The results are in, and even though Joe Romm suggested:
“Please click here and freep this poll until the magazine has the decency to take it down.”
He apparently had little effect. I do agree with Joe though, the poll was poorly designed. For example look at this result:
Only one problem, the math for percentages doesn’t add up:
That’s because the poll allowed for more than one answer to some questions. When you do that, percentages then don’t reference properly to 100%.
As I and many others said, it was poorly designed and poorly presented. From my vantage point it looked like very little thought went into it.
That said, the results, while interesting, should be taken with a grain of salt.
I think the SciAm editors were just having a little fun and building some buzz. Online polls are inherently unscientific anyway.
From the Romm viewpoint the current numbers are “worse than we thought” as of his posting. One thread commentator stated: “What happened here is that the deniers posted this poll on a website like WTFUWT and people went in droves and distorted the balance.” However I found the poll and answered it before it was posted here and even before the WUWT effect the results were pretty bad from an alarmist perspective; they just got worse after.
We humans breath out CO2. So do all other animals. Therefore, we and all other animals must die, to “save the planet”.
We are living in an era not matched in history for mass hysteria.
?? solar variation is NOT a natural process?? Where is that study?
“The results, while interesting, should be taken with a grain of salt.”
That statement could apply to myriad aspects of climate ‘research.’
Those grains of salt will come in handy. As seasoning, as the (C)AGW alarmists are slowly roasted over the hot coals…
Hey, they’ve been feeding off the public for decades. Turnabout is fair play. ☺
The first sentence has a fact in error. Judith Curry is at Georgia Tech instead of the University of Georgia. These are who we turn to for scientific facts?
Anthony your criticism of the percentages is misplaced. A few of the questions allowed for multiple answers.
REPLY: May I suggest that you fully read the text? That’s exactly what I said. Then read this definition of percentage
That’s the “cent” in percentage. 100. Lesson: don’t use percentages to show results if they don’t work with adding up to 100.
-Anthony
I can only suggest that the poll was designed by a warmist statistician.
still every body should vote
Yeah – isn’t that the fate fashionable ideas…I guess CAGW is going the way of
love and peace;
pet rocks;
long/short hair/skirts;
immanent ice ages;
hope and change;
fill in the blank with any other silly faddish thought fashion: ________________
The idea of multiple answers doesn’t bother me. Sometimes polls make more sense that way. In the example question that you highlighted, “Natural processes” would include “Solar variation.”
Nevertheless, Scientific American has a long way to go before they regain my confidence.
ClimateSanity
So in other words, it’s worse than we thought?
Anthony – only a GRAIN of salt?
I took the survey and could not complete it untli I had answered ALL questions – so how did the 2 ‘skipped question’ respondees manage that?
There were a couple of questions that I did not like any of the options, eg No5 – ‘What should we do about climate change – as we do affect out local climates through construction, deforestation, etc there are things we can do but the choices to the question are too broad in scope.
It is interesting to see so many opting for ‘Keeping science out of the political process’ as politicians have to be guided by scientists for many of their decisions. The option should have been ‘Keeping POLITICS out of the SCIENTIFIC PROCESS’.
LarryOldimer says:
November 5, 2010 at 1:31 pm
We humans breath out CO2. So do all other animals. Therefore, we and all other animals must die, to “save the planet”.
And cows fart Methane, adding insult to injury. I think, therefore, they must die. I’ll be in linwe for the steaks.
Interesting, indeed. And I’m sure many skeptics refused to take the poll due to the lack of available answers accurately reflecting said skeptics’ views.
But it’s on the internet. It’s gotta be true!
Perhaps this is the latest in Principal Component Analysis? Only the second component is completely included in the third. (That is, unless solar variation is not a natural process.) Anyone choosing the second option should also choose the third. And if you deduct the number choosing option 2 from that of option 3, you do begin to approach 100%. (With characteristic SA accuracy…)
Actually, Anthony, I thought the provision for multiple responses was a strength of this poll. I voted for three of them, because I do believe that both natural process and human agency are involved and I was quire prepared to add solar variability (yes, that too is a natural process and should have been given as an example of natural causes). So the poll did not try to force a false dichotomisation of the causes, which is surely a virtue.
REPLY: I have no trouble with multiple choice, but showing the results in percentages is the wrong way to do it. [per”cent” = fraction of 100] All they needed was the bar graph and totals, or they could have broken up the questions so that the answering process was better defined. – Anthony
Exxon 1,614
Round shiny thing 1,745
James Hansen 3,982
What’s climate? 325
= 7,666
They say 5,258 voted. If we take away solar (because it’s natural) we get 5,921 which should be robust enough to pass Nature’s vigorous peer review process.
Hmm,
So, as a percentage of answers given, we get
21.06
22.77
51.92
4.25
So when attributing climate change, natural variation gets over half. How does such a smart readership put up with that amount of editorial idiocy?
These numbers prove there is a consensus of scientists (readers of Scientific American)
that climate change is caused by natural processes.
-Jay
OMG! Just looked at the whole poll. Yeah it hurts! Hurts from laughing! Doc, this has got to be – – a joke? a ruse? an elitist’s put-on? a con to see the reaction?
but only via serious venues like The New York Times ROTFL!
an effective group of government… OTF – still laughing!
the phrase on which the fate of human civilization hangs My side hurts! Stop!
If it’s not a joke, it is the absolute worse poll I have ever read.
My take on it… 79% of the votes cast agree that “greenhouse gases from human activity” have no influence on the climate.
and in # 7, keeping science out of the political process …
Shouldn’t that be; keeping the political process out of science??
at least as another option?
Alert to Josh!!
SA is going into comedy. Based on their hilarious survey they are serious competition for you.
John