Leaked email scandal means climate doubters outweigh rest

PUBLIC confidence in the science of climate change is diminishing.

PUBLIC confidence in the science of climate change is diminishing, with a recent British survey finding the climate change email scandal has prompted a greater proportion of people to doubt that human activity contributes to global warming.

The poll, conducted for the BBC, revealed 34 per cent of respondents thought global warming was an established fact, down from 50 per cent in November.

And one quarter of people thought climate change was not happening at all, up from 15 per cent over the same period.

The poll was conducted by British market research company Populus, which compared results from a new BBC phone survey to a study undertaken for The Times newspaper in November, prior to the release of leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climactic Research Unit.

Populus managing director Michael Simmonds said it was unusual to see such a dramatic shift in opinion in such a short period.

"The British public are sceptical about man's contribution to climate change -- and becoming more so," Mr Simmonds said.

"More people are now doubters than firm believers."

Emails leaked in November revealed CRU head Phil Jones urged colleagues to destroy climate data so it couldn't be accessed under a Freedom of Information request. Another email appeared to suggest using a "trick" to massage years of temperature data to "hide the decline".

Amid the continuing fallout, Professor Jones revealed yesterday he was so traumatised by the global backlash against him he had contemplated suicide.

"I am just a scientist. I have no training in PR or dealing with crises," Professor Jones told London's The Sunday Times newspaper.

"People said I should go and kill myself . . . they were coming from all over the world."

The revelations came as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change faced renewed criticism over errors in its landmark 2007 report.

The prediction that rain-fed north African crop production would be slashed by up to 50 per cent by 2020 as a result of global warming has been undermined after Chris Field, lead author of the IPCC's climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times he could find nothing in the report to support the claim.