UPDATE: At first I was concerned about this poll and the language involved. Now from comments I’m seeing a number of people whom aren’t worried and see an opportunity to voice their opinion. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide if they wish to participate. – Anthony
Wow, just wow. Who would think we’d see this sort of language and lack of sound judgment from a science museum? In the Now playing at a museum near you, the “Day After Tomorrow Map” thread, something interesting was discovered.
Once you click the “count me out” button, you enter a netherworld of governmental lists. The London Science Museum might want to think about redoing this web feature. The images are below, here’s the link.
Okay…now look what happens when you click “COUNT ME OUT”. Yellow highlighter mine.
Not only is this insulting and threatening to the reader, it virtually ensures that all responses logged by the London Science Museum are “COUNT ME IN” if you originally chose to vote otherwise.
Future presentation of results to the government: “The results show overwhelmingly that people agree with us. Hardly anyone chose COUNT ME OUT.
Even with the caveat the list*, how many people would trust it? I wouldn’t. I doubt many people even get to the caveat. The main statement is just too worrisome.
Perhaps the “COUNT ME OUT” respondents get a visit from these chaps? 😉
To be fair, respondents get a similar message if they choose to be counted in.
However, one wonders how many people will respond at all once they see that language.
The Science Museum really ought to pull this feature or redo language in it in my opinion.
h/t to alert WUWT reader coddbotherer
UPDATE: 10/24 @11:30PM
It appears some robovoting hit this poll. Robert Phelan’s letter pretty well sums up my thinking on this issue.
Sirs:
By now you must be aware that your on-line Prove It poll was seriously compromised. I voted “count-me-out” once under my own name, but after the individual who corrupted your poll revealed himself, I tested your polling system with two consecutive “count-me-in” votes, which were both apparently accepted.
Leaving aside my distaste for your support of politicized, Lysenko-style “science”, as both a social scientist and computer systems consultant I respect data and am appalled by the shoddy manner in which your organization collected it. A few suggestions:
1. State clearly the purpose of your poll and exactly which data will be used for that purpose.
2. You stated that you would pass the results to the government:
a. if the results had fairly resulted in a “count-me-out” majority, would those results have been passed on?
b. it would be helpful top explain what you would do with the comments you requested from the “count-me-outs”;
c. since the results were to be passed, presumably, to the UK government, foreigners such as myself should have been excluded from the voting. Checking the IP location of voters should be easy.
3. No one, either inside the UK or outside received the follow up e-mail. The explanation provided about ensuring one vote per person, frankly, makes no sense.
4. Maintaining a confidential list of voter names, e-mail addresses and IP’s to verify non-duplication would be easy. Making the voting a two-step process, where the voter had to respond to a follow-on e-mail would be even more secure.
5. Maintaining a list of non-acceptable names for screening: Joseph Stalin, Lenin, Mao Tse-tung and Mickey Mouse all claimed to have voted no, as did Keith Briffa, Michael Mann, Gavin Schmidt and James Hansen.
7. Create a display page where interested persons can view the names who have voted. Given the politicized nature of the topic, a unified alphabetical list would be appropriate.
8. Test the security of your poll before putting it on-line. Find a good hacker and pay him only if he succeeds in breaking into your system.
If you people can’t even run an on-line poll, why should anyone consider your opinions on climate? If this poll was so important that you needed two ministers of HMG to introduce it, why didn’t you get it done right?
I intend my suggestions to be helpful; if you find them so then I would be glad to be of further assistance. I am bitterly opposed to the position you have taken on “AGW” but I would not allow that to interfere with my professionalism.
Oh, one last suggestion. Don’t even try to salvage the results of this poll. Wipe them, make the changes I’ve suggested and start again.
Robert E. Phelan
Adjunct Instructor of Sociology
Business Systems and Automation Consultant
A commenter on our site, “lihard” has seemingly confessed to adding a thousand votes via a script. There was a period of about 15 minutes where the count jumped about 1000 votes. It appears “lihard” was at fault as he pre-announced it here in comments. Of course there was little anyone could do about it. I speak for myself and the moderation staff in saying we strongly object and are offended by his ballot stuffing and want to make clear that it is not condoned in any way. Whether or not the poll was put together with apparently no security in place does not justify any kind of dishonest activity.
However, since that burst (if indeed he, lihard, did one) the vote count has steadily risen, I believe those to be valid. If the Science Museum has any logs, they should be able to filter those ~1000 in question out. I hope they do.
I don’t condone ballot stuffing in any form. Unfortunately it can happen when polls like this one don’t appear to have the most basic simplistic security. The interesting thing here is that if anybody wanting to stuff the poll, no matter what side of the argument they are on, could easily have done so. No special skills are needed to boost the counter…just keep clicking the submit button. Any kid can do it.
Perhaps the Science Museum didn’t think of security for cyberspace like they do for their exhibits. The internet is a harsh place and prone to such things. The lack of due diligence for security is as troubling as the language they used which originally caught my attention.
The polls we do here at WUWT don’t suffer from these problems, as they have anti-ballot stuffing security built in courtesy of WordPress. I hope that the Science Museum will upgrade their poll security if they choose to continue with it. Also for the record, you’ll find me logged once in poll, shortly after posting this story on 11/23 approximately 9:30-10AM PST, with my full name and email address given. If anyone from the Science Museum (or the UK government) wishes to contact me, they can use that email address. – Anthony
It’s now 2040 on 23/10/2009 and the count stands at 1541 OUT. I have been watching the site for anbout 25 minutes and doing the F5 refresh every couple of seconds (my aching finger!).
It would appear that there’s no robot posting. The changes are appearing at random time intervals ranging from a couple of seconds to two minutes or more.
wattsupwiththat (10:27:57) :
Leif please advise if you get any confirming emails. I think perhaps they filter non UK IP addresses.
I still haven’t got my confirming email Anthony & I AM UK based.
DaveE.
Final post at 2045hrs.
It’s now 350 IN and 1553 OUT
Let’s see what tomorrow brings. BTW,I have voted, using a valid UK e-mail address and I have received no ‘validation’ e-mail.
Well I am hoping nothing untoward happens, I voted count me out. But I did abandon the first attempt and check the same information was requested for a Count Me In vote.
I then complained to the ASA (Advertising Standards Agency) about the child scaring anti-warming/change adverts which my taxes are paying for. No point in doing things by half.
Just counted myself out and gave reasons. Results so far 350 counted in and 1557 counted out. We seem to be doing well. I guess this thing will just be buried quietly.
The science museum link states:
“Scientists can tell the extra carbon dioxide around the Earth comes from fossil fuels by looking at the type of carbon.”
It was my understanding that 1-4% of the CO2 in the atmosphere has a fossil fuel origin, based on C14 studies. Unfortunately I can’t find my reference for this. Is this figure correct ?
Mr. Bradbury would be proud.
Dear All,
I suspect this is becoming a newsworthy story that will interest the MSM – government embarrassment etc. Can I suggest that anyone with MSM contacts phone them now so that it may have a chance of hitting tomorrow’s papers. Last time I looked at 21.00 BST the score was 352 to the church of AGW against 1573 sceptics.
Regards
S
This would be a good story on The Register. Get emailing people.
Just added my “out” vote.
353 / 1585 now…
Cheers
Mark
353 counted in, 1589 counted out, as of 2 minutes ago.
Pretty funny. Teach those yahoos a lesson about web polls.
Hope it makes the BBC. Headline should read:
Climate Outies Swamp Innies in Alarmist Museum Poll
Wasn’t it settled already, we are doomed.
1603/353.. which of you lads used Hansens´s NASA e-mail??
😀
Dr A. Burns (12:51:22),
I hope this helps:
“Segalstad (1992; 1993; 1996) concluded from 13-C/12-C isotope mass balance calculations, in accordance with the 14-C data, that at least 96% of the current atmospheric CO2 is isotopically indistinguishable from non-fossil-fuel sources, i.e. natural marine and juvenile sources from the Earth’s interior. Hence, for the atmospheric CO2 budget, marine equilibration and degassing, and juvenile degassing from e.g. volcanic sources, must be much more important; and the sum of burning of fossil-fuel and biogenic releases (4%) much less important, than assumed (21% of atmospheric CO2) by the authors of the IPCC model (Houghton et al., 1990).”
Source:
http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/ESEF3VO2.htm
Mr Green Genes (11:44:23)
There are many reasons to be concerned about civil liberties in the UK, real reasons, and some of the things you mention are among them, though there are more, some more serious than the ones you allude to, and no, I and many of my acquaintance are not at all happy about recent trends. You did not mention, for instance, the very disturbing arrest of Damien Green. I do not take the same attitude either to all the items on your list; some are more alarming than others.
However, one of the things I am not concerned about is that responding to a Science Museum poll on whether I believe in Global Warming may get me onto some government enemies list or other.
And no, I do not think that the innocent have no reason to fear. I just think that there’s no evidence that the UK government thinks that people expressing opinions about the scientific basis for AGW is a security issue. You are far more likely to get on government lists if you join protests against power stations, attend climate camps, take up animal rights, demonstrate against the G8, all that sort of thing. Because they are not actually total idiots, and they do not have unlimited time and energy to worry about every personal opinion everyone may hold. And they have something very real to worry about in the background: terrorism.
You are right that there is a sort of uneasy consensus in the UK, where it is ‘not done’ to express reservations in public, but in private you find lots of reservations, including from opinion formers. The further away from Westminster you go, and the further away from the devout Labour Party membership, the more scepticism you find. But even within that, there is a lot of vigorous debate about policy implications, and its funny, as in the sea defence matter, that people who think identically about warming can take exactly opposite views on many of them. And the reverse, by the way – people who think differently on warming often end up agreeing on policy.
As for example, its warming, sea defences are consequently under threat, therefore we must act now and strengthen them. And, no, of course its not warming, but sea defences are in disrepair, and we must act now and strengthen them.
Under the surface, a lot of what this is about is not the reduction of emissions, but UK energy security, which is a nightmare. That is why I think joining the Kingsnorth protests probably really would get you on lists, and quite right too.
Tell me about it!
Remember dabs & mugshot too!
I’m there, pulled on sus!
DaveE.
I have a dozen quite legitimate e-mail addresses (personal and business) and I’ve just used each one to be “counted out.” From what Mike D. just reported, I can see the site being quietly closed very shortly.
Don’t do that. Both sides should play fair.
If they took the temperature of the globe the way this poll is shaping up, we’d all be busy talking about more important things, rather than going to the mat with Big Environment.
Like sending a fleet of trawlers out into the Pacific Gyre and fishing up that mass of swirling plastic. Put that $100B invested into Carbon Bubble shares to work. Mop it up.
I counted out, with a real e-mail addy. And responded.
W@nkers, they must need some funding for something.
# 353 counted in so far
# 1624 counted out so far
353 to 1633. I would have preferred, though, that “our side” didn’t resort to ballot box stuffing. It would be so cool to see those numbers represent real votes.
Respectfully, “evanmjones”, when have the catastrophists ever played fair?
[REPLY – In order to have the right to complain, we must play fair, regardless. Besides, having the moral high ground has serious advantages of its own. I doubt we can prevail without it. ~ Evan]
354 Counted In, 1637 Counted out. Added my thoughts to the out.
Like others above I “Counted” myself out. Dropped a short explanation also. Let us not spam this site – allow the “outs” to prevail legitimaly.
I think they’re not accepting none-UK votes. I live outside the UK and I haven’t had one confirmation e-mail yet. Perhaps tomorrow.