Morgan recently released a new poll on their global warming beliefs and CPRS approval series that they’ve been running regularly of late. These polls are phone polls with relatively small sample sizes running between the late 500’s and a 1000 or so, making the MoE’s on them max out between 3 and 5%. As a result of the small headline samples, and even smaller sub-samples on the cross-tabs, it’s worth stating that the trends in the charts below (apart from the two headline charts) are indicative only.
First up, we’ll go through public opinion on generic global warming. Morgan asks:
Which of the following is closest to your view about Global Warming?
First up, the headline result comes in like this (click to expand):
What we see is a longer term trend away from “If we don’t act now it will be too late” and a slow, incremental growth in the “Concerns are exaggerated” responses – although both appear to have stabilised over recent months. The undecideds and “It’s already too late” crowd appear to be fairly stable over the long term in their size.
We can also hit the cross-tabs and look at the responses by party vote as well as by gender and geography. First up, responses by Party Vote (ALP, Coalition, Green):
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Next, responses by gender and geography (Men, Women, Capital Cities and Non-capital cities):
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Rather than look at some of the dynamics here in isolation, like the growing partisan divide and the huge gender split, the same dymanics we see with generic global warming are also manifest in views on the CPRS legislation. The headline CPRS numbers come in:
Now the cross-tabs on party vote (ALP, Coalition, Green):
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Now by gender and geography (Men, Women, Capitals and Non-capitals)
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The really big stand outs here are the increasing partisan divide not only on the CPRS legislation – which is probably to be expected – but also in generic views about global warming. The other is the pretty significant difference between men and women on each issue – a difference well, well beyond any margin of error involved in the polling.
Capital City/Regional differences exist as well, but are larger on the CPRS than generic global warming.
There’s something in this for both sides of politics. The demographic cross-tabs must be a worry for the Coalition, putting Abbott and the LNP on the wrong side of a plurality of women voters on yet another issue, as well as being on the wrong side of metropolitan majority opinion (you cant win government without winning the cities). But it’s not all bad for Abbott - Barking in comments in the Newspoll thread made a good point that’s worth repeating:
I have nothing to base this on other than gut feeling, and I’m sure its only an element of what is going on however. The Global Warming issue is not a good one for the ALP, those who think more should be done are moving to the Greens, those blue collar ‘howards battlers’ who read Bolt will move to others, etc because they think that we shouldn’t do anything. There is a bit of a squeeze here and I’m not sure how the ALP can run it.
The CRPS headline chart certainly supports the notion.
On other matters, I’ve emptied the Idiot Bin. For those that were stuck in it, abide by the simple moderation rules of Pollytics and you’ll be fine.
UPDATE:
Adam in comments asked about age breakdowns on the questions. Since the sample sizes here are small, the results are indicative only. First up, on the generic global warming questions:
Then we have the CPRS approval responses:
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What intrigues me is the partisan nature of the CPRS debate.
The level of Labor voters approval of the CPRS has remained constant but the coalition voters approval of the CPRS has plummeted.
It makes me think there has been a switcheroo of voters. Some Anti-CPRS people have abandoned the ALP and some pro-CPRS peeople have abandoned the Libs. If this occurred in relatively equal numbers then it would explain the partisan nature of the polling.
I always thought a shift to Tony Abbott was swapping the North Sydney type seats for those in the Outer Suburbs.
I just think that the reality of what a CPRS would actually mean started to crystallise.
It’s one thing to say I’m for the planet and then quite some more to allow loss of personal liberty and see the globally anointed elitists prolong human suffering in developing nations.
My view is that there will be an inceased swing away from belief in AGW (as opposed to undefined climate change) and the CPRS as the main stream media are forced to start reporting both sides of the argument because of the coalition’s policy change. Opinion will also swing away as realisation sets in that any CPRS or similar scheme will cost money direct from taxpayers. The government has been careful to avoid stating what it will cost, only mentioning that lower earners will be overcompensated (so how will they ever get the message?) and has still failed to publish any cost benefit analysis.
Perhaps this will be a good question to put to such a poll, “Do you agree a cost benefit analysis on the CPRS should precede a parliamentary vote?”
On the whole, a pleasing trend towards skepticism. Surprising, to be honest, given the ongoing drought and the frothing-at-the-mouth fanaticism displayed by many of our leaders.
Good god, 22% of ALP supporters are against AGW? I thought it was just Crean and myself. Splendid.
Sorry to be crude JamesK, but I don’t think many people opposed to the CPRS give two shits about the human suffering in developing nations when they think about this legislation. There’s a big gulf between saying you care about the environment and being willing to change one’s lifestyle to do something about it.
I wager that opposition to the CPRS (as proposed, or in any form) is more about people wanting to drive as much as they like, blast air conditioners whenever they like, and buy energy at the cheapest possible price, than a concern about the supposed economic threat to developing nations posed by some sort of carbon trading. On that point, what does the human suffering in developing nations exacerbated by global warming do to the bleeding hearts of the anti-action brigade? If we’re that bloody concerned about the human suffering in developing nations, let’s have a carbon trading scheme, call off their debt, drop trade barriers and call it even.
The problem with the policy response to AGW has, in my view, had little to do with denialists, who are a noisy, but irrelevant side-show.
The main problem has been that politicians of all stripes have been heavily leant-upon by business-interests in private (although in Australia we are so used to a mining culture that maybe the mining interest haven’t even needed to do much leaning) with the result that nothing much of any consequence has happned in the area since the science was settled in the early 1990s.
People have noted this inactivity and have wrongly concluded that the problem is not pressing.
The tragedy is that a switch to a non-carbon economy would be comparatively easy even with currently technology and would mean very little disruption to anyone’s lives. All it would mean is that instead of the carbon-industries being the main sector of the economy, the alternative energy-generating industries would be. Why the mining sector hasn’t made the switch in the 20 years that they have had an incentive to do so is beyond me.
The really intractable environment problem is the size of humanity’s demands on the ecosystem, which would not be solved by a post-carbon economy, though this would be part of the solution.
“The tragedy is that a switch to a non-carbon economy would be comparatively easy even with currently technology and would mean very little disruption to anyone’s lives.”
Damn right, the sooner this guv’mint abandons its absurd opposition to nuclear energy, the better. I’m not being facetious, I think this makes sense even if you are a noisy, irrelevent denialist. Or a noisy, irrelevent alarmist. Abundant energy without the environmental impact of coal, without the need to clear vast tracts of land for wind turbines and without the reliance of by-products of heavy industry like solar (go look up what those panels are actually made of).
Flocci – you might find this interesting:
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/scientists-hunt-for-victorias-hot-spots-20100119-mhum.html
On the Geothermal above, I know ‘a lot’ about this. Here’s some more links to similar projects.
http://www.ga.gov.au/minerals/research/national/geothermal/index.jsp
http://www.ret.gov.au/energy/energy%20programs/cei/acre/gdp/Pages/default.aspx
Apols for the Min Press Release, but it’s the best project summary available publicly
http://minister.ret.gov.au/TheHonMartinFergusonMP/Pages/RENEWABLEENERGYDEMONSTRATIONPROGRAMFOURINNOVATIVEPROJECTSRECEIVE$235MILLION.aspx
Possum, has anyone done a break down on the views, for and against, either or both climate change and the CPRS based upon age?
I just recall that striking interview between Malcolm Turnbull and Alan Jones last year – after Jones had allowed Monkton to repeat his one world government paranoia the day before – and the apparent older demographic of the average Jones listener.
Is this demographic (white, right and retired) the one responsible for swamping Liberal in-boxes with anti-CPRS e-mails prior to the defeat of the CPRS?
Thanks Possum, very interesting. Geothermal power does seem ideal, where it is possible. I’m not sure about there claims of water generation though, perhaps I misunderstand it. When I was researching geothermal energy one thing that was considered highly problematic was that the water involved rapidly became contaminated by C02, methane, ammonia and other nasties. (these are also emitted into the atmosphere, albeit in much lower levels than you find in coal fired power plants)
There are also other environmental issues, such as subsidence and earth tremors caused by the injection process:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFM.V53F..08D
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,541296,00.html
I will have to go dig out my files on geothermal* and see how things have changed inthe last couple of years.
*Why does this sound so damned pompous?
Adam, I’ve got that data floating around – give me till tomorrow and I’ll throw a few extra charts up on it.
Evan – Oooh, ta!
bah, “pompous” is the new black Flocci!
Aha, I found a prospectus on geothermal power available from http://www.glacierpartnerscorp.com/
It gives the start up price of geothermal as $4.9 million usd per megawatt for 35mw plant, which is significant.
Part of the problem seems to be scale, most of the planned geothermal plants I’ve read about are 30-300mw*, whereas current generation nuclear reactors are up to 8000mw (the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant).
Damnit, I forgot to say, the ongoing costs of geothermal do seem to be the cheapest of all power generators. This assumes the local communities don’t get fed up with all the local tremors and demand it be shut down;)
At the risk of totally derailing the thread…..
The main concerns with geothermal in Australia are drilling costs and distance to transmission infrastructure.
The best data available, and hence where the most projects are going on is in the Cooper Basin, in SW Qld/NW SA. There were some oil tenemants leased there in the 70s and 80s so there’s a bit of heat and subsurface geology data lying around.
The key to finding geothermal resources is deep-hot granite and a layer of insulating sediment. In Australia this is often under coal deposits and between 4-5km. There are some exceptions like in Tassie and the Victorian project that recently got a GDP grant.
So, the best projects under way at the moment are in the Cooper Basin; the REDP projects in the Ferguson press release. I think they’re 50MW and 30MW but are only demonstration projects. Resource estimates put the max capacity (in their tenemants) somewhere around 3-4MW. The industry guesses that by 2050 or so there could be a few GW of capacity out there. It’s true baseload too; which is good and bad. Goes all the time, but it’s hard to switch off, just like a coal plant.
It’s a long way from the Basin to the grid. They could hook up at Port Augusta but the network there is only 11kV lines or something like that. Not enough. A better option is to travel east across Southern Qld (which is much further) but hooks up to a better connection point. To make this more viable it would be possible to build the planned big solar thermal plants along the same line.
WRT water and emissions. All plants now run as closed loop or ‘binary’ systems. Heat is extracted underground using water which then transfers to a seperate power generating loop which runs through the turbine. Thus, emissions and poisons that are dissolved in the water aren’t really a problem. There are even papers around covering radiation from dissolved fission atoms.
For any heat engine (geothermal, solar thermal, coal, nuclear) cooling is a problem. Thanks to Carnot’s law the efficiency of any heat engine is directly related to the temperature of the outlet. Most coal plants dam a near by river for just this purpose; water is a terrific way to ensure cool outlet temps. This is hard in the desert but not impossible. I’ve seen plans for an air cooled geothermal plant, but the size is ridiculous; something like a 130m concrete tower for a 50MW plant. This will remain a problem.
Hmmm.
I reckon these are your best postings on geothermal that I’ve seen Evan.
Thanks.
jamesK, in talking about lying politicians, seems to forget howards famous, there will never ever be a G.S.T., now we have Abbotts, workchoices is dead , ,gee, I think a pig just flew past my window, really,
I think global warming is not the right label for what is happening, climate change is a better description, caused in the main by overpopulation, try putting 50 people in a room with one toilet, and see the result.
Splendid post, Mr Beaver.
Hmmm. (Again)
I seem to remember Howard dare I say bravely running an election campaign on the GST.
Now that’s a level of honesty you will neever ever see from Kevin Rudd.
Thanks for your contribution brian and for presenting a gap wide enough to fly a helicopter thru’.
JamesK
It was brave in the ‘Yes Minister’ sense.
He had no choice. He couldn’t run on his record, and he’d broken virtually every promise he’d made.
The only hope he had was a Big Distraction. It worked so well he then used BDs for most of his other campaigns, as well.
Just couldn’t find one that worked in 2007.
Zoomster, Howard also had the One Nation tidal wave to deal with, which in the lead up the 98 election, no one really knew just how big it would be because One Nation voters consistently lied to pollsters about their voting intention.
Both parties knew it would be substantial, but trying to pinpoint it proved difficult. Somewhere between 8-20% was what they were all working on.
Well as Fran Kelly’s story goes zoomster………
And we all know what a paragon of independent journalism she represents
The current tactic by climate sceptics is to slide from ‘there’s no global warming’ to ‘greenhouse gases don’t cause climate change’ to ‘we may need to do something but not this CPRS, ETS or whatever’. It suits Tony Abbott’s dissembling equivocation to a tee.
Why slide from ‘there’s no global warming’ when there has been no global warming for at least a decade Kev?
(Apologies to Possum and all other co-religionists but I couldn’t possibly ignore that invite)
Just a couple of thoughts about geothermal. (and a bit of a rant)
Firstly, your water cycle depends on your particular situation. But all the projects I’ve heard about in Australia are essentially closed loop. Meaning your contaminants are more an issue from the point of view of corrosion. Nevertheless, modern materials can handle this well.
Secondly, be wary of current estimates of geothermal costs. Its very hard to find costings truly reflective of Australian conditions. One thing you must keep in mind is that unlike nuclear, where you have to achieve a certain scale in order to defray the cost of the core and all the safety systems (and in some cases, achieve a scale that is predictable and stable), geothermal scales well in relatively small units. And more importantly, your costs go down dramatically as you scale and effectively go into mass production.
The other advantage in having relatively small units (and this applies to a lot of renewables) is that once you get the first one working, you can scale up very rapidly. And its also capital friendly. Capital friendly in the sense that your returns are quicker and your risk is relatively small (compared to large nuclear and coal plants). Its actually the risk factors more than anything else that decide what gets built.
Having said this, a few dollars per Watt of capital is pretty damn good for something that will go on producing power for 3-5 decades. Likewise, wave power is a good investment – provided you get a good trade off between cost and lifetime. Finally I think, the engineers are getting real clever.
And this will get me into trouble for saying, yet again. There is nothing essentially expensive about renewables. Not if you consider the basic materials costs. The same could be said for nuclear. In theory you get the benefit of having a fairly compact core. The problem is that to make nuclear safe (just as is the case with human space flight) it takes lots of money to engineer in all the materials, systems, tests, procedures needed to do that. And a lot of labour.
I still find it galling that a lot of people go oh no we need to reduce our usage of carbon and then launch off into a “we must have nuclear”. The problem is this – nuclear is a mature technology and unlikely to get cheaper. Renewables are still being cost reduced. In 10 to 15 years from now, there will be no point to building nuclear because it just won’t have a business case.
And lets not forget that we waste a lot of energy – just pure waste. Not just really lousy inefficient air conditioners (most have a COP of about 3, but that figure could easily be 8), but because of all the sheer waste built into retail, industrial and so on. We could cut our use of electricity by a third tomorrow, with known technology, and at a price less than building any power station, renewable or otherwise.
Cud: Interesting stuff. I particularly like your analysis of the cost curves of mature nuclear vs nascent renewables.
How do you factor in the possibilities of Gen IV nukes? Are these just pipe dreams, or is there any scope for costs to come down?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor/ has some text about economic modelling, but hey, it’s the wiki – who knows how reliable the article is?
As promised, I’ve updated the post with some age breakdowns as per Adam’s request.
Would love to get Bernard Keane’s response to the latest BoM long range weather forecast.
“…Get ready for a cool three months…”
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/temps_ahead.shtml
This is particularly prescient considering his previous dire predictions on December 22 2009:
“…The perspective on climate change might look very different six long, hot weeks from now…”
Indeed it will, Bernard.
From the BoM report:
“…The national outlook for mean maximum temperatures over the late summer to mid-autumn period (February-April)…shows there is a 60 to 70% chance of cooler than normal days averaged across the season over Tasmania, Victoria, southern and western SA and the southern fringes of NSW…”
I prognosticate the public’s apathy to AGW and the ETS is based on an awakening to the overt unaccountable global climate bureaucracy that was being peddled at Nohopenhagen and the fact that the climate is not doing what the models predicted.
In an El Nino cycle no less.
Has everyone seen nasa’s latest figures on global temps? Looks like 2010 was hottest ever year in southern hemisphere.
good post here (with links through to nasa source)- http://politicalowl.blogspot.com/2010/01/warmest-year-on-record-for-southern.html
Possum- It would be interesting if you could plot a correlation between ‘against cprs’ and ‘global warming is exaggaerated’ for each demographic. I wonder if they are consistent or if some just want another climate policy (just not the CPRS).
And you also mentioned Hanson supporters lied to pollsters. Do you think that is the case with the sceptics too?
MPM@31 I don’t normally even read your posts but I accidentally did this time and am glad since your selective quoting is so easily turned from biased to balanced by giving the other half of the information you conveniently left out from the very same source you provided:
“The chance that the average February-April maximum temperature will *exceed* the long-term median maximum temperature, is between 60 and 85% northeast of a line from Derby in northern WA to Sydney”
Cooler southern average temps and hotter northern temps are actually *normal* El Nino and exactly what the models predict.
blue_green went:
That’s a mighty fine idea!
Unfortunately, we dont have enough observations to do anything meaningful with any given demographic, but we have enough observations to do things will combined demographics. I’ll get onto it forthwith!
Also, I would have thought the temperatures over the next three months will be cooler because we will be in autumn instead of summer :-d
@blue_green
2010 has already been declared the hottest year on record in the southern hemisphere! Optimistic, even by the alarmist standards we’ve come to expect from these people.
@Johnny B Good.
Thank you kindly for picking up the typo.
2009 was the hottest year on record for the Southern hemisphere.
(not 2010- that would be silly).
I will have to ask my sub-editor to be more careful next time.
All good mate.
Poss, I ended up at this site the other day:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/01/17/01_17_10_polls/
I don’t like the vertical orientation of the graph, but I do like the MOE being on every dot. It makes it so much easier to get a feel for how significant any particular dot is on the graph.
What would you think about using it on some of your graphs?
I don’t know if you think that is a good idea, or whether it is possible with your software, but if it is possible and desirable I think it would improve the graphs for people like me who don’t keep that sort of thing in our head, and don’t mentally add the MOE spread to any particular data point – and especially so if for some reason two data points are combined, giving a smaller MOE.
@Stuart Skabo
I never read your posts but this one begged a response.
The very same source shows a wetter than average outlook for the same period:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/maps/rain.national.hrweb.gif?20100119
Good news for farmers. Bad news for AGW proselytes.
Pluz explain
Gusface@42,
I must admit I was confused too…. what is she on about (or should that be ‘what is she on.’)
Possum, thanks for doing the further analysis. Whilst you acknowledge it is a small sample, which may not be directly indicative of the overall picture, it does seem to support the supposition wandering around various blogs and media outlets.
Namely that those most opposed to the very idea of climate change, and the need for action to combat it, are the older generation.
It has been simplistically defined – as I did by using terms like the “old, white right brigade” – but I wonder if there is anything further in it?
It does seem to me, very simplistically, that the older generation is probably one that relies more on traditional media outlets – like the press and talk back radio – and thus might only be reading / listening to the anti-AGW viewpoint that those outlets produce.
A sort of self-fulfilling cycle of anti-AGW perceptions, with little actual science read, heard or understood in the process.
Alan Jones blindly accepting Monkton’s ‘one world government’ patter with nary a suspicion of doubt comes to mind.
Does anyone know of any other data, polled or otherwise, to either support or disprove such an idea?
Blue_green – your requested number crunching as promised
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2010/01/20/when-climate-change-scepticism-changes-political-opinion/
Peter @29, actually I like some Gen IV nuclear designs. In particular the molten salt type has some promise. (Coolant contains the fuel). The interesting question is whether they get used on Earth, or on Mars..
Ziggy understood things well when he suggested not having one nuclear station but 30(ish). The reason for that was that without a nuclear industry in Australia (supporting industries, degree courses, etc, etc) we’d be paying through the nose to the yanks. So what he proposed was quite sensible – build up all that talent locally. Problem is, by the time you do that the game is over.
i heard yesterday that we have an Almino effect in the souther half of the country
the water in the oceans are warmer but it keep the ground temperatures down.
Perhaps you could ask the Weather Bureau to explain this one.
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