Concern about climate change shrinks globally as threat grows

[sinanda777]

Concerns about climate change shrank across the world last year, a survey shows, with fewer than half those questioned believing it posed a “very serious threat” to their countries in the next 20 years.

Only 20 per cent of people in China, the world’s biggest polluter, said they believed climate change was a very serious threat, down 3 percentage points from the previous poll in 2019, the Gallup World Risk Poll showed on Wednesday. Globally, the figure fell by 1.5 percentage points to 48.7 per cent in 2021, it said.

The Covid-19 pandemic and concerns about more immediate issues such as health and livelihoods may partly explain the drop, the survey, based on over 125,000 interviews in 121 countries, showed.

Climate change awareness in 2021 rose slightly in the United States, the second biggest global polluter, to 51.5 per cent, it added.

Regions with the highest ecological threats are on average the least concerned about climate change, with only 27.4 per cent of the Middle East and North Africa and 39.1 per cent of South Asian respondents concerned about the risks.

The findings come ahead of the COP27 global climate talks when countries meet in Egypt in November.

But despite the shrinking concern, the ecological bill of climate change is growing globally.

A study by the Institute for Economics and Peace of 228 countries and territories found that 750 million people globally are now affected by undernourishment and climate change as well as rising inflation, and Russia’s war in Ukraine will exacerbate food insecurity in the future.

More than 1.4 billion people in 83 countries face extreme “water stress”, where over 20 per cent of the population do not have access to clean drinking water, the study showed.

Several European countries are expected to experience critical clean water shortages by 2040, including Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal, the report found, which will also hit most of the sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa.

Annually, air pollution has cost the world US$8.1 trillion (S$11.5 trillion), or 6.1 per cent of global gross domestic product, causing between 6 million and 9 million deaths, the study showed, adding that the average global cost of natural disasters reached US$200 billion annually, four times higher than in the 1980s. 온라인카지노

“Negotiators at COP27 need to consider the ways in which climate change is exacerbating the impacts of ecological threats ... and how the international community can mitigate them,” said Mr Steve Killelea, founder of the institute that is based in Sydney.

[Die_empty]

   
Concern about climate change shrinks globally as threat grows

The world is more concerned currently with inflation, high cost of gas/power and employment. Climate change that has been the number one concern of most European nations is gradually becoming a secondary concern. Europe is desperately in need of alternative source of power and less concerned have been given to the environmental effect or consequences of their choice. Burning of coal and firewood are now the new normal because these commodities are now in high demand in Europe. Except the price of oil and gas normalizing, there might be less care for the environment for a long time. 

[BADecker]

The funny thing is, there might be a nuclear war. I wouldn't blame people if they forgot about climate change in the face of a nuclear war. But, ironically, a nuclear war is one of the few dramatic and dynamic things that people can do to affect climate change. All-out nuclear war would bring on ice-age type of global cooling... by sending so much dust and smoke and ash into the atmosphere that the sun's rays couldn't penetrate the cloud, to warm the earth.

[GloryBeryle]

I never believe that people seriously care about climate change. It is just a political and/or economic movement caused by climate. Take Europe as an example, I guess Europians care about the climate change most and they are against any pollution as a whole. Well, in the past six months, especially since the Ukraine War broke out this year, why would European countries are becoming quite now ? Because of the Russia's natural gas cut-off, most European coutries are in desperate need of energy in winter. The high prices of energy supply have gone crazy and they are thinking about buring coals or other traditioinal ways to stay warm. So what about climate change ? What about CO2 emissions ?  Be wise.

[Kavelj22]

In fact, I do not think that there is a real interest in climate change, whether it is on the part of governments and states or on the part of peoples, with the exception of non-governmental organizations and associations active in the environmental field. The scientific community has been warning about climate change since the nineties of the last century, and people did not realize the importance of this until the emergence of Covid in 2020 and its spread as a pandemic.

Even the so-called World Climate Conference and the Global Climate Agreement were steps that were taken to reduce risks and work on programs that concern the health of the planet, but no one is committed to their outcomes, as there are no clauses in the agreement that oblige the signatories to comply.

[worldofcoins]

Yes, every country is concerned about climate change, but to be honest, no one is taking any serious steps and precautions against the same. We can see a bunch of media talks and meetings for climate change, but on a serious note, nothing is being done for the same. So I think the world needs to be practical rather than just talkative.

[Gyfts]

I was looking at the Gallup world risk poll and couldn't find the numbers on climate change, it seems odd to me that less people care about it now than they did in the past. The climate change alarmism has picked up steam over the last decade, maybe folks have had enough.

A study by the Institute for Economics and Peace of 228 countries and territories found that 750 million people globally are now affected by undernourishment and climate change as well as rising inflation, and Russia’s war in Ukraine will exacerbate food insecurity in the future.

Okay, but these are independent issues. Undernourishment isn't a climate change issue and inflation isn't either. You don't tackle any of these problems by outlawing oil/gas/nuclear and forcing people to pay higher energy costs under the guise of climate change activism.

[BADecker]

I never believe that people seriously care about climate change. It is just a political and/or economic movement caused by climate. Take Europe as an example, I guess Europians care about the climate change most and they are against any pollution as a whole. Well, in the past six months, especially since the Ukraine War broke out this year, why would European countries are becoming quite now ? Because of the Russia's natural gas cut-off, most European coutries are in desperate need of energy in winter. The high prices of energy supply have gone crazy and they are thinking about buring coals or other traditioinal ways to stay warm. So what about climate change ? What about CO2 emissions ?  Be wise.

It's CO2 emissions that help plants grow. The best green houses pump in CO2 to get healthier, greener plants. With the wold population soaring, we need more CO2 to grow more plants to feed more people and the animals the people eat.

The problem is populated areas. People need to spread out rather than live in big cities, so that there is no local pollution problem any longer.


MIT study: Earth can regulate, stabilize its own temperature

A study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has found that the Earth is capable of regulating and stabilizing its temperature across vast timescales and even after dramatic changes in climate.

The Nov. 16 study published in Science Advances elaborated on the planet’s “stabilizing feedback system,” which has allowed the existence of diverse life-forms for the past 3.7 billion years or so. While this feedback has been assumed before, the study now serves as primary evidence for the existence of this system.

“You have a planet whose climate was subjected to so many dramatic external changes,” said MIT climate scientist and study co-author Constantin Arnscheidt. “Why did life survive all this time? One argument is that we need some sort of stabilizing mechanism to keep temperatures suitable for life. But it’s never been demonstrated from data that such a mechanism has consistently controlled Earth’s climate.”

To prove this argument, Arnscheidt and his co-author Daniel Rothman investigated existing paleoclimate data collected over the last 66 million years. They applied mathematical modeling to determine whether swings in Earth’s average temperatures might be limited by one or more factors.

The MIT researchers believe that silicate weathering is a critical mechanism in how the Earth regulates its temperature. As silicate rocks endure and corrode over time, deeper layers of mineral are constantly exposed to the atmosphere. Chemical reactions with the silicates extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and trap it in rock and ocean sediment.

Higher rates of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere build up weathering activity, growing the volume of exposed silicates that, in turn, takes out more of the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, preventing future weathering.

As expected, the timescales of the temperature stabilizations correspond to the timescales that silicate weathering works, which is up to about 400,000 years. The evidence left by fossils and ice cores indicate that this weathering is actually keeping temperatures in check.

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