International polls and Internet search engines show that a wave of climate scepticism is sweeping the world on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit.

The global credit crunch, a cold northern hemisphere winter, and now Climategate are combining to convince people around the world that climate change is not the major concern that it once was.

In the United States, recent research conducted by Washington’s Pew Research Centre showed a 14 percent plunge in the number of people who thought there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures compared to just 18 months ago. At the same time, the number of Americans blaming rising temperatures on human activity has dropped from 47 percent cent to 36 percent.

Meanwhile, the number of Australians who believe they should spend a significant amount of money addressing the problem has dropped below 50 percent, falling 20 percentage points compared to 2006. According to the Lowy Institute, global warming is now only the seventh most pressing issue for Australians, dropping from equal first place only two years ago.

A poll conducted by The Times newspaper found that fewer than half of Britons believe that human activity is to blame for global warming. Only 41 percent accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made.

In Europe, the number of residents who see climate change as the world’s gravest problem has dropped 12 percent since the spring of 2008.

An international study has mirrored this trend, finding  that concern over climate change has dropped by 8 percentage points, from 42% to 34%.

Alarmingly for those hoping for action at Copenhagen, all of these polls occurred before the leaking of emails from climate scientists allegedly showed questionable practices among leading climate scientists. Remarkably, the term “climategate” now surpasses“global warming” in terms of the number of results on Google, while google trends also demonstrate a huge increase in Internet searches for terms such as “climate change hoax” and “climate change fraud”.