when asked about mitigation. Surely if you fully believe what the alarmists are saying, you must also support proposed remedial action even if it may cause relatively minor inconvenience.
I seem to remember that there was a period at the beginning of this decade when support for the Conservative Party was consistently underestimated by opinion polls when compared with actual election results. It was thought that this was because expressing sympathy for a failed and widely reviled political party was no longer socially acceptable, but this did not carry through to peoples actions when confronted with a ballot paper.
An opinion poll designed to find out if this is the case with climate change would be interesting, but I doubt whether we’ll see one for a while yet.
Tony: yes, I’m sure there is some truth in that. It is pretty well agreed by pollsters that people responding to polls tended to underplay support for the Conservative party because they were embarrassed by it. (Even today, despite Cameron’s “decontamination” of the brand, some observers think that polls may underestimate Tory support – viz recent by-elections.) However, what also interests me (I am founding chairman of an internet research company) is that it appears people may be more honest when responding on-line than they are responding to telephone or face-to-face interviews. The suggestion is that they are more relaxed when responding in their own time and, in particular, that it’s between them and their computer with no interviewer whose presence may prejudice their responses. Hence, it’s been suggested, the predictive success of YouGov as opposed to conventional pollsters.
In interpreting polling results, I think the overriding thing to consider is the precise phrasing and organisation of the questions – and to be especially wary of polls where questions are based on an assumption (as was the Guardian poll) or provide a list of possible answers to choose from. But it may also be important also to consider the polling methodology.
Robin:
If what we are both saying is true, then there may be some interesting surprises on the the political horizon. This kind of report in The Guardian is not likely to ignored by admistrators, politicians and policy wonks seek confirmation of their perception of the state of public opinion.
Perhapse it is such partisan interpretations of opinion poll findings that make the more extraordinary pronouncements of people like Patricai Hewitt possible.
Further to the above, I’ve just come across a survey (of UK and US respondents) conducted last March by YouGov about a wide range of issues. Two questions were relevant:
1. A list of 10 items (plus “not sure”) was presented to respondents. One was “Global Warming”. They were asked which 2 or 3 items were “the most important”.
In the UK, 19% picked Global Warming – 8th of the 10 items. (Taxation and Iraq were lower, and the top 3 were Immigration (60%), Crime (49%) and the Economy (31%).)
In the US, 17% picked Global Warming – 8th of the 10 items. (Crime and Personal Morality were lower, and the top 3 were the Economy (59%), Healthcare (43%) and Immigration (40%).)
2. “Turning now to the subject of climate change, do you think…”
The world is becoming warmer as a result of human activity – 55% UK / 49% US
The world is becoming warmer but NOT because of human activity – 25% UK / 19% US
The world is NOT becoming warmer – 7% UK / 18% US
Not sure – 13% UK / 14% US
What do I make of this? (First, it may be noted that YouGov conducts its polls online which (see my post 3 above) probably means its findings are more reliable.)
Taking the second question first, clearly nearly everyone thinks the world is getting warmer. However, the question is rather poorly phrased (see my comments above) and should, I think, have specified a time period – e.g, over the past 10 years or the past century. Then about half think it’s because of human activity. Again the question is rather poorly phrased: does it mean that humans caused the warming or contributed to it?
But (see the first question), whatever the correct interpretation, very few people think it matters much. Moreover, it’s clear from the other recent polls cited by Tony (above) that, had there been no predetermined list of items (which, as I point out in post 2 above tend to prompt people to say what they think they ought to believe) and respondents had simply listed what really concerned them, Global Warming would probably have come even lower.
Robin:
It would be interesting to know what percentage of the respondents think human activity has contributed to 20th century warming AND what percentage think that human activity is the cause.
This would give some indication of the extent to which the public are being mislead by the media and enviro-activists, as not even the IPCC endorses the second proposition. In fact it would be fascinating to see just how many of the myths propagated by Al Gore and others are generally accepted as facts by those who believe in AGW.
Incidentally, the indisputable fact that the rising temperature trend during the last 30 years of the 20th century has not been sustained during the last decade seems not to be getting through to the public, yet. When it does, I wonder what the effect on polls like this will be?
It’s also interesting that the questions about mitigation get very much the same response as in other polls. Whatever people may think about AGW there is no general outcry, or even tacit support, for taking any inconvenient actions in an attempt to prevent it, other than building more nuclear power stations. There must be environmentalist weeping into their compost bins at this very moment.
Good article. Totally agree with you.
Robin
Ask the right question and you’ll get the right answer (as you have stated more eloquently).
How about:
Headline: Poll shows that people feel more seriously impacted by XXXX than by YYYY.
A no-brainer.
Max
Robin
Timing is also of the essence.
Take your poll during one of the harshest cold snaps.
Max
Robin
Not to belabor a point, but location is also important.
Ask your poll question to those standing on the street in an unemployment line.
Max