IBD picks up on the SciAm poll WUWT covered here.
Global Warming: Wouldn’t the followers of Scientific American have a pretty good understanding of what’s really going on with the climate? If a reader poll is any indication, they’re skeptical man is heating the planet.
For years we’ve heard that scientists have reached a “consensus” that the earth is warming due to a greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide emissions resulting from man’s use of fossil fuels. No use in discussing it further, Al Gore and others have said. It’s happening.
Not every reader of Scientific American magazine is a scientist. But the responses of the 7,000 readers (6,767 as of Friday morning) who’ve taken the magazine’s online poll strongly suggest that claims of a consensus are, at best, an exaggeration.
More than three-fourths (77.7%) say natural processes are causing climate change and almost a third (31.9%) blame solar variation. Only 26.6% believe man is the cause. (The percentages exceed 100 because respondents were allowed to choose more than one cause on this question.)
Whether climate change is man-caused or natural, most respondents don’t believe there’s anything that can be done about it anyway. Nearly seven in 10 (69.2%) agree “we are powerless to stop it.” A mere one in four (25.7%) recommend switching “to carbon-free energy sources as much as possible and adapt to changes already under way.”
It seems even some of those who would endorse changing energy sources don’t believe the benefits are worth the costs (which indicates they aren’t taking the alarmists’ claims seriously). Almost eight in 10 (79.4%) answer “nothing” to the question: “How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change?”
A small but apparently hard-core 12.3% say they’d be OK with spending “whatever it takes.” Only 4.9% choose “a doubling of gasoline prices” while 3.4% don’t mind paying “a 50% increase in electricity bills.”
That small, but hard, core likely makes up most of the 15.7% who think “the IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is an effective group of government representatives, scientists and other experts.” These holdouts are overwhelmed, though, by the 83.6% who agree the IPCC “is a corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda.”
This isn’t what we expected from the readers of a magazine that Cato’s Patrick Michaels says “has been shilling for the climate apocalypse for years.” Yet we’re not shocked. A new consensus is emerging as the unraveling of the global warming tale picks up speed.
See editorial at IBD here
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Brother, can you paradigm? Thought I would bring out that ol’ chestnut for the occasion.
“who’ve taken the magazine’s online poll”
Really that’s the only part you have to read. Internet polls are entirely worthless.
Bonus points though since WUWT posted a link to the poll and then later posts a link to an article about the poll. Now the people who themselves voted on it can comment and say the result shows their opinion is gaining momentum!
To steal the catchline from a McCain’s fries commercial on UK tv – ‘Its all good…’
Might be interesting to take into account that the poll doesn’t reflect the significant number of people who intentionally dropped their SciAm subscriptions or stopped reading it as a direct result of their skewed reporting and bias on climate, and their clear AGW alarmism.
I’d wager the numbers would be far worse for the warmistas if former readers (such as me) had been included.
A Sky and Telescope article on “The Scream.”:
http://ecommons.txstate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context=physfacp
PDF file.
Ironically it may just be Volcanic activity that puts the final nail in the AGW coffin..
Blizzard in St.Paul Minn as we speak, BTW no, I am not tying it to Volcanoes ..
It would be most interesting to place your face Anthony face to face together with mr Pachauris face and ask the public who is the good guy . I bet you your score would leave the negative score of the IPCC in this poll in the dust .
sharperoo wrote: “Bonus points though since WUWT posted a link to the poll and then later posts a link to an article about the poll. Now the people who themselves voted on it can comment and say the result shows their opinion is gaining momentum!”
——————————————-
ALL polls, not just internet polls, show that” their opinion is gaining momentum.” And that is because it is. The more people find out about the “consensus science,” the less inclined they are to find it persuasive.
Science is not governed with a poll on a website. The “consensus” you hear refers to published literature, the examined evidence, rather than some vote within the scientific community.
“Not every reader of Scientific American magazine is a scientist.” I would agree, in fact I know of very few scientists who actually read it. They prefer journals, as SA is more appropriate for interested people outside of the discipline.
Of course, this poll was open to anyone – people reaching it through a link on blogs, actual readers, etc. Surely you understand this. Polling Americans reveals that nearly half outright reject evolution – is this evidence that the consensus of science with respect to evolution is in doubt? No, because the body of research in the literature overwhelmingly illustrates the veracity of evolutionary theory.
“almost a third (31.9%) blame solar variation.”
So almost a third have obviously bollocks understandings of the climatology. Blaming the sun requires that our measurements of TSI are incorrect, that it is increasing rapidly in the past century rather than cycling with the sunspot cycle, and apparently that CO2 does not induce any radiative forcing. Does this sound like a person with any grasp of basic radiation physics and the actual data, or someone basing their beliefs on soundbytes?
“These holdouts are overwhelmed, though, by the 83.6% who agree the IPCC “is a corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda.””
This illustrates one of two things – that these people believe the IPCC actually does research, rather than summarize it, and thus dismiss literature because they think that the IPCC wrote it, OR, they understand what the IPCC does, but think it misrepresents the literature. The latter would be somewhat correct, because many scientists feel they understate the literature (ie, only including thermal expansion in projections of sea level rise). Of course, this isn’t what they are thinking – they imagine, I suppose, that this is some sort of New World Order group trying to take over.
I’ll keep my dollars for adaptation, which has a million times better odds of survival than handing over my paycheck to King Gore and the Carbon Exchange.
In all fairness, I was able to vote in the poll and I’m not a Scientific American subscriber. I voted because I read about the poll in WUWT. I contributed to the skeptical results. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
It’s fun and entertaining when we skeptics can affect a poll when its creators expect a very different result such as here or in the British Museum poll earlier this year. And it’s embarrassing for the poll creators. But does it really mean anything or reflect reality? No.
Well yes, but if you normalize and smooth the data correcting for urban retreat islands, mainstream media disinformation and funding biases, you clearly see the strong and unquestionable consensus supporting catastrophic anthropogenic CO2-driven climate disruption reemerge. (Trust me on this…)
For Sharperoo:
Even though it was an online poll and therefore subject to gaming, it appears that more skeptics gamed it than believers. Gotta wonder why that happened, eh?
Watch the MSM. They are the co-informers of what they want the consensus to be. The other co-informers of what the consensus will be are the ideologists that shape the curricula in social activism at the ‘progressive’ schools of journalism.
Follow the
moneyideas.John
The “correct” interpretation (spin) of these results is that it shows a need for a massive “education” and media campaign to “enlighten” the obviously ignorant peasants of their fate should they continue to reject the righteous conclusions of the Environmental Illuminati. (sarcoff)
@Doug in Seattle
“it appears that more skeptics gamed it than believers. Gotta wonder why that happened, eh?”
Your question sounds like it’s rhetorical but I have no idea what the answer is supposed to be. Assuming your gaming premise, why did that happen and how does the superior “poll gaming” ability of skeptics reflect well upon them?
Oh there is a consensus all right. Among politicians and bureaucrats. Two of the more worthless species.
So let me get this straight, scientific knowledge is only viable if it has been ‘published’ somewhere?
I wonder what we did before magazines like Science and Nature and all those pompous journals came along? Of course it also leads us to the idea that only ‘real’ scientists can debate and decide on ‘scientific’ concepts. The use of peer review and journals is supposed to aid in the communication and dissemination of ideas not restrict and censor them
No wonder the public are now view science on the same parity as politics and religion.
About time some folk removed their heads from their nether regions and stopped being so elitist.
Nick says:
November 14, 2010 at 8:53 am
Then I guess you believe these kinds of things are “bullocks” too.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoia-ssa011609.php
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find that “scholarly” poll that claimed something like 99.4% of “scientists” agree with the premise of AGW, but I can’t be bothered to look up those old USSR election results either.
I guess thats “bollocks” and not “bullocks”, but the spelling on the latter somehow seems more appropriate.
sharper00 says:
November 14, 2010 at 9:33 am
Your question sounds like it’s rhetorical but I have no idea what the answer is supposed to be. Assuming your gaming premise, why did that happen and how does the superior “poll gaming” ability of skeptics reflect well upon them?
—————————
sharper00,
The so-called skeptics appear more highly mobile, motivated and active than the so-called consensus of late.
Conclude what one will , it looks like politicians and MSM sense it. It looks like the bulk of science is starting to sense it. Clearly the people paying for it (lowly, lowly taxpayers) have long since sensed it.
The next step is for new leadership to emerge to represent the reformed/ renaissance of climate science. I don’t think we will recycle any of the current ‘consensus/settled’ science leadership of the past 20+ years. New blood with new ideas! Wonderful.
John
There is a lot of material for making jokes and cartoons in Global Warming/Clima Change/Climate disruption, etc.,etc.
It has been the most creative era, in human´s history, for the biggest collection of foolishness, stupidity, silliness, in favor of such a weird piece of pseudo science.
It has broken all records!!.
We really wonder How in the world could somebody imagine a more silly argument?
Who was the creator of such a JOKE?; if they planned it to achieve GLOBAL GOVERNANCE, what they got, instead was a GLOBALIZED JOKE:
You name it: From painting roofs with white paint to whatever….
Is there ANYBODY, not being a wide spectrum and full proof FOOL, to believe ANY of these super-silly arguments, without peeing from laughing?
I guess they don´t realize it…..
Now that editorial is worth another shot of Hot Toddy! Hey! I have a cold!
The people who read Sci.Amer. are not the people who read the National Enquirer. I dare say that it’s readership is amongst the better educated portion of the population. This seems to go against the common assertion that the better educated people support the claim of CAGW.
It seems, by this poll, thinking, open minded, educated people have rejected all aspects of CAGW. It seems ideological agenda is required, to enable the many, supporters, of the hypothesis, of CO2 induced CAGW. But then, most of us, already knew that!
This must be a very depressing time, for those, whose main goal is to save the world from the ignorant masses, which are the cause, of all climate and woes. The only comfort, I can offer them, is that “consensus” is irrelevant to science. GK
Nick says:
“Science is not governed with a poll on a website. The “consensus” you hear refers to published literature, the examined evidence, rather than some vote within the scientific community.”
I agree with Nick, science is not governed by a poll on a website, particularly one which permits non-scientists like myself to vote. It does, hoever, show that those who take an interest in science and “climate change” – two almost totally different subjects, since the latter has now become a religion – are not convinced by the AGW agenda.
The trouble is that “published literature” is dependant on the fashion of the day. Go back forty or fifty years and much published literature was predicting the possibility of a new ice age rather than global warming. As testified by numerous blogs, it is very hard for those scientists swimming against the tide to have their work published, except on websites such as WUWT.
The other problem is that much of the”the examined evidence” is dubious. There has still been no convincing explanation by climatologists as to why their favoured tree ring, ice core and lake sediment data are belied by contemporaneous historical records as to the existence of medieval warming and little ice age. Until the proxies match the historic observations the “examined evidence” on which the climate models have been based will remain suspect.
One Example of Many – At the end of the 19th Century the American Press started a War with Spain, very little of the “information” pressed upon the American people was true. They like to do this about every hundred years. Seems to have something to do with the variation in the Solar Cycle.