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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eadler says:
November 15, 2010 at 7:45 am
Nope, sorry. The correct answer was “all the above” which was selected by 13% including me. Climate sensitivity is the surface temperature response to a change in greenhouse gases, it’s a variable whose value is unknown, and the fate of the world hinges upon it.
[SNIP – violation of site policy – wtf@fu.com is not a valid email address. the fu.com domain is in Arlington, VA and your comment originates at The University of Reading, UK., until you use a valid email address, all of your comments will be discarded – Anthony]
Interesting is that now that SciAm published an uncharacteristically non-scientific opinion piece (about Judith Curry) which actually displays skeptics in a positive light, that WUWT readers start throwing mudd at the journal… What’s up with that ?
Also interesting is that some of the respondents here (for example DJ Meredith and G.Karst) blindly accepted Anthony’s false assertion that this poll reflected the opinion of SciAm readers. Even after Nick pointed out that the poll was open to all internet users.
I think that this misleading post, as well as the mudd-throwing from WUWT readers here and on other ‘skeptics’ blog sites are a strong indication that readers here may be driven more by group thinking and preconceived beliefs, and accepting Anthony’s messages without question, rather than engage in critical thinking by themselves.
Rob,
Obviously a non-scientifically conducted online poll where there is no control on the demographics of those queried doesn’t accurately reflect the true numbers. What it does show is that the grand noble cause of CAGW has lost its power (if it ever had it) to engage and mobilize the citizenry. If there were heaps of green true believer page views at Sci Am then the poll would have been overwhelming positive towards AGW.
The skeptics are killing the true believers in the theatre of public opinion. We already know this from the page view statistics for climate related websites. Likewise, Cap ‘n Trade isn’t dead because Obama thinks it will help get him re-elected. Nor did the Chicago Carbon Exchange close because of market demand was so hot.
We may also deduce that the skeptics are far more passionate than the CAGW true believers. Which is ironic, given that the CAGW true believers are suppose to be saving the planet from an apocalypse, while all most skeptics really want is climate science performed by proper scientific methods. Most skeptics came to the climate debate with open minds capable of changing with the hard evidence. There is really no single great histrionic crusade like saving the planet to unite or motivate the skeptics, just rational fidelity to honest science.
As for the claim someone made that the consensus is in the peer-review journals not what the stupid hoi polloi believe. He conveniently omits that climategate exposed naughty climate scientists excluding papers from the literature that worked against the consensus. So the peer-reviewed consensus is as dubious as an online poll.
Perhaps part of the unpopularity of the CAGW meme is due to the odious sense of moral superiority oily CAGW evangelists secrete where ever they go.
Not true Rob!
I believe I said polls are irrelevant to science.
The only polls that affect climate, are the two poles of the planet. The rest is merely a high school popularity contest.
If you have data indicating this poll was not SciAm reader participated, please post it! GK
Wes George wrote :
“…..climategate exposed naughty climate scientists excluding papers from the literature that worked against the consensus.”
OK. Name a couple of papers that “naughty” scientists excluded from “the literature”.
Just ONE paper for starters, so that we can analyse the science in there and check why it was not accepted.
Regarding your assertions that ‘skeptics’ (I would say “media egos”) are winning the hearts and minds of the public, may I remind you that science is not a democracy.
So show the “better” science that supposedly was suppressed “excluded” by these “naughty” scientists, and we may have a discussion.
Remember that public opinion does not affect the outcome of this global experiment (of emitting a trillion ton of CO2 into this planet’s atmosphere).