EXCERPTS FROM GALLUP – complete poll story here
PRINCETON, NJ — Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated. This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.
As recently as 2006, significantly more Americans thought the news underestimated the seriousness of global warming than said it exaggerated it, 38% vs. 30%. Now, according to Gallup’s 2009 Environment survey, more Americans say the problem is exaggerated rather than underestimated, 41% vs. 28%.
The trend in the “exaggerated” response has been somewhat volatile since 2001, and the previous high point, 38%, came in 2004. Over the next two years, “exaggerated” sentiment fell to 31% and 30%. Still, as noted, the current 41% is the highest since Gallup’s trend on this measure began in 1997.
…
Notably, all of the past year’s uptick in cynicism about the seriousness of global warming coverage occurred among Americans 30 and older. The views of 18- to 29-year-olds, the age group generally most concerned about global warming and most likely to say the problem is underestimated, didn’t change.
Mary Hinge (09:15:22) : Your reply to David Corcoran (06:04:33) about the sea level rise. i.e. “Really? Have you looked at the latest global mean sea level graphs? http://sealevel.colorado.edu/”
Can you educate me a bit without my having to go the entire site to find out how they did their calculations. I looked at the chart. It shows a trend line from 1992-2008 of ocean levels rising at 3.3 mm per year. This is about 2 inches in the past 16 years.
Questions:
1. Why does the chart start out at -30mm? To do this, I assume they are taking the 16 year average (1992-now) and plotting the trend based upon the average (mean)?
2. Data from satellites in orbit can be adjusted for orbital decay, ionosphere and troposhere skew, etc. But does the sea level data take into account of the nutation of the Earth?… whereby the satellite may be measuring sea level at a certain assumed datum(s) at a certain time of day, but the earth shifts in an 18 year cycle with respect to the satellite orbit. From Wikipedia: “The nutation of a planet happens because the tidal forces which cause the precession of the equinoxes vary over time so that the speed of precession is not constant. The principal term of nutation is due to the regression of the moon’s nodal line and has the same period of 6798 days (18.6 years). It reaches 17″ in longitude and 9″ in obliquity.”
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutation
I think my point is that in order to measure sea level with accuracy from a satellite, the places below being measured can not shift, and the moon and sun (which cause tidal action) need to be in the exact same spot, distance and time as when you did the previous measurement AND then one must compensate for the Earth’s nutational shift over its 18 year cycle.
Bottom line is: are all their variables compensated for ? i.e. eliptical orbit around the sun, moon influence, time of day, nutation, ionosphere and troposphere distortions (which vary with time of day, sun spot activity, etc.)
The reason why I am asking this is because I am presently working with some well-known Phd-types, who do GPS systems to centimeter accuracy, which is pretty darn tough to do even with fancy Kalman filtering and SASM receivers. I just can’t beleive that satellites launched 16 years ago, before the technology was mature on such measurements…how they can get down to the millimeter level when we are having a tough time getting measurements to the centimeter level. And I am not trying to be cynical. I am open to being educated on how they do it.
Mary Hinge (06:01:58) : “Maybe many of them are looking at the subject from all angles and wondering that, if PDo has switched to -ive for a while, we are now in La Nina conditions (though not an event as yet)…”
That’s a joke, right? I suspect 99% of the survey respondants wouldn’t have a clue to what that means.
Tallbloke thanks a lot for that bit of work. I’ll try to incorporate it, plus the post-2002 graph showing the correlation still fits. Interesting thing is, Ed had a point too – why does the CO2 shoot up from 2002 on? Personally I think the capacity of the seas and biosphere to absorb CO2 is still so huge compared with our output that I doubt it’s China. But one needs to look carefully, details matter!
Ryan C (08:06:50) :
Just come back from lunch break at work, and they have posters all over the walls here about the WWF Climate Change Earth Hour, made me instantly angry. Shall I risk my job and tear all these things down?
Channel that anger into something useful. I’m currently working on a Skeptics Climate Science wiki project. Care to help?
I would suggest you do go to the site and read about it, also find out about Jason, Topex etc. It is much better to do this yourself rather than being fed bite size portions if you catch my drift. To givean idea of sensitivity there was a period of a few months when the data was incorrect due to the early use of the ‘leap second’. The graph shows the annual variations well, you can remove this noise and add an inverse barometer to allow for pressure differences.
The graph also reveals the effects on global sea level of El Nino and La Nina, unfortunately some people either don’t realise this or ignore this to further their agenda, a good example is the post from Smokey
It’s a shame some people are like this but luckily there are plenty who correct them…..continually!
thefordprefect:
Well, some of us feel QUITE THE OPPOSITE. We’d like to face our children and grandchildren as they struggle with a planet very different to today’s and say “I tried to stop them, really I did”.
I’d like to be able to say “here’s a car”, instead of “here are a week’s worth of transportation vouchers”. I’d like to say, “here, let me help you with the downpayment on a house” instead of “here, let me help out with 3 months rent on a government sanctioned rental unit, too bad nobody can afford personal homes anymore”.
I’d like to say “when I’m gone, this will all be yours”… instead of “when I’m gone, the government will take this all away to balance my carbon imbalance”.
Save us your self-righteous and erroneous precautionary principle. EVERY SKEPTIC HERE has already looked at the evidence AS PRESENTED by alarmists, and come to the conclusion that alarm and action are not only unwarranted, but the actions proposed are MORE HARMFUL than the alleged problem.
“thefordprefect”: Couple things- 1. you just talk endlessly about GW. GW =/= AGW. 2. CET shows warming ~throughout~ its record, not just recently. It starts in the middle of the LIA. WTF do you expect? 3. So it appears that this is more about how you ~feel~ than facts. How irrational:
“I will at least be able to face my children when they struggle with a planet very different to today’s and say, “I tried”.
And if I am wrong I will be again able to say to my children that the world is a cleaner place because of the actions we unecessarily took.”
Well, that’s nice and all. Maybe you can explain to them why you needlessly squandered the wealth of the world they should have inherited to address a problem that wasn’t possible to address or necessary. Moreover, you once again stupidly, like all feel good environmentalist liberals, equate the issue of AGW with pollution control. In point of fact, real pollution is and has been a rapidly diminishing problem in the Western World since way before AGW. But now many of your alarmist friends propose re-polluting the air to offset warming. The planet in the future will be cleaner if we don’t do anything about AGW. If we do, it will be poorer, dirtier, no climatically different than it would have been otherwise, and less free (not that you care about that).
Do I disagree with the initial warming 1.3 C figure? Meh. It doesn’t sound quite right, more like 1 C, but that’s splitting hairs. But as for your methane and watervapor feedbacks, perhaps you can explain a) why methane has stopped increasing and b) Why you totally ignore cloud processes, which could significantly offset the warming tendency? Because if we think to much, it will be “too late”? Guess what? If AGW really is a crisis, their is close to nothing you can do about it, and nothing at all that wouldn’t involve massive reduction in energy use and quality of life decline to go along with it. I will feel proud when I look at my children (not that I think I’ll have any, but I’ll keep my options open) that I fought to keep them free and living in a world were their quality of life is at least as good as mine was if not better because I stopped self righteous zealots like yourself from reversing the industrial revolution. Good day sir.
BTW “Good day sir.” is my way of saying that I don’t have the energy deal with your dense head anymore. So, even if you choose to throw spittle my way again, I won’t given you the giggles from your obvious intellectual masochism. I have other small minds to thrash.
Mary Hinge (10:40:57),
Maybe if you wish harder you’ll be right:
click1
click2
Anthony, Charles, everyone…
Where can I get a list of 19th century surface stations with their exact positions along with their recorded data? Or even all/most global stations over the last century and a half?
I want to do an intense study of the effects of urbanisation and land use changes over time. I will also need to study historical maps to get a good idea of how much smog from homes, businesses and factories was blocking out sunlight during the early days of temperature monitoring.
Reply: This may be helpful to you, that’s a big task. ~ charles the moderator
Actually Fox has had coverage on the conference. Glenn Beck had a 5 minute interview with Dr. Bob Carter, an Australian who was participating in the ICCC. He pointed out that the MSM ignored the conference and was supportive of the comments that the “science was not settled”
It was on Tuesdays show 3/12/09 about 35 minutes into the show.
Larry
Aron (09:32:53) : RE: Computer models: Programmers have been trying for years to simulate the experience of driving a car and still aren’t able to do so.
Not sure what you mean by experience (Fahrvergnügen maybe?) but autonomous robot cars have been built and tested at CMU and elsewhere. See the DARPA Urban Challenge links:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07170/795261-115.stm
http://www.darpa.mil/GRANDCHALLENGE/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/robotics/4228634.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge
I’d love to help out Lucy, but I am have a mathematics background and currently work in municipal govt, I know nothing about climate besides what I read online and witness in life. I am mainly skeptical because I find it very obvious that AGW is such a political thing, just by reading the MSM and listening to the non stop contradictions and hypocrites. I know a lot based on readings, but if an AGW alarmist did a background check and noticed that I was a mathy and not a “climate scientist”, they would discredit your whole site.
Thanks Charles
DAV, I mean a virtual simulation of driving a car. There are many and they keep getting better. Some are geared towards realism and some towards gaming physics. But nothing, after four decades of development and massive increases in computing power, has been able to approximately simulate driving a car.
Programmers are doing better with airplanes but even in that area, even in military grade software and hardware, they are far short of approximating reality.
It’s mostly the environment’s effect on a vehicle that programmers find most difficult.
So imagine trying to simulate the whole world’s climate. All the models currently in operation are very crude and lacking.
Aron
I did a study to try to see how much co2 was being put into the atmosphere during the 19th Century as I wanted to check Ernst Becks assertions.
Take into account dirty coal with few emissions controls being burnt in hearths, factories, boilers, agricultural machines, steam trains, the manufacture and use of gas, and the tens of thousands of steam ships emitting co2/smoke along sea lanes and into ports and I think co2 was probably similar to today’s.
All this caused smog so you might also usefully look at the dates of various clean air acts. In Britain our clean act was in the 1950’s I believe and I think checking out these will give a good idea of which countries were most polluted and therefore most likely to have temperatures corrupted by lack of sunlight.
I think I have posted this CET graph for you before but you will note that as well as temperatures it contains the offical IPCC figures for emissions of coal gas, etc.
http://cadenzapress.co.uk/download/menken_hobgoblin.jpg
This is also available as a spread sheet form if you needed it.
By the way there were around 100 surface stations in 1850 (50 reliable) and GS Callendar believed there were only 200 reliable ones in 1938 according to his archives. He was very interested in this subject and kept copious notes so there might be something in there for you. I have a particular interest in global temperatures to 1850 so if you want to post in a few days and tell me what information you have obtained I can see if I have anything different.
Are you in the UK?
Good luck
TonyB
Pragmatic (09:40:22) : What Duke fails to mention is the fact that Pope Urban himself had given Galileo permission to publish his book “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems.” He was urged to portray heliocentricity as a theory. … While Mr. Duke’s defense of the Church is admirable – it was the Church that forced a good scientist to sign an onerous recantation. And it was the Church that locked him in prison even after doing so.
The parts you left out, Prag: 1) Galileo was asked, possibly in some quaint Italian way, to keep it as theory — meaning no advocacy — unless he could provide sufficient proof; 2) he not only failed to do this but one “participant” in the Dialogue was a common fool, Simplicio, espousing the non-heliocentric side who clearly was meant to be the voice of Urban himself; 3) the “prison” was house arrest — rather mild considering his open insult of a potential, powerful ally.
Galileo had the salesmanship of one JH wouldn’t you say?
Household bills to soar because of climate change, claim scientists,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/4968378/Household-bills-to-soar-because-of-climate-change-claim-scientists.html
The average cost of living is likely to increase dramatically to pay for the impact of global warming, (it certainly will with cap and trade).
Heat related deaths will increase, (no mention of a decrease in cold related deaths).
Even garden maintenance will increase as longer summers and wetter, warmer winters will mean that lawns need mowing more often.
The findings are to be presented to a climate summit in Copenhagen by Alastair Hunt, a researcher at Bath University who studied the potential affect of global warming on health services, local councils, households and gardens.
What total drivel.
The birth of a sceptic.
I took an interest in climate change about five years ago, but at the time had no real idea what the arguments were and who believed what. I had heard of things like the Kyoto agreement and thought that, as President Bush was against it, it was probably a good thing to support. The media continued to drip feed terms like “carbon footprint”, “eco friendly” and “renewable resources which became so much part of everyday language, that it became difficult to imagine a conversation without at least one cropping up somewhere.
It wasn’t until Al Gore came on the scene that the details behind the concept began to appear. There seemed to be no doubt that what he was saying was true. There were no dissenting voices on the TV or in the newspapers, people openly talked about the mess we had made and how we had to act now in order to save the planet.
At this point I realised that I had begun to believe in and have opinions on something that I actually knew nothing about.
The Internet came to the rescue, dozens of blog sites and at first I was amazed to find that there were people out there that did not believe in this thing called AGW. The main difference between the sites seemed to be that one side of the argument knew that they were right and didn’t feel the need to present any evidence; the other side did present data and were excommunicated from the human race for doing so.
At 51 I have just managed to finish my degree and during the last two years have been studying environmental science. These years of enquiring finally led me to fall on the side of the sceptics.
My main reasons are:
Man has never been able to predict weather or climate with any degree of accuracy, how is it that we can now be so sure of events up to 100 years in the future?
Many great scientists throughout history have carried out experiments which required accurate measurement of atmospheric CO2. Some of these readings have been higher than those of today. Do we have a valid reason to discredit their work?
Am I really expected to believe that there exists or has existed any technology that can measure the average global temperature with sufficient accuracy to assert that there has been a rise in temperature of such a small amount?
While at school in the 70’s I was told that if the icecaps grew much bigger, there was a risk that the earth’s centre of gravity would move nearer to the poles causing a faster spin.
I do not believe that it is possible to model climate without taking the sun into account.
For now – that is enough for me to doubt, I do not work in science and so have no financial motivation to doubt.
Please keep the faith.
Richard Hobley – Oxford England
This shows nicely the reduction in global sea level from the strong La Nina last year and the cooler La Nina conditions this year. When Enso conditions are neutral (as they were throughout mid 2008) this shows the ‘correct’ mean level, i.e the level when not affected by ENSO conditions or events. Mid 2008 was at the same level as the very strong El Nino which you guys always cherry pick (see click 2 for an example)
Typical cherrypicking, not only do you pick the time during the El Nino but the graph ends at the beginning of 2008, why is this period picked, wouldn’t be something to do with the strong La Nina would it? Cherry picking to mislead at its worst.
>I have the image in my mind of DJ typing in his post, then putting his hands over his eyes, so as not to read any response to his post. He is firmly entrenched in his beliefs. There are none so blind, ……
David I don’t reply because all I see are talking points. Climate change is a science debate – or it would be if sceptics published. The continuing conflation of the science debate with the mitigation “debate” underscores that it is not the science that matters among most who post here. Its an ideological adversion to the policies that might be necessary if the science is taken seriously by policy makers. That is seen by the fact that most sceptics are also sceptical of CO2 as an agent for acidification (a completely independent area of science).
I also know when non-experts (like yourself) adopt a position where you are willing to argue against a massive literature produced by climate scientists that you are driven by belief and ideology and not science.
BTW I understand the US has had the driest start to a year on record. Let’s hope you don’t suffer horrible summer heatwaves like NZ & OZ lest your poll numbers go the other way.
Mike Strong
We have had this discussion with Mary before.
Firstly the satellites are NOT accurate to mm but only centimetres (if at all) . The following two sites give a good description of the process-which is being constantly refined but doesn’t get more accurate as the inherent flaws in measuring capabilities can’t be resolved.
http://www.tos.org/oceanography/issues/issue_archive/issue_pdfs/15_1/15_1_jacobs_et_al.pdf
http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/Journal/Issues/1999/dec/abs1635.html
The following site deals with problems of the data;
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=859
This with reliability
http://lightblueline.org/satellite-tracking-sea-levels-set-launch
This link gives a graphic map showing coastline length.
http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-top-ten/world-top-ten-longest-coastline-countries-map.html
This gives it textually by individual country
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/List-of-countries-by-length-of-coastline
The worlds coastline is some 1 million plus KM in total and virtually each kilometre will be affected by different factors, some real some imagined.
These include melting ice sheets/gravity (the case put forward at the Copenhagen conference) stasis, erosion, tectonics, deposition, building projects, changes of currents, barometric pressure, state of the tide, thermal expansion, reliabilty of the monitoring equipment and how that is turned into data are just a few.
It is very difficult to determine where the ‘top’ of the sea is anyway, or its mean height. It’s a bit like trying to hit a constantly moving target and made more difficult when it’s done from space using satellites that have difficulty in reading what is the surface and what is under it. Consequently they have considerable margins of error that is greater than the measurement they are taking.
Secondly , just like temperatures, sea levels go up and down and the older datasets clearly show this
Newlyn in Cornwall
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/resids/170-161.gif
and
Helsinki.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/resids/060-351.gif
The following link leads to a graph produced by the Dutch Govt sea level organisation- and confirm sea levels are stable and are somewhat lower than during the MWP.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=61
The greatest sea level expert in the world is Prof Morner.
Morner says: “The mean eustatic rise in sea level for the period 1850-1930 was in the order of 1.0-1.1
mm/year,” but that “after 1930-40, this rise seems to have stopped (Pirazzoli et al., 1989; Morner, 1973,2000).” This stasis, in his words, “lasted, at least, up to the mid-60s.” Thereafter, “the record can be divided into three parts: (1) 1993-1996 with a clear trend of stability, (2) 1997-1998 with a high-amplitude rise and fall recording the ENSO event of these years and (3) 1998-2000 with an irregular record of no clear tendency.” Most important of all, in his words, “There is a total absence of any recent ‘acceleration in sea level rise’ as often claimed by IPCC and related groups.”
He concludes: “When we consider past records, recorded variability, causational processes involved and the last century’s data, our best estimate of possible future sea-level changes is +10 +/- 10cm in a century, or, maybe, even +5 +/- 15cm.” See also Morner (1995); INQUA (2000).”
I am inclined to agree with Professor Morner that sea level is not really doing very much generally (with exceptions either way in some places)
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we18.htm
The above link dissects the data and states that a rise by 2100 of 5cm is possible…. plus or minus 15cm!
Morner stresses (as I do) that observational data contradicts the theoretical interpolated and massaged data that is used by the IPCC.
John Daly also had a good handle on all this.
http://www.john-daly.com/deadisle/index.htm
The sea level is not rising at the rate suggested-it has dropped in recent years according to many local gauges (what is global sea level supposed to mean with a million kilometres of coastline-it is meaningless)
To reach a 1 metre increase by 2100 means an average of nearly 11mm a year (only 91 years remaining). There is simply no evidence to show this is happening.
Tonyb
Global warming will save millions of lives
Winter regularly takes many more lives than any heatwave: 25,000 to 50,000 people each year die in Britain from excess cold. Across Europe, there are six times more cold-related deaths than heat-related deaths. We know this from the world’s biggest cross-national, peer-reviewed studies under the aegis of Professor William Keatinge of the University of London.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/4981028/Global-warming-will-save-millions-of-lives.html
Lucy S. – A contributing factor to the increased rate of CO2 generation may have to do with the development of China. In the four years ending 2007, China’s coal consumption increased by as much as the US’s total coal consumption.
It is little remarked in the climate world, but, in fact, the action in carbon emmissions is in China, and increasingly, India. US, European, and Japanese fossil fuel consumption is falling, by and large.
“Elizabeth (08:32:05) :
This is fascinating, considering the extent to which mainstream media and education systems treat AGW as a settled science. In fact, most consider reporting on the skeptic side to be socially irresponsible.
Hopefully our policy makers are getting the message.”
Sorry…but I believe you have a niave view of our “policy makers”. If by policy makers you are referring to our politicians, they have but one goal and one goal only, that being to get as much money from both citizens and industry as possible. It can be called a tax or a fee, matters not, but they need money, lots and lots of money. Without money, there is no power, and without power there is no influence, and without either of those things, people question why they are needed at all.
So no…never try to enlighten a politician. They basically could care less. They care about transferring money…and AGW provides a mechanism the likes of which most of them have never witnessed. We should start a pool for when the first local lawn mower fees get enacted at the rural town level, cuz they’re coming.
Jim
Back at ya Mary Hinge about the sea level rise measurements. So it is a radar altimeter…I was right about the not-better-than centimeter accuracy (per measurement)…but I understand about the “few-hundred thousand” repeats of the same measurements over 10 days can give them reasonable faith that their data is correct to the “several millimeters” level. The NASA site:
“TOPEX/Poseidon range measurements are accurate to 3-4 centimeters. The range measurements are subtracted from POD-derived estimates of the satellite orbital height, resulting in ocean height measurements that are good to 4-5 centimeters (better than 2 inches) relative to the center of the Earth.
This accuracy figure pertains to a few-kilometer spot on the ocean surface directly beneath the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite. By averaging the few-hundred thousand measurements collected by the satellite in the time it takes to cover the global oceans (10 days), global mean sea level can be determined with a precision of several millimeters. ”
I got this from: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/technology.html
Well, there ya go. But despite the 2″ ocean level rise in 16 years, the question is it from AGW, or something else like plate tectonics or ????
Aron (12:01:22) : DAV, I mean a virtual simulation of driving a car. There are many and they keep getting better. Some are geared towards realism and some towards gaming physics. But nothing, after four decades of development and massive increases in computing power, has been able to approximately simulate driving a car.
Do you mean making it indistinguishable from physically driving one? Not sure what the point would be. That would require lots of feedback (tactile, aural, olfactory, kinetic, etc.) which moves the simulation from model to mechanism. This has been done very well for aircraft because of economic sense. And those are realistic enough to substitute for actual flight experience. I’ve even seen someone get sick in one.
But all of that is a completely different endeavour than weather/climate simulation. No, the latter models aren’t all that good yet but there’s no real impediment for improvement. You are right but for some very wrong reasons. It is unnecessary that a computer model of wx/climate should ever become an actual mechanism. The model output doesn’t have to supply a realistic experience to be useful.