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.
Sorry Anthony, I was out of line to even suggest that you might be hiding something. I just want to see your study so badly that I’m getting frustrated. But I should remember that the reality is that things often go much slower than it seems like they should.
[REPLY – Patience . . . ~ Evan]
Anthony, I doubt Joe Romm wanted it taken down because it was “poorly designed”.
No, I’m just glad that “solar variation” at 33.2% and “natural processes” at 74.7% add up to 107.9%!
If the “warmers” can play with numbers, why can’t Scientific American?
So much for Scientific American. A clear demonstration of their scientific prowess.
What will we see next? A big article on how the earth is warming and we are all going to die?
Oops, they already did that.
Bob
8. How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change?
nothing 77.5% 4,215
muahahaha! And that’s the truth of it. 😉
I imagine the numbers are homoginized. What you need to see is the raw data and the code used to calculate the results.
I wouldn’t worry too much about the stats. I’d just see it as saying:
1. No-one thinks there is no climate change. Good, because that’s true.
2. There’s far more folks thinking climate change is natural or solar in nature than AGW. Good, because that’s the most likely long-term truth from the scientific data currently out there.
There’s no need for this nitpicking.
The results are the way you want them.
So why nit pick?
Isn’t ‘solar variation’ a member of the set ‘natural influence’?
Scientific American has fallen a long, long way.
I thought it was a fun, entertaining set of questions.
The thing I thought was the most entertaining was trying to figure out the mindset of the crew that thought up both the questions and the possible responses.
That mindset was clearly bizzare.
How can you be sure that loads of Joe Romm’s readers did not accept his advice?
Perhaps the majority of his readers only go there for a laugh!
Mindbuilder says:
November 5, 2010 at 2:44 pm
Hi Mindbuilder,
I don’t know if you’re worked with peer-reviewed journals in the past, but often times things move at a pretty slow pace. You submit the manuscript, things get processed in a couple days or weeks, then they get sent out for review where they often sit on a prof’s computer or desk for months before getting looked at. It’s a slow process. I work in a “fast” field, so I’ve had papers published online in ~2 months, but I’ve also sent them to other journals where even the first reviews didn’t come back for several months.
I can’t imagine how much longer it’ll take for a manuscript like the surface stations one to get reviewed. All it takes is one reviewer (or editor) who doesn’t like it to drag out the process to well over a year, even if the majority of the paper is fine. And the more feathers you ruffle, the longer it takes. Unless you’re lucky, the only way to get a paper through faster is to publish something that doesn’t upset anyone, and that’s not going to happen with the surface stations work.
-Scott
actually, aside from the labels on the graph, I’d say that multiple answers is a good polling structure for a question like this. Perhaps “Respondents answering positively” and “percent of respondents answering positively” would have caused less confusion.
Gotta be encouraged by the results, all the same.
I had to look up freep:
http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=0bB&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&channel=s&defl=en&q=define:freep&sa=X&ei=YZDUTNKBGcbQ4gbu9vjrBw&ved=0CBQQkAE
“To subject to a mass internet or email assault aimed at pushing a particular point of view”
Disturbing to learn that google is now also a dictionary. Sadly not surprising that Romm was encouraging such childish tomfoolery.
Please add the definition to the article.
Here’s the latest at 0035 hrs GMT+1:
“What is the IPCC (paraphrased)?
An effective group of government representatives, scientists and other experts. 17.0% 948
A corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda. 82.3% 4,580
Something to do with Internet protocols. 0.7% 37”
Well, all I can say is that we are not all barmy.
Anthony:
I see no problem with the summary of the results as %s. As I am sure you recognize, for questions with multiple responses, the % simply refer to the % of those responding not of all responses. The summary of the results should also separately display the results for those who identified one, two, three of the apparently four options. It would be interesting to know the % of people who attributed the perceived warming to solely greenhouse gases and those who perceived no role for greenhouse gases.
REPLY: Well perhaps it is just the TV reporter in me, but we had a cardinal rule in the newsroom that ANY graphics that went to air or to web using a percentage had to be checked so that there was no math error or entry error and it all added up to 100%. This was particularly true of election season where we might have six candidates for one office and if the % figures didn’t all add up to 100, we’d get calls from all over the place.
I remember well a math teach from a local school calling up and berating one of the neophyte reporters once for just such a gaffe. The poor girl was in tears.
So from my perspective in presenting stats to the public, any graphic where the % of items doesn’t add up to 100% is just asking for trouble. I figure if you design a poll that allows such an presentation “error” to be automatically generated, you need a better poll design. This is the root of the issue here. – Anthony
It is always difficult and dangerous to read too much into a poll like this. Many who are apathetic to climate change would not bother to vote. If one is apathetic, this is generally because you have doubts and are not a card carrying believer.
Obviously solar variations is part of natural variation. The difference being that many drivers behind natural variation are not known still less understood (indeed how can you understand something that you do not know about). Solar variation is simply one of the known natural drivers in the all embracing term ‘natural variation’.
Simplistically, the poll suggests a split of about 30/70 believe that climate change is anthropogenic, or put another way, approx 70% of responders do not consider climate change to be manmade. If so, that shows support in manmade climate change to be weakening when compared to other polls over the last 18 months or so. Good news indeed.
Support for the theory will further decline should we have another cold winter in the Northern Hemisphere, and also in circumstances where people are struggling to make ends meet in the light of the western world recesssion and finding that their pain is increasing due to their energy bills going up by 10% because of green subsidies and holiday/air travel tax increasing. For a family, the rises in air travel tax in the UK will add between £70 to £300 on the price of a holiday. When disposal income is reduced, inevitably one questions these matters more.
Further, slowly (perhaps I should say very slowly) the tone of reporting of events is changing. Today, the BBC ran a lengthy weather report (I did not see all of it) commenting on world wide weather events. It talked about record highs in Japan and wet weather in Mexico and said that this was all part of El Nino La Nina cycles!! There was no mention of manmade Global warming. They reported that this year was a very active hurricane season in the Atlantic with 17 named storms (earliest hurricane and first time 2 cat 4 storms had developed at the same time). Again this was attributed to El Nino (not AGW) and further they even said that this was not a record year, the record year being 2005 with 28 named storms. As I say I did not see the whole bulletin so may be there were AGW scares but what I saw was more objective.
I think that many in the AGW camp see the real possibility of many years of cooler weather ahead, and realise that this will cause them real difficulties unless they tone down their message. I fully expect them to say that natural variation can for a limited period mask the effects of manmade factors such as increasing CO2, but despite this the underlying trend is still that temperatures are going up such that when the natural variations are less influential, AGW will come back and bite us.
that poll must be wrong!
Reuters: Despite Electoral Outcomes, Poll Shows Voters Want Clean Economy
By Elizabeth McGowan at SolveClimate
Those findings come from a survey of 1,000 voters who actually cast ballots in 83 battleground House districts nationwide. Washington, D.C.-based Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted the poll Nov. 1 and 2.
When voters who chose the Republican candidate were asked to name their biggest concern about the Democrat, only 1 percent cited an answer related to energy or cap and trade…
“There was no mandate on turning back the clock on environmental protection,” said Heather Taylor-Miesle, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund. “Polls galore show continued and strong public support for making continued progress to protect our health and boost our economy.”…
As well, 55 percent of those polled supported a comprehensive energy bill that charges energy companies for carbon emissions but also would limit pollution, invest in domestic energy sources and encourage companies to develop clean energy…
By a 22 percent margin, battleground voters supported the idea of the Environmental Protection Agency tackling global warming by regulating carbon emissions from power plants, vehicles, factories and other sources. The poll showed 58 percent supported the EPA taking such initiative and 36 opposed the idea….
“As sure as the sun rises in the East, America is going to continue moving forward on the clean energy economy and strong environmental protection,” said Anna Aurilio, director of Environment America’s Washington office, about the poll’s results. “The next Congress will have to decide if it is going to be responsive to science, innovation and public support or if it will simply focus on payback to Big Oil and the polluter lobby that funded so many of its campaigns.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS253311316220101105
look – even small business wants action!
June 2010: New Poll Finds Strong Support for Clean Energy Policies Among Small Business Owners
A new bi-partisan poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and American Viewpoint found strong support among small business owners for clean energy and climate legislation…
•61 percent of small business owners agree that moving the country to clean energy is a way to restart the economy and help small businesses create jobs…
http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/06/new-poll-finds-strong-support-for-clean-energy-policies-among-small-business-owners.html
even the Japanese want action!
2009: Reuters: Japanese voters want tough climate goals – survey
WWF and other Japanese and international organisations — which all favour tough climate goals — commissioned the poll of 976 people by U.S.-based Greenberg Quinlan Rosner from May 16 to 25…
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L21005040.htm
surely Sci-Am should get Greenberg Quinlan Rosner to design their next poll.
Re Mikes comments on Rachael Maddow:
I have to agree. We should put our complete trust in an admitted leftist, sexually confused anchorperson on CNN!
Does anyone here try to get a comment published over at Climate Progress? I see almost ZERO contrarian views in their comments section.
I didn’t renew my subscription about a year ago.
Still a long way to go though before it reaches the appalling standards of New Scientist.
Since Nature caused mankind to come about, isn’t “anthropogenic” global warming also coming from natural processes?
You might be familiar with the legal reasoning where the maker of a defective device gets the blame for harm the device does rather than the device itself. Yup, old Joe Romm is going to keep at it until Nature regrets not issuing a voluntary recall. He’ll keep going until he gets one too! ☺
Those must have been adjusted numbers!
The math isn’t so bad since people were free to give more than one answer.
The % is based on the people answering the question, and is not based on the number of answer to the question.
I have not read all comments.
Lemonick must enjoy special privileges at SciAm; self-promotion of his article, by engaging a Monkey to offer a ´survey´ even more drivel-ous than his original effort. I agree, Anthony, ¨From my vantage point it looked like very little thought went into it.¨
so THAT’S how GISS does it….