Stanford and Woods Institute didn’t like the recent polls like these:
Pew poll: 2 of 3 Americans think Congressional action on climate change is not a priority
Gallup: Americans’ Global Warming Concerns Continue to Drop
Pew Poll: global warming dead last, down from last year
So with public money from the National Science Foundation, they conducted their own poll, and issued a press release:
Large majority of Americans still believe in global warming, Stanford poll finds
Three out of four Americans believe that the Earth has been gradually warming as the result of human activity and want the government to institute regulations to stop it, according to a new survey by researchers at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.
The survey was conducted by Woods Institute Senior Fellow Jon Krosnick, a professor of communication and of political science at Stanford, with funding from the National Science Foundation. The results are based on telephone interviews conducted from June 1-7 with 1,000 randomly selected American adults.
“Several national surveys released during the last eight months have been interpreted as showing that fewer and fewer Americans believe that climate change is real, human-caused and threatening to people,” Krosnick said. “But our new survey shows just the opposite.”
For example, when respondents in the June 2010 survey were asked if the Earth’s temperature probably had been heating up over the last 100 years, 74 percent said yes. And 75 percent said that human behavior was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred. Krosnick has asked similar questions in previous Woods Institute polls since 2006.
“Our surveys reveal a small decline in the proportion of people who believe global warming has been happening, from 84 percent in 2007 to 74 percent today,” Krosnick said. “Statistical analysis of our data revealed that this decline is attributable to perceptions of recent weather changes by the minority of Americans who have been skeptical about climate scientists.”
In terms of average Earth temperature, 2008 was the coldest year since 2000, Krosnick said. “Scientists say that such year-to-year fluctuations are uninformative, and people who trust scientists therefore ignore this information when forming opinions about global warming’s existence,” he added. “But people who do not trust climate scientists base their conclusions on their personal observations of nature. These ‘low-trust’ individuals were especially aware of the recent decline in average world temperatures; they were the ones in our survey whose doubts about global warming have increased since 2007.”
According to Krosnick, this explanation is especially significant, because it suggests that the recent decline in the proportion of people who believe in global warming is likely to be temporary. “If the Earth’s temperature begins to rise again, these individuals may reverse course and rejoin the large majority who still think warming is real,” he said.
‘Climategate’
Several questions in the June survey addressed the so-called “climategate” controversy, which made headlines in late 2009 and early 2010.
“Growing public skepticism has, in recent months, been attributed to news reports about e-mail messages hacked from the computer system at the University of East Anglia in Britain – characterized as showing climate scientists colluding to silence unconvinced colleagues – and by the discoveries of alleged flaws in reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC),” Krosnick said. “Our survey discredited this claim in multiple ways. ”
For example, only 9 percent of respondents said they knew about the East Anglia e-mail messages and believed they indicate that climate scientists should not be trusted, and only 13 percent said the same about the controversial IPPC reports.
“Overall, we found no decline in Americans’ trust in environmental scientists,” Krosnick said. “Fully 71 percent of respondents said they trust scientists a moderate amount, a lot or completely.”
Government solutions
In the June 2010 survey, 86 percent of respondents said they wanted the federal government to limit the amount of air pollution that businesses emit, and 76 percent favored government limitations on greenhouse gas emissions generated by businesses. Only 14 percent said that the United States should not take action to combat global warming unless other major industrial countries like China and India do so as well.
Among other survey results:
- 78 percent opposed taxes on electricity to reduce consumption, and 72 percent opposed taxes on gasoline;
- 84 percent favored the federal government offering tax breaks to encourage utilities to make more electricity from water, wind and solar power;
- Four out of 5 respondents favored government requiring or offering tax breaks to encourage the production of cars that use less gas (81 percent), appliances that use less electricity (80 percent) and homes and office buildings that require less energy to heat and cool (80 percent);
- Only 18 percent said that policies to reduce global warming would increase unemployment.
For additional information on Krosnick’s research, visit: http://woods.stanford.edu/research/surveys.html
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Of course we have to take their word for it that the one thousand people were actually random and not taken from a greepeace donation rosta.
Lts try to simplify this, a fanatical alarmist ‘research’ body that has made a very luctrative living from AGW for years conducts its own poll and comes to conclusions that directly contradict every independent poll and yet we are supposed to take this Potemkin village style poll seriously?
Who are they trying to kid, themselves or everyone else? I find it rather more than sad that people could pass off such shoddy and obvious twaddle and expect it to be given elbow room…ooops I forgot, the AGW industry has been doing just that for a decade at least.
I have conducted my own poll of myself and my cats and it finds that I trust this poll as much a BBC poll, I have run it through my own computer model and I find that if flared trousers make a comeback then the earth will be covered in them to a depth of no less than one mile by the year 3595.
Pole questions, as we all know, are designed to either arrive at the some true understanding or to bolster ones predefined agenda. Results are simply a propaganda tool. Fortunately most people are smart enough to realize this. Press releases are even greater propaganda tools. I think most people realize that too. What is most disconcerting, is most news dissemination outlets are simply press release repeaters.
See the last page of the pdf:
Adjusted results, not the raw data. Sound familiar? 😉
Once again we have the mixing up of two different things, “the environment, and pollution” with “global warming”. No sane person wants dirty water and dirty air, but CO2 is not pollution and global warming is not a threat to the environment.
Why should we help them by commenting anything?
I say: Ignore them completely, and let them be forgotten.
Did they change their objective paragraph?
Or is it still “find arguments to support AGW” or something like that?
I bet it still is.
They will just use the process to their advantage, and try again.
“What do you think will be the most serious problem facing the world in the future if nothing is done to stop it?”
Crazed ideologues .
It will be like Honecker in the DDR saying;
Yes we did a mistake, but please, please thrust us, and let us try to run another 40 year DDR experiment!
This time we promise noone will mention that we think the Refutniks should be jailed.
This time we promise we will not have the media on our side in a world wide campaign.
This time we promise to include all scientific reports, even from Mørner, Segalstad, Karlen…. and not a single model-run!
We promise! Cross my heart!
Jonathan Castle says:
June 10, 2010 at 12:50 am
Risible. There’s lies, damn lies and statistics. But hey, why even bother with the statistics?
_______________________________________________________________________
Why bother with statistics (& polls)?
There are two reasons.
The first is to accurately gauge the thoughts of the target population. These studies are very carefully engineered to take out as much bias as possible and to poll the correct market segment. They are often used by corporate marketing departments.
The second reason is unethical in my opinion. These studies are very carefully engineered to reach a desired opinion and to poll the correct sub-population. The information is then used to influence politicians and the population as a whole.
Well if 94% of the population believes the sky is pink, I guess I must be wrong. If 84% of the population thinks a pink sky tax is appropriate, who am I to go against the majority wishes. This is a democracy after all. (Yes I know the USA is a republic)
I could duplicate this poll easily by including 90% Greenpeace/WWF members.
The difference in the proportions of “yes” responses to Q33.a which asks about “pollution” versus Q33.b which asks about “greenhouse gases” is statistically significant with a p-value less than .0001 indicating that Q33.a is biased in favor of eliciting a pro-government intervention response.
Now, imagine if they had asked specifically about CO2, pointing out that everything you do generates CO2 and therefore the cost of everything you do would increase as a result of government policies. What would be the proportion of “yes” responses then?
Here is my attempt to deconstruct Dr. Krosnick’s survey.
A poll by email? I doubt you could find a single honest statistician who would say that would be a valid method.
And 75% believe the world has warmed up. OK, but 75% say it was due to humans. You don’t believe it was due to humans if you don’t believe it has happened, so really you are talking about 75% of 75%, or 56% in reality believe humans have warmed the planet.
John Trigge, thanks for that. I noticed the same thing about Q33b.
It’s a bait-and-switch.
Basically, the bias invalidates most of the survey. Thanks for playing!
I followed the links and could not find the actual questions from Krosnick’s survey.
Oops! Found them: http://woods.stanford.edu/docs/surveys/Global-Warming-Survey-Selected-Results-June2010.pdf
@richard Scott: The poll was conducted by phone. 699 respondents were contacted on a landline and 301 respondents were reached at a cell number.
@Doug Interview dates were June 1 – 7, 2010. They used the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey 2009 for the sampling scheme.
@kadaka Weighting survey results for sampling probability is necessary for the results to be generalizable to the overall population.
It has been my experience that any opinion poll that sets out to prove something in particular always does. That is why they are worse than useless.
I was called once by a poll taker and asked questions that I thought were very leading in the way and the order that they were asked. When I tried to phrase my answers to account for this the pollster became upset and refused to take my answer. He also tried to get me to give, what I felt, was the answer he wanted. Since then I have refused to participate in phone polls.
Look at the “selected results,” provided by Stanford University.
Consider questions 33a and 33b, each of which was asked of half of the 1000 people…
******************
Question 33a
Number of people = 496
“Some people believe that the United States government should limit the amount of air pollution that U.S. businesses can produce. Other people believe that the government should not limit air pollution from U.S. businesses. What about you? Do you think the government should or should not limit air pollution from U.S. businesses?”
Possible answer choices for 33a…
1. Government should limit air pollution from U.S. businesses
2. Government should not limit air pollution from U.S. businesses
3. Don’t know (DO NOT READ)
4. Refused (DO NOT READ)
***************************
Question 33b
Number of people = 504
“Some people believe that the United States government should limit the amount of greenhouse gasses thought to cause global warming that U.S. businesses can produce. Other people believe that the government should not limit the amount of greenhouse gasses that U.S. businesses put out. What about you? Do you think the government should or should not limit the amount of greenhouse gasses that U.S. businesses put out?”
Possible answers for 33b…
1. Government should limit air pollution from U.S. businesses
2. Government should not limit air pollution from U.S. businesses
3. Don’t know (DO NOT READ)
4. Refused (DO NOT READ)
******************************
Note that both sets of possible answers are exactly the same and use the word “pollution.” Perhaps this is simply a typo in their pdf document. Perhaps for the second question the possible answers used “greenhouse gasses” instead of the “pollution.”
However, if the word “pollution” was actually used for the possible answers for 33b, then this is a bogus survey.
Best regards,
ClimateSanity
A perspective from the heartland; aka Mainstreet USA:
I can honestly say that no one I know thinks AGW is an issue. With everything else going on, it’s simply not on the radar for most middle class folks. I suspect the attitudes are somewhat different on the west coast and northeast US where some tend to consider themselves more “enlightened” and are more interested in Earth Day, ecofluff kinds of things.
When it became clear that the AGW advocacy machine was a coalition of climate scientists, politicians, and Hollywood celebrities, it lost most of us in the heartland. We are not stupid. We readily see the hypocrisy of the most visible AGW advocates who prescribe draconian changes in lifestyle for the rest of us while they contine clomping about with their huge carbon footprints, i.e. huge homes, private jets, lavish lifestyles, etc. as well as the holding of climate conferences in such places as Bali and Copenhagen. We also do not buy the mitigation of such things through the purchase of carbon offsets.
On the other hand, I and most of the folks I know will consistently support good environmental practices regarding things we consider real issues. Perhaps it could be said that, regarding AGW, we in the heartland tend to be a bit more pragmatic?
@tommoriarty: Well, considering this gem
I attributed the repeated list of answers to a copy & paste error. I am also a little confused as to why questions are listed out of order. I did not spend time counting, but there seem to be some gaps in question numbers as well. Dunno.
“For example, only 9 percent of respondents said they knew about the East Anglia e-mail messages and believed they indicate that climate scientists should not be trusted…”
I think we should believe this and act on it accordingly while there is still time.
Actually they add a third to the mix. Energy restrictions and taxation. 75% of India and China cook and heat with coal, wood or other fires. They want to punish us for lighting a charcoal grill for cooking.
So the created strawman is if you either don’t support rationing, regulation, taxation, you are against clean air and water.
“But people who do not trust climate scientists base their conclusions on their personal observations of nature.” –
that about sums it up.
“For example, only 9 percent of respondents said they knew about the East Anglia e-mail messages and believed they indicate that climate scientists should not be trusted, and only 13 percent said the same about the controversial IPPC reports.”
This tells us more about the media censorship about this issue and the general dumbing down of the American populace.
No doubt far more know who the contestants on American Idol are.
Who knew the IPCC reports were controversial. I thought they reflected incontrovertible scientific truth.
To make sense of polling results, you have to decide that the people or organizations that conducted them present themselves fairly, have a track record, and that the process behind the numbers was likely to yield data that represents the underlying population, usually and in this case (I assume) the resident population of the U.S. Otherwise, the results aren’t worth the time it takes to read them.
The Woods Institute press release says:
“For the Stanford study, the research team analyzed the results of two national surveys. The first was a September 2009 Internet poll of 906 adults, conducted by the polling firm Abt SRBI. …. The researchers found similar results when they analyzed a November 2009 telephone survey of 1,055 adults sponsored by the Woods Institute for the Environment and the Associated Press (AP).”
First check: do the poll’s authors identify themselves and their affiliations fairly?
I gather that the reanalysis was done by the Woods Institute for the Environment, presumably a research organization operated by one or more Stanford University (California) faculty. Publications by faculty-driven research institutes rarely speak for their universities, and this one may include a disclaimer to that effect that I did not see. Analysis that represents the university’s point of view typically come from its administrative departments or include an early affirmation of such a fact.
The assumption that the “Woods Institute for the Environment” speaks for Stanford University because the copyright at the bottom of its home page says “© Woods Institute for the Environment Stanford University. All rights reserved.” (Notice that there are two periods) is easy. The links behind “Woods Institute for the Environment” and “Stanford University” lead to different places though, and nothing on the Institutes “About” page says that it speaks for the university. It’s equally easy to assume that the “Woods Institute” (Palo Alto, CA) is related in some way to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Woods Hole, MA), but I doubt it.
First answer: The Woods Institute for the Environment does not (in my opinion) identify itself and its affiliations fairly, because they do not clearly disclaim easily made mistakes about its relationships. I’m sure the folks at California’s Woods Institute for the Environment can point to the places they’ve made such disclaimers and are careful to correct both mistakes and disclaim any intention to benefit from them. They’d get a better mark in my book if they made both disclaimers clearly and often, which they do not as far as I can tell.
Second check: What is the organization’s track record as a source of polls that represent the U.S. population?
Second answer: None, or not substantial. I’m not familiar with any of the organizations listed (abt SRBI, Woods Institute for the Environment, or the Associated Press) as widely known sources of polls on the environment or any other subject. That’s not to say they do bad work, just that I know of no track record. They not in the same league, for example, as Quinipiac University, a branch of the Connecticutt’s public college and university system that has developed a reputation for polling on political questions.
Third Check: Sampling process: How was the sample chosen? How were non-responses handled?
Both surveys report samples near the magic 1,000 that means the results may represent the underlying population, presumably residents of the U.S., but size is the easy part.
The respondent pool must represent the population (stratified by sex, …), with enough “extras” to account for non-responses (a growing problem that makes polling more difficult and expensive).
The polling process must include a “non-response” algorithm of second chances, replacement by “extras” who do respond, etc.
Third Answer: Not clear. Maybe the samples were carefully chosen and nonresponses followed up, but given my conclusions on the other questions, I didn’t go looking.
I don’t know anything about abt SRBI, but I can’t imagine a way for an internet poll to clear the first hurdle. The response pool is limited to people whose email addresses happen to be in your database or those who visit your site, and choose to participate. What is the chance that such a database has enough demographic information about ‘zapper123’ and friends to say anything about the distribution of characteristics among respondents?
Internet polls aimed at narrower groups (IT professionals of certain types) clear that hurdle with screening questions, but they do not claim to represent the population as a whole.
After assigning less than stellar grades to some important hurdle questions, I didn’t read the poll’s results.
George Brower,
whose comments, opinions, etc. represent only his own views, which have been reviewed by no one. He has no idea whether his views reflect those of his family, colleagues, employer, or anyone else on the planet. They are offered without warranty of any kind in the hope that someone may find them useful.
If the pollsters used local phone numbers in the Stanford area (Palo Alto, SU, Menlo Park, Portola Valley, Los Altos) that would be a random survey of one of the most “liberal” “environmentalist” areas of the far left state. The area skews the data.