Sure the planet may be warming up, but it’s not our fault say a majority of Britons.

Less than half of the general public in the U.K. thinks that climate change or global warming is caused by man-made activities. That’s the word according to a survey in London’s The Times newspaper.

The Times reports that only 41% of the British public believes that it’s a scientific fact that global warming has been caused by human activity. Other findings:

• 32% believe that the link between human activity and global warming is still unproven
• 15% don’t believe the planet is warming up, and
• 8% say that it’s “environmentalist propaganda” to blame global warming on human activity.

Driving Britons’ rising disbelieve is the prospect of a new round of green taxes intended to drive up the cost of using fossil fuels to make clean and renewable energy more competitive. The new taxes are coming because the U.K. has agreed to legally binding agreements to cut its carbon emissions by 34% by 2020 and by 80% by 2050.

The U.S. has yet to agree to any mandatory cuts, though Congress is considering bills that call for 20% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.

The U.K.’s energy secretary dismisses the poll because “the overwhelming body of scientific information is stacked up against the [global warming] deniers and shows us that climate change is man-made and is happening now.” Political leaders in London admit they have more work to do to convince the public that the threat is real.

Meanwhile, The Times also reports that if climate change does lead to the catastrophe that many predict, the changes could happen in just a few months. It only took six months for the world to plunge into a deep freeze during the last major ice age 12,800 years ago, according to geological professor William Patterson with Canada’s University of Saskatchewan.

Tags: climate change, global warming deniers, greenhouse gas, ice age