When hockey stick creator Dr. Michael Mann responds to valid questions about his science by blocking the person asking the questions as well as deleting them so that others can’t see them, is it really any surprise that distrust of climate scientists is on the rise?
From Stanford University
Support for climate change action drops, Stanford poll finds
The drop was concentrated among Americans who distrust climate scientists.
By Rob Jordan (Stanford)
The study found that, overall, the majority of Americans continue to support many specific government actions to mitigate effects of global warming.
Americans’ support for government action on global warming remains high but has dropped during the past two years, according to a new survey by Stanford researchers in collaboration with Ipsos Public Affairs. Political rhetoric and cooler-than-average weather appear to have influenced the shift, but economics doesn’t appear to have played a role.
The survey directed by Jon Krosnick, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, shows that support for a range of policies intended to reduce future climate change dropped by an average of 5 percentage points per year between 2010 and 2012.
In a 2010 Stanford survey, more than three-quarters of respondents expressed support for mandating more efficient and less polluting cars, appliances, homes, offices and power plants. Nearly 90 percent of respondents favored federal tax breaks to spur companies to produce more electricity from water, wind and solar energy. On average, 72 percent of respondents supported government action on climate change in 2010. By 2012, that support had dropped to 62 percent.
The drop was concentrated among Americans who distrust climate scientists, even more so among such people who identify themselves as Republicans. Americans who do not trust climate science were especially aware of and influenced by recent shifts in world temperature, and 2011 was tied for the coolest of the last 11 years.
Krosnick pointed out that during the recent campaign, all but one Republican presidential candidate expressed doubt about global warming, and some urged no government action to address the issue. Rick Santorum described belief in climate change as a “pseudo-religion,” while Ron Paul called it a “hoax.” Mitt Romney, the apparent Republican nominee, has said, “I can tell you the right course for America with regard to energy policy is to focus on job creation and not global warming.”
The Stanford-Ipsos study found no evidence that the decline in public support for government action was concentrated among respondents who lived in states struggling the most economically.
The study found that, overall, the majority of Americans continue to support many specific government actions to mitigate global warming’s effect. However, most Americans remain opposed to consumer taxes intended to decrease public use of electricity and gasoline.
Rob Jordan is the communications writer for the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
Media Contact
Jon Krosnick, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: krosnick@stanford.edu, (650) 725-3031
Rob Jordan, communications, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: rjordan@stanford.edu, (650) 721-1881
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Here’s the survey in PDF form: http://woods.stanford.edu/docs/surveys/GW-Policy-Trend-2010-2012-1.pdf
It is a disgrace that climate scientists, and their pseudoscience, are damaging public confidence in real science.
I speak as a real scientist who totally disgusted by them!
It is almost like the mafia pretending to be good citizens but everyone knows that they are hoodlums.
I like to think skeptics had something to do with the decline in polls, but the warmists have been their own worst enemies. Their tactics have been so “bald faced” propaganda and their science declarations, so obviously misleading and devious, that the public vomited. I have been waiting for a demand for “comeuppance” for some time. GK
It is as well that trust in science is dropping. Scientists are men, not gods, and sometimes we need to be reminded of that.
When scientists are properly skeptical, the amount jof good they can do is awesome. That fact will eventually be reaffirmed.
I remain horrified that most Americans STILL believe that the foundation of life (CO2) is a pollutant and that temperatures associated with increased biodiversity need to be “mitigated.”
HMMMmmmm, I can not say I am really thrilled with their idea of a survey. It had som trickyness to it.
One question was:
This is listed as an also ran “minority view” (how good is the survey in sampling the real population?)
Another question was:
however it is reported as
Now I would call that a bit tricky, but this one is worse.
I am very much in favor of hydroelectric but not large scale wind, and solar power so how the heck do I answer that question?
And this last is fraud in my view. It is not a poll question and therefore the topic should have been left “unreported” Heck why didn’t they ask THAT question about trust first!
Why combine the democrats and independents?
Mann is losing the PR war as well as the facts.
Apart from MAYBE in the Arctic (see also soot, wind, currents, natural oscillations), what other effects? Where is the evidence? Emperor penguins double than previously thought? Polar bear numbers up since the 1950s? Antarctica? Declining rate of sea level rise? Global malaria declining? Droughtflood in Australia. UK droughflood? It’s just the climate doing its thing with very little assistance from the trace gas co2. Look to airport tarmacs and lying climate scientists for ‘evidence’ global warming.
Lady Life Grows says:
May 8, 2012 at 3:46 pm
….I remain horrified that most Americans STILL believe that the foundation of life (CO2) is a pollutant and that temperatures associated with increased biodiversity need to be “mitigated.”
_______________________
A rotten education system with no real science, math or logic taught coupled with living in cities and Dr. Spock has produced a couple generations who can not even tie their shoes.
It’s called climate change – because the climate always changes and it always has done. As for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming – it’s “just a thing of the past.” Why is it no longer mentioned as loudly as before? Answer = it’s a scam, reach for your wallets.
I know that there’s something wrong with this poll. In contrast, a reputable Pew poll showed that only 19% of Republicans believe in man-made GW: http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/01/modest-rise-in-number-saying-there-is-solid-evidence-of-global-warming/ (you need to dig in the fine print to find that 19% number).
So how can ~ 50% of Republicans support climate change action — when only 19% of Repubs believe in AGW? It’s impossible. Something about the poll is fishy. As a Republican, I can tell you, hardly any (close to zero) Repubs support action to mitigate climate change. Do others here agree with me on that?
And lets not let this be a justification for Romney to take up climate change again. Or to nominate for VP that rotund RINO climate change spouter NE Gov Chris Christie.
as some of u may know, the Melbourne Theatre Company in Australia is presenting “The Heretic” by English playwright, Richard Bean, which has a CAGW sceptic edge (Bishop Hill covered it when it played at the Royal Court Theatre in England):
9 May: Andrew Bolt: On being abused by Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics
Former Greens candidate Professor Clive Hamilton is furious:
Who would have thought the Melbourne Theatre Company would get into bed with Andrew Bolt?…
Yet in response to the MTC staging a play with the sceptic as a hero, Hamilton lets fly with a truly extraordinary stream of abuse:
…discredited … rat-bags … denier .. conspiracy theorists … fossil-fuel industry hatchet men … cyber-bullies … shit-spreaders … shock jocks … bullshit … insidious … grubbier … distortion … cowardly … artistic wanking … poison … slippery falsehoods … travesty.
Wow. You’d laugh at the hypocrisy – this very epitome of the rabid shock-jockery Hamilton imagines in his foes – if Hamilton didn’t also stoop to the most vicious smearing of the playwright:
Perhaps Richard Bean’s next project will be The Heretic 2, another “funny, provocative and heart-warming family drama” in which the maverick academic David Irving, lone defender of the truth, uncovers definitive evidence that the Holocaust never happened. Sent to Coventry by his fellow historians — a spineless lot who have for years been manipulating the evidence to protect their funding and their reputations — David is in the end vindicated; the Holocaust was a Zionist plot after all…
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/ormer_greens_candidate_professor_clive_hamilton_is_furious/
“Do you favor or oppose the federal government giving
tax breaks to companies that burn coal to make
electricity if they use new methods to put the air
pollution they generate into underground storage areas
instead of letting that air pollution go up the
smokestacks at their factories?
Favor 62.3% 58.5%
Oppose 34.4 36.9”
With highly dishonest questions like these favoring the CAGW cause, the numbers in favor of such policies, although dropping, are still much higher than they would ordinarily be.
Similarly, many people may see nothing wrong with the government requiring or bribing with taxpayer money car manufacturers to build cars which have better mileage, or with requiring them to make electric cars (though support for that is a bit lower):
“Building cars that use less gasoline
Require by law or encourage with tax breaks 78.1% 65.1%
Stay out of entirely 21.6 33.0”
Would they be as supportive, though, if they knew that such policies inevitably mean moving in the direction of socialism, and that in exchange for higher-mileage cars they will almost certainly have to sacrifice in the areas of the car’s weight, meaning its size choice of materials, and in safety? I highly doubt it.
Very interesting. We poll our electric consumers regularly regarding their preferences for different generation resources and find that any survey that doesn’t ask the complementary question of cost is quite irrelevant. Most people will tell you they want an electric supply with zero emissions, but then overwhelmingly respond with a tolerable price increase in the order of 0 to 5%.
Still, looking at the trend given such a biased questionnaire I’m encouraged. I’ll bet an unbiased survey would show at least twice the decline.
@Oatley. “I’ll bet an unbiased survey would show at least twice the decline.” Yes, this bogus poll is definitely hiding the decline.
Without any information regarding the poll structure and sample, my first reaction is suspicion that there is bias in both sampling and the form of the questions. Pollsters need to show that they are not “push polling”.
The poll must be wrong. Everybody who has read Chris Mooney’s work about the defectiveness of the republican brain knows that liberals and independents must show the absolute opposite behaviour. Probably Tea Partiers have posed as liberals to distort the results. /sarc
Chuck Nolan says:
Why combine the democrats and independents?
Good eye, Chuck! I would guess that the author is a Democrat and would like to think that Independents are going to vote for his guys.
Chuck Nolan says:
May 8, 2012 at 4:14 pm
“Why combine the democrats and independents?”
Because the purpose of the poll was to single out and slam the Republican party. If they had the Independents as a separate category and they largely agreed with the Repubs, it would have made the Dems look bad (i.e. the fringe minority viewpoint).
These polls, much like Climate Science, are little more than propaganda campaigns. And it doesn’t matter which side of political fence (left or right) the pollsters are on.
Yeah, hide the decline! (In the dropping level of interest by independents.)
Politicians, with their policy-relevant research requirements, bear the majority blame.
Catastrophists, not the catastrophes, are what we must fear.
As CERTAIN climate scientists chose to abandon scientific methodology and reason for faith based advocacy and dogmatic zealotry it should come as no surprise that people no longer trust them .
As an independent, I find it offensive to be grouped with Democrats like that. Generally, I don’t like federal gov’t to decide (regardless of which party) of what we should do, etc but I tend to find Republicans more tolerable. At least where I live.
Not sure about the chart at the start of this blog. It appears more than 100% of folks, republican or democrat/independents, believe scientists can be trusted and distrusted.
Or maybe I am just sleepy.
‘The Stanford-Ipsos study found no evidence that the decline in public support for government action was concentrated among respondents who lived in states struggling the most economically.’
Now that’s interesting. Without any further information as to what they mean by ‘struggling economically’-typically vague-I’m going to guess that maybe because there was no decline in public support for government action might just be the reason
those states continue to struggle.
I will recant my last post. I think I see the error of my ways. That aside, looking at the poll results, it appears folks are quite stupid. Asked if they support raising taxes on electricity or gasoline to promote green, they are against it overwhelmingly, no matter the political affiliation. But if the government is to spend money to promote green agenda, they seem good with it. One effects the pocketbook directly, the other apparently others pocketbooks. Yes we are in trouble.
ROTFL…….where did they find Republicans that would not only do some stupid phone survey, but give out their address so they could receive a $10 gift certificate?
Republicans don’t survey…..they hang up