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.
PhilinCalifornia says:
November 5, 2010 at 5:30 pm
“Still a long way to go though before it reaches the appalling standards of New Scientist.”
Very true. Difficult to top these days. NS is toast.
I agree that the polling is up the creek.
The first problem is that the options aren’t exclusive. Anybody can choose all or just some. Even when one allows for those selective solar factors recognizing that they should also tick natural, the sums don’t add up at all (just ignore the count of solar) because some respondents probably thought that greenhouse gases also have some effect.
Where’s no way of telling from here how many chose three out of four.
One thing that the poll demonstrates is that SciAm doesn’t know how to construct a poll that produces meaningful results.
Scientific American has really suffered since the loss of Martin Gardner….
His mathmatical games were wonderful.
But sadly, Scientific American has been forced to outsource their mathmatical problems to 2 individuals who, ironically enough, are brilliant in their venue, but their math skills are, shall we say, entertaining.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who discovered ManBearPig, used the same Algorythm for percentages in one of their famous documentaries.
ManBearPig is 50% man, 50% bear, and 50% pig. This new application of percentages is quite useful, though, and we can expect to see it applied by political parties soon.
Anthony…I’d quibble a bit with your heartburn over multiple response questions. I’ve used them in some settings. Yes, you are correct that the poll was sloppy…for example, I looked at the original survey form and the question did not even state “choose as many as you think are relevant” (or something)….the only indication was a check box instead of a radio button (which is the forced choice format)
The summary was very poor. But this is not an election. Yes, it would be horrible to go on the air with something that should add up to 100 percent but doesn’t. My favorite is the cume chart that starts sloping down somewhere in the middle.
If properly explained….like “here’s the percentage of people who find the following factor important in climate change” there is information to be had.
Still better would be for the respondent to assign weights….but that would be hard for survey monkey
For its poll, Scientific American apparently used the same consultant that designed this.
I reject completely the notion that the sun is part of natural variation. The sun is a nuclear device and as such is under strict regulation by the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency to be specific. A considerable number of communities in fact have declared themselves nuclear free zones, though admittedly this was mostly about banning nuclear missiles (hence the signs erected at airports to prevent them from landing). Given the proven, robust, and obvious effectiveness of the United Nations in general (consider the fine work of, for example, of the IPCC, programs like Food For Oil, and the leadership demonstrated in the battle for women’s rights being chaired by Iran) the notion that there is any variability in the sun not carefully monitored and controlled by the UN is just nonsense, and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t understand science. All you have to do to prove it to yourself is look at all the IPCC models that don’t even include solar variation as a variable. If its not in the models, it obviously isn’t a factor. Sheesh, just read the reports! The proof is right there!
Smokey,
Laugh and a half. That’s the new “relativistic” math. But they aim too low. Consider the question of scale as measured by Biggar, Saskatchewan:
http://biggarencyclopaedia.wetpaint.com/
davidmhoffer says:
November 5, 2010 at 10:37 pm
=======================
LOL…….LOL……LOL
Chris
I don’t believe they’ve got the poll questions wrong. The one you point to Anthony asks what the cause of climate change is. I don’t believe anyone on these threads would deny that humans are having some effect on the climate, or that the sun is also having an effect. What this question tells you is that most people admit to there being some climate change from the humans and the sun, but the majority think that the major drivers for climate change are natural events.
Well, one question if I recall correctly asked how much effort/money we needed to devote to stopping climate change.
The last option was ‘Whatever it takes.’
It was the only possible answer – so shrouded in ambiguity since ‘Whatever it takes’ could range from ‘absolutely nothing’ to ten years worth of sackcloth and ashes and abstinence from all that feels and tastes good.
As I write I see Climate Progress’ image capture and the survey results are out of kilter. See the question “3. What is causing climate change?”
Joe Romm’s gif image
Survey results reality 8.51 GMT
To be fair it could be that the decline has since worsened, which it has at the time of my comment.
If you add the ‘human activity’ responses to the ‘natural causes’ responses there is an excess of about 328 which is close to the number of ‘no climate change’ responses….
In the poll question I see:
Then further down the survey page it asks:
This is not a very scientific survey.
Some new titles for Joe Romm:
Freeperman
The Grim Freeper
“Isn’t solar variation a natural process?
-Jay”
Last time I checked, yes. Unless the IPCC has declared otherwise…
That graph at the beginning looks exactly like the the graph for heat absorption of gaseous CO2. Now there’s a coincidence
Watts: “very little thought went into it”? I think they should regard this as Oreskes , or Doran/Zimmerman quality, and therefor publish it in Nature or in Science. 😉
No! Just kidding. My humor is (just like AGW) bottomless…
I’m puzzled why more folk here don’t appreciate the virtues of this poll. Sure, as science it’s a nonstarter. But it does reflect real swathes of public opinion, as one reads them in so many columns of readers’ comments where it’s plain the readers know far more, and are fairer and wiser, than the author of the article did or was. Moreover I think it was done with tongue in cheek. And surely it signals a real move in the skeptics direction from the NS op-eds and Mannian complain-o-logues we’ve seen even recently. Look at what SciAm readers now think:
1. Should climate scientists discuss scientific uncertainty in mainstream forums? (resoundingly )Yes, it would help engage the citizenry.
2. Judith Curry is: (resoundingly) a peacemaker.
3. What is causing climate change? (clearly) natural processes.
4. The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is: (resoundingly) a corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda.
5. What should we do about climate change? (clearly) Nothing, we are powerless to stop it.
6. What is “climate sensitivity”? (good majority) an unknown variable that climate scientists still do not understand.
7. Which policy options do you support? (good majority) keeping science out of the political process.
I’ve been waiting years to see this commonsense returning.
Showing the responses in percentages for that question only shows what fraction (times 100) of the respondents thought that e.g. greenhouse gasses from human activity were a contributing factor. So they do add up to 100%… for each possible response the number who didn’t think that was a contributing factor was 100% – the listed percentage.
It is erroneous that the sum of all of the columns should add to 100% before one can use percentages.
A legitimate criticism might be that the question should have read:
What is causing climate change (select all that apply)?
Clearly there were people who were confused that only one choice was possible.
Carrick says: “It is erroneous that the sum of all of the columns should add to 100% before one can use percentages.”
Your point may be technically correct, but it is extremely misleading if they don’t. First impressions matter – people will look at a column containing a percentage and assume all of the items add to 100%.
When presenting comparisons, results should account for the entire sample. Even if one of the items is something like “no opinion”.
Bernie and sylvian say: “the % simply refer to the % of those responding”
Then there should be two columns containing % agree and % disagree. The bars should be presented in similar fashion. The two will then add up to 100% and the presentation will start to make sense.
I agree with Anthony 110% on this one!
Lucy Skywalker says:
November 6, 2010 at 8:12 am
I’m puzzled why more folk here don’t appreciate the virtues of this poll.
++++++++++++
Agreed, Lucy S.
I think it was a kite flown to see who would show up. Now they know there is a demographic that carries no truck wth their dyed-in-the-paper alarmism that has ruled for so long. The point of keeping it deliberately non-scientific was so the Romms of this world could rightously damn it and from which they could recover easily if it didn’t fly. I have no idea if 5k hits is a good response. They obviously keep track fo the number of re-ups for subscriptions and perhaps they are trying to staunch a bleed with a few alternative climate-medicine pieces. The New Scientist is bound to do the same though will probably take longer to turn things onto a more even keel being in hidebound Great Britain.
Incidentally I visited the Romm site for the first time as a result of this (giving him a WUWT bump) and it was a bizarre experience. I think fulmination is the right word. It was worse than listening to Jerry Falwell. I literally think they do not hear the content of their own sentences. It is also clear, like other warmist sites, they revolve around the axis of WUWT and fear its frequenters and comments mightily.
Just so everyone knows.
A percentage can be based on the number of respondents OR the number of responses; i.e., N = responses or respondents.
When multiple selections are allowed on a poll question, the percentages reported should always be with reference to the number of responses (not respondents) and it should be made clear which it is on each question. What this means is that the percentages should add up to 100% for each question no matter how the question is asked (single response or multiple responses per question).
Now, if the individual percentages don’t add up to 100% for each question, it is an ERROR–usually by the programmer who implemented the poll on the Internet. The person who calculated the statistical percentages obviously used the “number of respondents” as the denominator on each question rather than the number of responses as he/she should have done. It was a common mistake caused by someone who, in a hurry, divided everything by the number of respondents. What is amazing to me is that no one at Scientific American caught the error.
Stupid little people. Don’t they know how to respond to poorly designed surveys in the way they are expected to?
Ideally, you ought to give the percentage giving each response and combination of responses separately.
e.g.
A: 40%
B: 45%
A and B: 10%
Neither: 5%
Instead of:
A: 50%
B: 55%
Although I can’t believe anyone is really taking this seriously.
Didn’t like question 7. I didn’t support ANY of the “policies” but they wouldn’t let me submit the poll without selecting one of the selections. So I selected “keeping science out of the political process.” That of course is the opposite of what I want. We need to get science in and Gore out. But I certainly didn’t support any of the others so that was the least worst selection.