More Durban PR ramp-up, this time from GMU, recycling old news and old claims.
Widespread Public Misperception about Scientific Agreement on Global Warming Undermines Climate Policy Support
FAIRFAX, Va.-People who believe there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about global warming tend to be less certain that global warming is happening and less supportive of climate policy, researchers at George Mason, San Diego State, and Yale Universities report in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
A recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois found near unanimous agreement among climate scientists that human-caused global warming is happening.
This new George Mason University study, however, using results from a national survey of the American public, finds that many Americans believe that most climate scientists actually disagree about the subject.
In the national survey conducted in June 2010, two-thirds of respondents said they either believed there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening (45 percent), that most scientists think it is not happening (5 percent), or that they did not know enough to say (16 percent.) These respondents were less likely to support climate change policies and to view climate change as a lower priority.
By contrast, survey respondents who correctly understood that there is widespread agreement about global warming among scientists were themselves more certain that it is happening, and were more supportive of climate policies.
“Misunderstanding the extent of scientific agreement about climate change is important because it undermines people’s certainty that climate change is happening, which in turn reduces their conviction that America should find ways to deal with the problem,” says Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.
Maibach argues that a campaign should be mounted to correct this misperception. “It is no accident that so many Americans misunderstand the widespread scientific agreement about human-caused climate change. A well-financed disinformation campaign deliberately created a myth about there being lack of agreement. The climate science community should take all reasonable measures to put this myth to rest.”
About George Mason University
George Mason University is an innovative, entrepreneurial institution with global distinction in a range of academic fields. Located in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., Mason provides students access to diverse cultural experiences and the most sought-after internships and employers in the country. Mason offers strong undergraduate and graduate degree programs in engineering and information technology, organizational psychology, health care and visual and performing arts. With Mason professors conducting groundbreaking research in areas such as climate change, public policy and the biosciences, George Mason University is a leading example of the modern, public university. George Mason University-Where Innovation Is Tradition.
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Media Contact: Tara Laskowski, tlaskows@gmu.edu 703-993-8815
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I’ll let Lawrence Solomon speak to the issue of the “…recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois “.
Deceitful claim: 97% of climate scientists think humans contribute to global warming
by Lawrence Solomon December 30, 2010 – 2:35 pm
Original Link:
How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? Pundits and the press tell us so. And how do the pundits and the press know? Until recently, they typically pointed to the number 2500 – that’s the number of scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those 2500, the pundits and the press believed, had endorsed the IPCC position. [1]
To their embarrassment, most of the pundits and press discovered that they were mistaken – those 2500 scientists hadn’t endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions, they had merely reviewed some part or other of the IPCC’s mammoth studies. To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently.
The upshot? The punditry looked for and recently found an alternate number to tout — “97% of the world’s climate scientists” accept the consensus, articles in the Washington Post and elsewhere have begun to claim.
This number will prove a new embarrassment to the pundits and press who use it. The number stems from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers – in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.
The two researchers started by altogether excluding from their survey the thousands of scientists most likely to think that the Sun, or planetary movements, might have something to do with climate on Earth – out were the solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists and astronomers. That left the 10,257 scientists in disciplines like geology, oceanography, paleontology, and geochemistry that were somehow deemed more worthy of being included in the consensus. The two researchers also decided that scientific accomplishment should not be a factor in who could answer – those surveyed were determined by their place of employment (an academic or a governmental institution). Neither was academic qualification a factor – about 1,000 of those surveyed did not have a PhD, some didn’t even have a master’s diploma.
To encourage a high participation among these remaining disciplines, the two researchers decided on a quickie survey that would take less than two minutes to complete, and would be done online, saving the respondents the hassle of mailing a reply. Nevertheless, most didn’t consider the quickie survey worthy of response –just 3146, or 30.7%, answered the two questions on the survey:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
The questions were actually non-questions. From my discussions with literally hundreds of skeptical scientists over the past few years, I know of none who claims that the planet hasn’t warmed since the 1700s, and almost none who think that humans haven’t contributed in some way to the recent warming – quite apart from carbon dioxide emissions, few would doubt that the creation of cities and the clearing of forests for agricultural lands have affected the climate. When pressed for a figure, global warming skeptics might say that human are responsible for 10% or 15% of the warming; some skeptics place the upper bound of man’s contribution at 35%. The skeptics only deny that humans played a dominant role in Earth’s warming.
Surprisingly, just 90% of those who responded to the first question believed that temperatures had risen – I would have expected a figure closer to 100%, since Earth was in the Little Ice Age in the centuries immediately preceding 1800. But perhaps some of the responders interpreted the question to include the past 1000 years, when Earth was in the Medieval Warm Period, generally thought to be warmer than today.
As for the second question, 82% of the earth scientists replied that that human activity had significantly contributed to the warming. Here the vagueness of the question comes into play. Since skeptics believe that human activity been a contributing factor, their answer would have turned on whether they consider a 10% or 15% or 35% increase to be a significant contributing factor. Some would, some wouldn’t.
In any case, the two researchers must have feared that an 82% figure would fall short of a convincing consensus – almost one in five wasn’t blaming humans for global warming — so they looked for subsets that would yield a higher percentage. They found it – almost — in those whose recent published peer-reviewed research fell primarily in the climate change field. But the percentage still fell short of the researchers’ ideal. So they made another cut, allowing only the research conducted by those earth scientists who identified themselves as climate scientists.
Once all these cuts were made, 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown qualifications were left endorsing the global warming orthodoxy. The two researchers were then satisfied with their findings [2]. Are you?
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and the author of The Deniers.
—
[1] http://www.probeinternational.org/ipcc-flyer-low%5B1%5D.pdf
[2] http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/012009_Doran_final1.pdf
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lies, damn lies and statistics !!!
reminds me of all the “more doctors” commercials in the 40’s and 50’s…..
Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication
Who is paying for this guy’s salary at this center?
A recent survey of professional Psychics revealed that 97% feel they provide valuable service for their customers too.
[Using multiple screen names violate site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
97% of 77 people who identified themselves as climate scientists in an online survey agree…
It’s happening, OK? But the anthropogenic part? Puhleeeeze. Tell me, without the toxic stochastism, how you can tell what the cause is, or to what degree you can distinguish the human component. Until then please be quiet with all the wastage and repetition.
Love the phrase “correctly understood”
Churning out the BS for Durban – as the great meeting of the AGW cult grows ever closer, the unfounded hysteria from the grant-addicted will grow and grow.
I believe in climate change. I believe that humans are causing climate change. I believe that humans are causing the climate to warm.
Unfortunately for the GMU claims, I also believe that humans are not at fault for any amount that the climate is changing that makes any measurable or functional difference. I also don’t believe that we have been able to adequately measure what the real human signature of the “warming” is. I also believe that the amount of climate change caused by humans is so far overshadowed by natural variability as to be almost not worthy of discussion.
It is worthy of discussion, and further scientific study, but not political policy, and certainly not increased taxes. It is worthy because we do not know.
75 scientists should be used as a 97% quantifier for the purposes of selling hamburgers, not public policy.
Just a reminder
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-100-150-100.htm
So, what percentage of the original 10,257 are true believers in the AGW scam ?
I think that survey was well before 2009.
Every person who reads this should email Tara Laskowski, tlaskows@gmu.edu and ask her if she really wants George Mason University associated with this egregiously biased and purposely misleading pseudo-scientific report. This report and its deceptions deserve wide-spread exposure of the tawdry methods used to promote AGW.
I can only think that Edward Maibach, Director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason, sees his funding and perhaps his position, disappearing along with AGW as the truth becomes known.
So the Global Warming Petition signed by more than 31,000 American scientists doesn’t exist, then.
Doner Gone Galt says:
November 21, 2011 at 10:32 am
A recent survey of professional Psychics revealed that 97% feel they provide valuable service for their customers too.
———————————————————————————
Yes but did the Psychics “predict” that outcome, or did they merely model it?
I find the oft repeated lie that climate sceptics have a huge, well funded propaganda machine and that this is the reason that the general public is not convinced quite interesting. Not only is this not true but it is the precise opposite of true. In the UK we have constant warmist propaganda from the BBC. They are funded by a kind of extortion racket and despite having a charter stating that they provide balanced reporting have a policy in place that excludes AGW sceptics from being heard. On commercial radio we have constant advertisements urging us all to “Act on CO2” by buying a green car, defrosting our freezer and buying low energy lightbulbs.
Interesting also is that the actual reason that people don’t believe the 97% consensus among scientists figure is that it isn’t true. Much like climate alarmism in general then.
I think that people’s everyday experiences must play a part in their scepticism. As I understand it, global temperatures have been more or less level over the past decade. In my little corner of the world, England, just north of the Humber, it has become significantly colder. During the late nineties we had baking hot summers and snow free winters and I was having to mow my lawn all year round because the winters were so mild. The last three winters have been relatively hard, the spring of 2010 was so cold that none of my veggies grew and last winter we had snow two feet deep. I have seen snow deeper than that caused by drifting but I have never seen it that deep due to just the sheer volume of it. I can now imagine people from colder climes laughing at what the English describe as a hard winter but I’m OK with that.
I’ll see their 77 scientists, and raise them 31,000 scientists, who all co-signed the following statement:
CO2 is harmless and beneficial. No one has been able to falsify that testable hypothesis.
“Maibach argues that a campaign should be mounted to correct this . . .”
Sounds that they have a pressing need to launch a propaganda scheme to get the ignorant masses in line with those who “correctly understood.”
Did you notice the oh so subtle switch in nomenclature near the top of the article from what they were asking scientist about:
“global warming”
to later the morph to:
“human-caused climate change”.
Nothing more than snake-oil salesmen calling themselves scientists.
Nothing new to see. Move along.
I was of the opinion that the GMU results – the 97% consensus finding – was dead on arrival. On first reading that a online survey had uncovered 97% of scientists believed in the CAGW orthodoxy, I thought it was the work of Greenpeace, not of an academic institution.
On learning of the widespread abuses carried out in assembling these figures, and the amount of derision heaped upon it in the blogs, I thought that was the end of it. A farcical piece of nonsense had been exposed for the propaganda that it was, and that was the end of the matter. Never did I think in my worst nightmares that there were people who actually believed these results represented reality.
Yet not only do such people exist, but they are the people shaping our destiny.
They know time is running out on the great eon of socialist spending and debt run up. Push for a mandate for Obama to act before he gets torched so it can be put into a 2,000 page law and locked in–see ObamaCare if there are any questions.
“A recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois found near unanimous agreement among climate scientists that human-caused global warming is happening.”
Why is this result unexpected?
For climate scientists, belief in global warming = climate ca$h. Radical belief in global warming = more climate ca$h. Insane, Jim Hansen – style belief in global warming = climate ca$h + “rock star” status from the progressives and MSM + millions in “prizes” from left wing funded eco groups and speaking fees.
There’s a lot of room for misinterpretation in these surveys. When people are asked if they believe “global warming is happening” they may answer No, not because they don’t believe the world is warming, but because they are aware that “global warming” is commonly used as a shorthand term for either manmade global warming or catastrophic manmade global warming. Similarly, if they’re asked about the degree of disagreement among climate scientists about GW, they may answer that they think it’s significant, because they think correctly that there is significant disagreement about the prospect of catastrophic manmade global warming (for which “GW” is a shorthand term).
Please do. Then the climate science community will have nailed its colors to the mast, so that when the warm turns they’ll be pilloried as an eternal laughingstock–to the point where the name of the field will have to be changed to avoid snickers.
Its like saying 9 out of ten people who believe CAGW is real believe CAGW is real? Its a poll Jim but not as we know it.
It stinks of desperation, it looks like a BBC poll and they are the worlds foremost authority on rigged and faked polls, I do believe they could do a poll that would place Hitler as more respected than Mother Theresa.