We created an opinion survey in order to have a better idea of the perception of GMOs and methane by the public.
The survey was available for anyone online and has been filled out approximately 250 times.
It is important to mention that the majority of responses come from Hungary and almost 30% of
the interviewees are under 18.
Among these people 13% never heard about the expression "genetic engineering", but almost 30% said they know a lot about it.
The abridgment GMO was unknown for 21% of the respondents, 46% have heard about it but only know little,
and 32% claim to know a lot about them.
When asked, the interviewees said they were mostly informed about GMOs in school/university (60%)
and the internet (66%). Surprisingly only 19% marked television as the information source.
The approach of these sources were positive most of times, 42% to be exact, and only 18% said it was negative.
We were curious to find out what uses of GMOs would people support.
The results clearly show that medicine and
energy production is more supported than genetically modified food or chemical production.
The 80% agrees that global warming is caused by human activities while 15% are not sure
and 5% think it is a conspiracy theory. Those who agree usually (68%) also agree with the
use of GMOs which reduce the greenhouse effect.
It is widely known that, besides carbon dioxide and other gases, methane is also responsible for global warming.
But what percentage is methane's direct contribution to the greenhouse effect and what percentage of methane is
produced by Human-related sources?
In average the interviewees said that Human-related sources produce 55%, while this number is around 66%.
They estimated methane's direct contribution to the greenhouse effect around 50%, which is actually way above
the truth which is approximately 10%.
Methane can even cause accidents, mostly explosions yet 31% said they never even heard of any accidents caused
by methane.
Our last question was that "Where can methane produced by organisms be useful?".
