AFP / Antonio Scorza

According to the latest poll by British  market research company Ipsos Mori, there has been a sharp decline in public  conviction that climate change is a threat, writes the Guardian,

the proportion of adults who believe climate change is "definitely" a reality dropped by 30% over the last year, from 44% to 31%.

Same goes for the American public, where poll after poll over the last months has shown that less and less people believe that climate change is a serious problem - or, if so, that it is manmade. According to the latest Rasmussen report on US public opinion,

47% think long-term planetary trends are mostly to blame, down three points from the previous survey in January. Eight percent say there is some other reason, and 10% aren't sure. (...) Belief that human activity is the primary cause of global warming has declined significantly. In April 2008, the numbers were nearly the mirror image of the current numbers. At that time, 47% blamed human activity and only 34% named long term planetary trends as the reason for climate change.

Reasons? All this comes after months of controversy about leaked emails from climate researchers and allegations of manipulating data. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had to admit mistakes in their estimate that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035 (they are melting nonetheless, but slower than the IPCC has written in their 2007 report). And the human tendency ignore problems that are too slowly developing to really  comprehend  and require too much change from us.

Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The Guardian and the  Independent both report today that a new study by the Global Carbon Project , led by Professor Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey, has found that there has been a 29 per cent increase in global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel between 2000 and 2008. This, writes the Independent,

means an annual increase in emissions of just over 3 per cent over the period, compared with an annual increase of 1 per cent between 1990 and 2000. Almost all of the increase this decade occurred after 2000 and resulted from the boom in the Chinese economy.

And it means a far higher increas in global temperatures than predicted by the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast just two years ago. The study argues that we could be on course for a 6C rise in temperatures by 2100. If in doubt about the implications of such a rise, i.e. the combustion of the rainforests, the acidification of the oceans and the consequences of irreversable tipping points, I suggest you read Mark Lynas' book "Six Degrees. Our Future on a Hotter Planet", a detailed description of a truely apocalyptic future.

Yet there are still people around who do not accept the human factor in climate change. Thomas Friedman, the voice of choice for mainstream liberal America, rebukes these incorrigible deniers in his column in the New York Times today - from a purely American perspective and for pure self-interest ( and, yes, there could be worse reasons for campaigning for a change of America's energy policy).

So, as I said, you don't believe in global warming? You’re wrong, but I'll let you enjoy it until your beach house gets washed away. But if you also don't believe the world is getting more crowded with more aspiring Americans — and that ignoring that will play to the strength of our worst enemies, while responding to it with clean energy will play to the strength of our best technologies — then you’re willfully blind, and you're hurting America’s future to boot.

And the world's, I might add.

Christopher Furlong / Getty Images