(AU) Two Thirds Of Citizens Around The World Agree Climate Change Is As Serious A Crisis As Covid-19 – Ipsos Survey

Ipsos - Climate Change

Most Australians support a green economic recovery from COVID-19.

Citizens want economic recovery actions to prioritise climate change.

A new Ipsos poll conducted in 14 countries shows widespread support for government actions to prioritise climate change in the economic recovery after COVID-19 with 65% globally agreeing that this is important.

For Australia, 57% agreed climate change should be prioritised in the economic recovery actions.

Furthermore, the survey finds that 71% of adults globally agree that, in the long term, climate change is as serious a crisis as COVID-19. While the majority of Australians (59%) agree climate change is as serious a crisis as COVID-19, this is well below the global average.

The survey was conducted online among more than 28,000 adults between April 16^th and April 19^th 2020.

A second Ipsos survey commissioned for Earth Day found that while climate change remains the most important environmental issue for citizens globally, they are no more likely to say they plan to make changes to their own environmental behaviours than they were six years ago.

The second survey was carried out online among more than 20,000 adults across 29 countries between Friday, February 21^st and March 6^th 2020.

Key Australian findings include:
 

• Climate change remains the most important environmental issue to Australians. Two-in-five (42%) cited it as one of the three most important environmental issues facing the nation. This was consistent with the global trend; climate change is the number one environmental issue globally too (37% identified it as a top issue).
   
• Also of concern to Australians are dealing with the amount of waste we generate (37%); future energy sources and supplies (29%); wildlife conservation (25%); and overpopulation (24%).
   
• Globally, other environmental issues that are important to citizens are air pollution (33%) and dealing with the amount of waste we generate (32%), followed by deforestation (26%) and water pollution (25%). Concern for the top four issues has increased since two years ago.
   
• A majority of the public globally (68%) agrees that if their governments do not act now to combat climate change, they will be failing their citizens. Australians feel similarly, 65% agreed Government inaction on climate change would be failing citizens.
   
• More than half of Australians (55%) say they would be put off from voting for a political party whose policies do not take climate change seriously.
   

Comparison of this year’s findings highlight changing environmental priorities for Australians. In 2018, future energy sources and supplies was a top-three environmental concern for Australians (40% identified it as a top environmental issue, compared with 29% this year).

Climate change was the third most commonly mentioned issue for Australians in 2018 at 35%; and is the number one environmental issue this year, up by 7 points to 42%.

Of all the countries’ citizens surveyed in 2020, Australians placed the greatest concern on wildlife conservation. A quarter (25%) of Australians identify it as a top-three issue compared with an average of 15% globally.

It is likely this concern has been shaped by the loss of Australian wildlife during the bushfire crisis over summer. However, concern was also relatively high in 2018 compared with the rest of the world. In 2018, 22% of Australians selected this issue (14% globally).

Across a range of environmental behaviours, as many as two fifths globally feel they are already contributing as much as they possibly can by undertaking specific behaviours.

Australians feel they are already doing much to limit their impact on climate change including recycling (54% report they are already doing as much as they possibly can); saving energy at home (e.g. through insulation, 43% already doing as much as they possibly can); and saving water at home (40% already doing as much as they possibly can).

Australians are divided on whether the environment should have to endure some setbacks in order to help the economy to recover from the economic impacts of COVID-19.

Half (50%) agree that the Government should focus on helping the economy to recover first and foremost, even if that means taking some actions that are bad for the environment. Two-in-five (41%) disagree.

Ipsos Australia Public Affairs Director, Jennifer Brook, said: “It’s not surprising Australians feel conflicted about the potential of environmental sacrifices for economic recovery.

"In another of our monthly Ipsos Issues Monitor surveys, we have seen the environment get pushed out as the number one issue facing the nation at the start of 2020 to be replaced by healthcare, the economy and unemployment.

“These three issues have all experienced a dramatic surge in concern during the coronavirus pandemic. At the beginning of the year, it was the bushfire crisis that put the environment at the top of the list, but clearly COVID-19 is driving concern about these other issues at the moment.

“Despite the environment taking a back seat compared with other current issues, it’s still important to people. There is strong support among the public for a green economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.

"The importance of staying at home as much as possible is having major impacts on our consumption and travel patterns at present. What remains to be seen is how sticky these behaviour changes are as the economy opens up again in post-pandemic life.”

Technical notes
 

• The findings come from two surveys conducted by Ipsos on the Global Advisor online platform.
   
• One is a 14-country survey conducted April 16-19, 2020 among 28,029 adults aged 18-74 in Canada and the United States and 16-74 in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia and Spain. The sample consisted of approximately 2,000+ individuals in each of the 14 countries.
   
• The other is a 29-country survey conducted February 21 - March 6, 2020 among 20,590 adults aged 18-74 in the United States, Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Turkey and aged 16-74 in 23 other markets.
  The sample for this survey included approximately 1000+ individuals in each of Australia, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland), France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, and the U.S.; and approximately 500+ individuals in each of Argentina, Belgium, Chile, Colombia, Hungary, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey.
   
• The precision of Ipsos online polls are calculated using a credibility interval with a poll of 1,000 accurate to +/- 3.1 percentage points and of 500 accurate to +/- 4.5 percentage points. For more information on the Ipsos use of credibility intervals, please visit the Ipsos website.
   
• 17 of the 29 countries surveyed online generate nationally representative samples in their countries (Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and United States).
  Brazil, China, Chile, Colombia, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey produce a national sample that is more urban & educated, and with higher incomes than their fellow citizens. 
  We refer to these respondents as “Upper Deck Consumer Citizens”.  They are not nationally representative of their country.
   
• Weighting was employed in both surveys to balance demographics and ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult population according to the most recent country Census data, and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe.
   

Links

• Ipsos full report (ZIP) | 1MB
• Ipsos Earth Day
• Australians' environmental concerns in January 2020
• Ipsos Predictions 2020
• Understanding Australia 2019
• Australians rank their most important Sustainable Development Goals
• Are you doing anything different in your life to combat climate change?
• Saving the planet starts at home

Devastating Simulations Say Sea Ice Will Be Completely Gone In Arctic Summers By 2050

ScienceAlert - Peter Dockrill

Arctic ice changes from 1984 to 2016. Cindy Starr/NASA SVS

For millions of years, the Arctic has observed an unbroken ritual. In winter, Arctic sea ice expands, as sub-zero polar temperatures freeze waters in their place. In summer, the ice pack retreats, as warmer temperatures thaw the winter-made gains, surrendering them back to the ocean.

In the era of anthropogenic climate change, the ebb and flow of this timeless cycle has become disturbed. For decades, the overall coverage of Arctic sea ice has been in decline, expanding less and retreating more with each year. Nonetheless, the Arctic has, as always, remained frozen, covered in sea ice, even in the summer. It may not for much longer.

A new analysis of numerous climate models predicts the Arctic Ocean will become ice-free in the summer in only decades, and even before the mid-point of this century – a startling forecast that persists even in the best case scenarios, in which we manage to significantly cut down atmospheric CO2 emissions.

"If we reduce global emissions rapidly and substantially, and thus keep global warming below 2 °C relative to pre-industrial levels, Arctic sea ice will nevertheless likely disappear occasionally in summer even before 2050," says polar geophysicist Dirk Notz from the University of Hamburg in Germany.

"This really surprised us."

Sea ice area at the end of the Arctic summer in 1979, at left, versus 2019. Dirk Notz

In the new study, Notz and his team examined dozens of different climate models simulating the evolution of Arctic sea ice in the future.

The models – which come from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) – comprise some of the latest generation of global climate models, and encompass a number different hypothetical scenarios, including trajectories based on rapid reduction of future CO2 emissions, as well as largely unchanged, 'business as usual' situations.

In most of the CMIP6 simulations, the Arctic Ocean becomes practically sea‐ice free (defined to mean sea‐ice area covering an area of less than 1 million square kilometres) in summers before we reach the year 2050, and regardless of the hypothetical scenario employed.

"The CMIP6 models simulate a large spread for when Arctic sea-ice area is predicted to drop below 1 million km², such that the Arctic Ocean becomes practically sea-ice free," the authors write in their paper.

"However, the clear majority of all models, and of those models that best capture the observed evolution, project that the Arctic will become practically sea-ice free in September before the year 2050 at future anthropogenic CO2 emissions of less than 1,000 [gigatonnes of] CO2 above that of 2019 in all scenarios."

Dirk Notz

While the results are certainly shocking, the overall prediction of a soon-to-be ice-free Arctic is not. Scientists have been forecasting this outcome for years, envisaging the end of the Arctic as we know it, and speculating what this could mean for all kinds of other ecosystems.

It's also something that will amplify the global warming effects the world is currently experiencing, scientists say, as with less ice in the Arctic, less sunlight can be reflected in the region, meaning our hotter planet absorbs even more heat as the North Pole increasingly melts away.

"It's a two-way street," NASA climate scientist Claire Parkinson, who wasn't involved with the current study, explained in 2018.

"The warming means less ice is going to form and more ice is going to melt, but also, because there's less ice, less of the Sun's incident solar radiation is reflected off, and this contributes to the warming."
If there's any good news here, it's that we may still be able to lessen the frequency of these ice-free Arctic summers, if we can manage to steeply reduce our CO2 emissions.

Models and simulations can predict many things, but the only trajectory that really matters is the path we collectively decide to take.

The findings are reported in Geophysical Research Letters.

Links

• Geophysical Research Letters: Arctic Sea Ice
• The end of the Arctic as we know it
• Disappearing sea ice is changing the whole ecosystem of the Arctic Ocean
• The emergence of modern sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean
• Arctic sea ice decline
• What Do Global Climate Models Tell Us about Future Arctic Sea Ice Coverage Changes?

New Michael Moore-Backed Documentary On YouTube Reveals Massive Ecological Impacts Of Renewables

Forbes - Michael Shellenberger

Michael Moore produced "Planet of the Humans" about the eco-impacts of renewables. Getty Editorial and Jeff Gibbs, Planet of the Humans

Over the last 10 years, everyone from celebrity influencers including Elon Musk, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Al Gore, to major technology brands including Apple, have repeatedly claimed that renewables like solar panels and wind farms are less polluting than fossil fuels.

But a new documentary, “Planet of the Humans,” being released free to the public on YouTube today, the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, reveals that industrial wind farms, solar farms, biomass, and biofuels are wrecking natural environments.



“Planet of the Humans was produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore. “I assumed solar panels would last forever,” Moore told Reuters. “I didn’t know what went into the making of them.”

The film shows both abandoned industrial wind and solar farms and new ones being built — but after cutting down forests. “It suddenly dawned on me what we were looking at was a solar dead zone,” says filmmaker Jeff Gibbs, staring at a former solar farm in California. “I learned that the solar panels don’t last.”

Like many environmental documentaries, “Planet of Humans” endorses debunked Malthusian ideas that the world is running out of energy. “We have to have our ability to consume reigned in,” says a well-coiffed environmental leader. “Without some major die-off of the human population there is no turning back,” says a scientist.

In truth, humankind has never been at risk of running out of energy. There has always been enough fossil fuels to power human civilization for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years, and nuclear energy is effectively infinite.

But the apocalyptic rhetoric detracts little from the heart of the documentary, which exposes the complicity of climate activists in promoting pollution-intensive biomass and natural gas.

The film unearths a great deal of information I had never seen before. It shows Apple’s head of sustainability, former EPA head Lisa Jackson, claiming on-stage at an Apple event, “We now run Apple on 100% renewable energy,” to loud applause.

But Gibbs interviews a scientist who researched corporate renewables programs who said, “I haven’t found a single entity anywhere in the world running on 100% solar and wind alone.” The film shows a forest being cut down to build an Apple solar farm.

After Earth Day Founder Denis Hayes claims at a 2015 Earth Day concert that the event was being powered by solar, Gibbs goes behind the stage to find out the truth. “The concert is run by a diesel generation system,” the solar vendor said. “That right there could run a toaster,” said another vendor.

The film also debunks the claim made by Elon Musk that his “Gigafactory” to make batteries is powered by renewables. In fact, it is hooked up to the electric grid.

“Some solar panels are built to only last 10 years,” said a man selling materials for solar manufacturing at a corporate expo. “It’s not like you get this magic free energy. I don’t know that it’s the solution and here I am selling the materials that go in photovoltaics.”

“What powers a learning community?” said MicKibben at the unveiling of a wood-burning power plant at Middlebury College in Vermont. “As of this afternoon, the easy answer to this is wood chips. It’s incredibly beautiful to look at the bunker of wood chips. Anything that burns we can throw in there! This shows that this could happen everywhere, should happen everywhere, and must happen everywhere!”

The film reveals that McKibben and Sierra Club supported a Michigan ballot initiative that would have required the state get 25% of its electricity from renewables by 2025, and that the initiative was backed by biomass industrial interests, and that efforts to build a biomass plant at Michigan State University were hotly opposed by climate activists — including ones from 350.org.

In reality, scientists have for over a decade raised the alarm about biomass and biofuels causing rainforest destruction around the world including Brazil and Malaysia, and have documented that, when one takes into account their landscape impacts, the fuels produce significantly higher carbon emissions than oil and gas and may produce more than coal.

In 2016, McKibben wrote an article for Grist.org where he argued against burning biomass to produce electricity.

The film shows Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla telling Leslie Stahl of “60 Minutes” that his biofuels plant made “Clean green gasoline.” After Stahl asked what the downside was, Khosla said, “There is no downside.”

One year later, Khosla’s company filed for bankruptcy and defaulted on a $75 million loan it received from the state of Mississippi. It produced biofuels for $5 to $10 a gallon — “even without counting the cost of building the plant,” noted Washington Post’s Steve Mufson in 2014. Two earlier Khosla biofuel ventures had already gone bankrupt after receiving hundreds of millions of federal government subsidies. Shareholders sued Khosla’s company for fraud.

“Planet of the Humans” notes that Al Gore personally accepted fossil fuel money in 2013 when he and a co-owner sold Current TV to Al Jazeera, which is state-funded by Qatar, the gas-exporting nation whose citizens have the largest per capita carbon footprint in the world.

One year earlier, Gore had said the goal of “reducing our dependence on expensive dirty oil” was “to save the future of civilization.”

The film shows Jon Stewart, the host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” asking Gore, “You couldn’t find, for your business, a more sustainable choice?”

“What is not sustainable about it?” responded Gore.

“Because it is backed by fossil fuel money?” said Stewart.

As part of the agreement, Gore reportedly received $100 million. Climate activists weren’t bothered by it. “I don’t think the community is too upset,” a politically active environmentalist told The Washington Post about Gore’s deal with Qatar. “My personal sense is he got a good deal.”

Gore’s business partner, David Blood, “turns forests into profits,” notes Gibbs.

The main problem with biofuels—the land required—stems from their low power density. If the United States were to replace all of its gasoline with corn ethanol, it would need an area 50 percent larger than all of the current U.S. cropland.

Even the most efficient biofuels, like those made from soybeans, require 450 to 750 times more land than petroleum. The best performing biofuel, sugarcane ethanol, widely used in Brazil, requires 400 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as petroleum.

Publicly, Kennedy, McKibben, and Brune promoted solar panels as an alternative to fossil fuels. “There were days where Germany was generating 80 percent of its power from solar,” said Mckibben. In reality, wind and solar provided just 34 percent of German electricity in 2019, and Germany relies upon burning natural gas, coal, and biogas from corn.

“In the Green Century Fund, recommended by 350.org,” reports Gibbs, “I found less than one percent solar and wind and 99% things like mining, oil and gas infrastructure, a tar sands exploiter, McDonald’s, Archer Daniels... Coca-Cola… and lots of banks, including Black Rock, the largest financer of deforestation on earth.”

“The plants that we are building, the wind plants and solar plants, are gas plants,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told oil and gas investors. About another project, Ivanpah, he said, “It’s a turbine that we just take from a gas plant and suspend it from a big scaffolding, a tower and surround it with giant mirrors in the desert.”

Building the Ivanpah solar farm resulted in the deaths of hundreds of old desert tortoises. “Deserts are not dead,” said the filmmaker. “They are in fact full of ancient life.”

The film points to the massive materials requirements of renewables.

Solar panels require sixteen times more materials in the form of cement, glass, concrete, and steel than do nuclear plants, and create three hundred times more waste. “You would have been better off just burning fossil fuels in the first place,” said one expert, “instead of just playing pretend. We’re basically just being fed a lie.”

The man noted that Koch Industries provide many of the materials used to build solar panels and industrial solar farms. “The funny part is that when you criticize solar plants like this you are accused of working for the Koch brothers,” he laughs. “That’s the idiocy. This relies on the most toxic industrial processes we’ve ever created.”

What drives people who believe they want to save the environment into destroying it? The filmmaker hints that the desire for “sustainability” is really a desire for a kind of immortality. “What differentiates people is that we know we’ll die someday,” says a sociologist. “We enveloped ourselves in belief systems and worldviews.”

“People on the left and the right who think we’re going to be able to solar panel ourselves into the future,” he says, “I think that’s delusional.”

The good news, the man says, is that “once you come to terms with death, anything is possible.”

Links

• New documentary 'Inner Climate Change' focuses on effects of Climate Change and Consciousness
• Pop Culture And Climate Change
• Inner Climate Change: The Change Starts Within You (2020)
• An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
• 2040
• Ice on Fire
• Chasing Coral