One in six UK adults still doubt human links to climate change

Overall, the study presents a 74% consensus from Europeans that climate change is primarily a man-made phenomenon. The Italians and Irish were firmest in this belief, at 82% and 81% respectively.

Despite the fact that, thankfully, the vast majority of participants recognised humanity’s ecological impacts, the study concluded that the UK public in particular underestimates how strongly science agrees on the link between our activities and climate change.

Regrettably for those people, this is where individual opinion gets eclipsed by irrefutable fact. NASA states that 97% of climate scientists globally agree that humans are causing marked temperature shifts within our atmosphere.

In the last decade particularly, global events for climate change mitigation – and more so intensifying protests and activist efforts – generally have made people more ecologically conscious of what we do, eat, and buy. Nonetheless, reports such as these show that we haven’t quite reached complete parity.

For Bobby Duffy, one of the report’s authors and a professor of public policy, the primary concern is that a lack of unanimity on climate change ‘could chip away at public support for policies to bring emissions down.’

Fortunately, that doesn’t appear to be a realistic prospect in the foreseeable future.

This study is in line with Meta and Yale’s recent findings on the same subject. Both suggest the majority of people believe that climate change is ‘mostly caused by human activities’ or at least ‘caused equally by human activities and natural changes.’

I guess the only way to prove the naysayers wrong, is by slashing emissions and showing the results. Like we really needed more motivation.