Climate Change Ignorance

[foxbat]

The impact of global warming is underestimated by the general public, according to a new study. 

Only a quarter of people correctly identified that all 20 of the world’s hottest years on record had occurred in the last 22 years when questioned by market research .

Members of the public also underestimated how much plastic waste has ended up in the environment, suggesting on average that just under half (49 per cent) of the 6.3 billion tonnes of the material created globally has ended up in landfill or as litter.
The true figure is 79 per cent.

Only a third of the public correctly think that the population sizes of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles in the world has fallen by 60 per cent since 1970, which is the estimate made by conservation organisations WWF and ZSL.
Half of people thought wildlife populations had fallen by 25 per cent in that time.

Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London and author of The Perils of Perception: Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything which is being published in paperback, said:
 “It is vital to understand public misperceptions about climate change and the natural environment