The Hague â€" As the debate on global warming steadily drifts away from whether it is real toward how it will affect our future, a new British study looks at the sources people trust to stay informed on the issue.
An online poll commissioned by the Carbon Brief, a British climate and energy news blog, found that 69 percent of respondents in the United Kingdom consider scientists the most trustworthy source on the issue (49 percent say they are ‘quite trustworthy’, while 20 percent say they are ‘very trustworthy’).
Surprisingly, environmental groups are the second-most trustworthy source (39 percent), ahead of the BBC (31 percent), friends and family (30 percent) and various other types of media, according to the poll, which was published this week.
“It might reflect who people see talking about these issues,†said Christian Hunt, the editor of Carbon Trust, in a telephone interview.
Politicians rate dead last, with only 7 percent of the poll’s respondents saying they were trustworthy on the issue.
The study is based on 2,035 online interviews conducted with U.K. residents at the end of January of this year. Roughly consistent with British opinion polls of recent years, it found that 89 percent of respondents believe climate change is real, with 56 percent of respondents saying climate change had been caused by human actions.
Join our sustainability conversation. Where do you get your information on climate change Why do you trust that source
