More Durban PR ramp-up, this time from GMU, recycling old news and old claims.
Widespread Public Misperception about Scientific Agreement on Global Warming Undermines Climate Policy Support
FAIRFAX, Va.-People who believe there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about global warming tend to be less certain that global warming is happening and less supportive of climate policy, researchers at George Mason, San Diego State, and Yale Universities report in a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
A recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois found near unanimous agreement among climate scientists that human-caused global warming is happening.
This new George Mason University study, however, using results from a national survey of the American public, finds that many Americans believe that most climate scientists actually disagree about the subject.
In the national survey conducted in June 2010, two-thirds of respondents said they either believed there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether or not global warming is happening (45 percent), that most scientists think it is not happening (5 percent), or that they did not know enough to say (16 percent.) These respondents were less likely to support climate change policies and to view climate change as a lower priority.
By contrast, survey respondents who correctly understood that there is widespread agreement about global warming among scientists were themselves more certain that it is happening, and were more supportive of climate policies.
“Misunderstanding the extent of scientific agreement about climate change is important because it undermines people’s certainty that climate change is happening, which in turn reduces their conviction that America should find ways to deal with the problem,” says Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.
Maibach argues that a campaign should be mounted to correct this misperception. “It is no accident that so many Americans misunderstand the widespread scientific agreement about human-caused climate change. A well-financed disinformation campaign deliberately created a myth about there being lack of agreement. The climate science community should take all reasonable measures to put this myth to rest.”
About George Mason University
George Mason University is an innovative, entrepreneurial institution with global distinction in a range of academic fields. Located in Northern Virginia near Washington, D.C., Mason provides students access to diverse cultural experiences and the most sought-after internships and employers in the country. Mason offers strong undergraduate and graduate degree programs in engineering and information technology, organizational psychology, health care and visual and performing arts. With Mason professors conducting groundbreaking research in areas such as climate change, public policy and the biosciences, George Mason University is a leading example of the modern, public university. George Mason University-Where Innovation Is Tradition.
###
Media Contact: Tara Laskowski, tlaskows@gmu.edu 703-993-8815
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I’ll let Lawrence Solomon speak to the issue of the “…recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois “.
Deceitful claim: 97% of climate scientists think humans contribute to global warming
by Lawrence Solomon December 30, 2010 – 2:35 pm
Original Link:
How do we know there’s a scientific consensus on climate change? Pundits and the press tell us so. And how do the pundits and the press know? Until recently, they typically pointed to the number 2500 – that’s the number of scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Those 2500, the pundits and the press believed, had endorsed the IPCC position. [1]
To their embarrassment, most of the pundits and press discovered that they were mistaken – those 2500 scientists hadn’t endorsed the IPCC’s conclusions, they had merely reviewed some part or other of the IPCC’s mammoth studies. To add to their embarrassment, many of those reviewers from within the IPCC establishment actually disagreed with the IPCC’s conclusions, sometimes vehemently.
The upshot? The punditry looked for and recently found an alternate number to tout — “97% of the world’s climate scientists” accept the consensus, articles in the Washington Post and elsewhere have begun to claim.
This number will prove a new embarrassment to the pundits and press who use it. The number stems from a 2009 online survey of 10,257 earth scientists, conducted by two researchers at the University of Illinois. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers – in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. The ratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.
The two researchers started by altogether excluding from their survey the thousands of scientists most likely to think that the Sun, or planetary movements, might have something to do with climate on Earth – out were the solar scientists, space scientists, cosmologists, physicists, meteorologists and astronomers. That left the 10,257 scientists in disciplines like geology, oceanography, paleontology, and geochemistry that were somehow deemed more worthy of being included in the consensus. The two researchers also decided that scientific accomplishment should not be a factor in who could answer – those surveyed were determined by their place of employment (an academic or a governmental institution). Neither was academic qualification a factor – about 1,000 of those surveyed did not have a PhD, some didn’t even have a master’s diploma.
To encourage a high participation among these remaining disciplines, the two researchers decided on a quickie survey that would take less than two minutes to complete, and would be done online, saving the respondents the hassle of mailing a reply. Nevertheless, most didn’t consider the quickie survey worthy of response –just 3146, or 30.7%, answered the two questions on the survey:
1. When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?
2. Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?
The questions were actually non-questions. From my discussions with literally hundreds of skeptical scientists over the past few years, I know of none who claims that the planet hasn’t warmed since the 1700s, and almost none who think that humans haven’t contributed in some way to the recent warming – quite apart from carbon dioxide emissions, few would doubt that the creation of cities and the clearing of forests for agricultural lands have affected the climate. When pressed for a figure, global warming skeptics might say that human are responsible for 10% or 15% of the warming; some skeptics place the upper bound of man’s contribution at 35%. The skeptics only deny that humans played a dominant role in Earth’s warming.
Surprisingly, just 90% of those who responded to the first question believed that temperatures had risen – I would have expected a figure closer to 100%, since Earth was in the Little Ice Age in the centuries immediately preceding 1800. But perhaps some of the responders interpreted the question to include the past 1000 years, when Earth was in the Medieval Warm Period, generally thought to be warmer than today.
As for the second question, 82% of the earth scientists replied that that human activity had significantly contributed to the warming. Here the vagueness of the question comes into play. Since skeptics believe that human activity been a contributing factor, their answer would have turned on whether they consider a 10% or 15% or 35% increase to be a significant contributing factor. Some would, some wouldn’t.
In any case, the two researchers must have feared that an 82% figure would fall short of a convincing consensus – almost one in five wasn’t blaming humans for global warming — so they looked for subsets that would yield a higher percentage. They found it – almost — in those whose recent published peer-reviewed research fell primarily in the climate change field. But the percentage still fell short of the researchers’ ideal. So they made another cut, allowing only the research conducted by those earth scientists who identified themselves as climate scientists.
Once all these cuts were made, 75 out of 77 scientists of unknown qualifications were left endorsing the global warming orthodoxy. The two researchers were then satisfied with their findings [2]. Are you?
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and the author of The Deniers.
—
[1] http://www.probeinternational.org/ipcc-flyer-low%5B1%5D.pdf
[2] http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/012009_Doran_final1.pdf
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“A recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois found near unanimous agreement among climate scientists that human-caused global warming is happening.”
Technically, I think you would find a majority of readers/participants of this blog would agree with that too. This question really misses the point of the whole debate. it isn’t weather or not CO2 contributes to a warmer planet or not — as I said, most here would agree with that. The point is that we don’t know how much it contributes! We don’t know the sensitivity of climate to a change in CO2.
I don’t think you’ll find THAT question being asked of climate scientists because then they really would find some disagreement.
So what if there is a consensus of 97% of scientists who are wrong. Remember those who stood up and endured total ridicule before being proved correct. Alfred Wegener on continental drift, Dan Shechtman and quasicrystals just this year or any to be found here:
http://amasci.com/weird/vindac.html
There always has to be one or two who challenge and break the consensus to move science forward.
DJ says:
November 21, 2011 at 10:46 am
I believe in climate change. I believe that humans are causing climate change. I believe that humans are causing the climate to warm.
Unfortunately for the GMU claims, I also believe that humans are not at fault for any amount that the climate is changing that makes any measurable or functional difference.
_______
Then what do you base your belief (your words, not mine) that humans are causing climate change on? If you can’t measure it, or see any functional difference, then how would you know it is occurring?
Yeah, yeah, and four out of five dentists who’s patients chew gum, brush their teeth with Cress.
Of course 97% of polled scientists agree to some global warming! Now get them to sign a statement that it is due to CO2 and in particular – Man Made CO2. While your at it include a statement saying such slight CO2 warming is harmful. Our food supply obviously loves it. GK
OMG !!!
New York City will be forced to drink sea water from the ocean flooding up-stream !!!
Cornell University says so !
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/nyregion/climate-change-to-affect-new-york-state-in-many-ways-study-says.html?_r=1&ref=science
Now we know, no?
Now, just when is this supposed to happen…?
Maybe it’ll just be a local phenomenon for New York….
Smokey says:
“CO2 is harmless and beneficial. No one has been able to falsify that testable hypothesis.”
____
This is an incomplete hypothesis. You’ve not stated the conditions, locations, concentrations, atmospheric pressure, temperatures, etc. Certainly, I can raise the CO2 in your body to a level that would kill you Smokey, so that would disprove your “testable” hypothesis. To be truly scientific and “testable” you need to state the conditions for your test, and very accurately define the rather nebulous terms “harmless” and “beneficial”. A world in which atmospheric CO2 levels were at 2000 ppm might be “harmless” and even “beneficial” if you’re a tropical plant, but really bad if you’re a human or even one of the many grain plants like wheat and corn that we need for our food supply.
Careful G. Karst, they said:
“A recent survey of climate scientists conducted by researchers … ”
a tiny subset, not all scientists.
I guess no one has actually read the full Doran thesis? (I have) just the 2 page PDF
Perhaps it’s time for another guest post…
It is comedy gold…. a couple of extracts… (there are very many, sounding very sceptically
(Doran appendi F&G from some of the PARTIPANTS in the survey)
—————————-
I just did your survey on global warming and I just wanted to make a couple of comments as follows:
1. I believe in global warming, both short term (my lifetime) and long term (10,000 years). I also believe in cycles and that someday we will see cooling.
2. I believe that global warming is caused, to at least some degree, by human activity.
3. I am not absolutely convinced, however, that carbon dioxide is the culprit. I think that remains to be proved. Carbon dioxide is complicated
——————————–
I just filled out your survey.
One brief comment. The first question is extremely difficult to answer in a non-pejorative way. Global temperatures before 1800 were highly variable but could not be accurately recorded, the Vikings made it to Greenland because of very warm temperatures at around 1000 AD.
As such, I had a very hard time answering the first question as time was not placed in context. Do I believe that the rate of change in global temperature in the past 40- years is instrumentally
unprecedented …yes! Is human actively associated with this…most likely. Are we polluting…most certainly!!!
I am disturbed by that first question as I very strongly believe that the response that you get will in no way reflect the complexity of how geoscientists view this issue.
———————————-
Just a quick note to give feedback on why I bailed out of the survey.
“Question 1: When compared with pre-1800’s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?” 1800 -> when? Time frames for such comparisons are critical, as there is clearly natural variation that we are trying to separate from an anthropogenic effect. It did not make sense to continue given that none of the allowed responses were valid (this is not a case of ‘no opinion/don’t know’).
This was a very simplistic and biased questionaire. Considering it was aimed at geoscientists, it had no time depth consideration at all, not even the short-range time depth of including the Little Ice Age, let alone the influence of orbital cycles, etc. I’m not sure what you are trying to prove,
What?! 97% of people whose livelihoods depend on the AGW research funding pipeline believe that AGW is real? Shocker!
Next you are going to tell me that 97% of ExxonMobil employees drive cars powered by gasoline engines…
sorry for typo’s dashed off quickly, as children’s bedtime..
the ‘Doran’ (97% scientists) thesis is about 150 pages long, and the feedback from the scientists that participated, makes them sound like a bunch of sceptics!
George Mason University finds that a large percentage of the population is engaging the “Appeal to Authority” fallacy when reasoning about the topic of Global Warming.
Rather than educate the public about logical fallacies, and provide advice on valid methods of reasoning, George Mason University chooses instead to reinforce the fallacious reasoning and exploit the naivite of the population for political gain.
This is “a leading example of a modern public university”.
A real scientist would disagree with the term ‘global’
when applied to ‘warming’
because it implies the entire globe warmed
when a third of the globe (mostly southern oceans)
got colder.
A real scientist would say that
some regions SEEM to have had minor warming
but the temperature network is too crude
to measure it accurately enough
to be alarmed about anything.
A real scientist would point out
that ‘global average temperature’
is thermodynamically meaningless,
a pointless exercise in statistical fluff.
R. Gates says:
November 21, 2011 at 11:42 am
I can light a match and the climate impact is there. I can plow a field or pave a highway and the climate will change. It has to, because for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction, and we live in the “climate”. Will some of those things offset each other? Probably. Will some be additive? Probably. Will they cause some “tipping point”? I really doubt it–the earth has seen, for example, far higher CO2 levels or much more ice cover than we currently have, and here we are without any “tipping point’. And that’s all DJ is saying (and you don’t need some computer running at jiggahertz speed on some contrived climate model to tell you that–it’s all just common sense). Will you make some logical point about it? I’ve yet to see it.
(You’re not becoming a skeptic, are you R? That would be unprecedented!)
What GMU is really saying is they have to change their Ad Company. The old gecko is no longer working.
A recent survey suggested 100% agreed god existed , given their the ‘experts ‘ and given they all agreed, God most therefore exist . Or perhaps its not that simply ?
Meanwhile here is some basic maths , to know what percentage a sub-group is of the whole group you have to know the whole group size as well as the sub-group size . As yet there is NO research that tell us the size of the group called ‘scientists ‘ climate or otherwise, therefore you can not say what percentage any number of people represents as you don’t know the whole group size .
So next time you see this claim being made , simply ask them for the research to provides the data on the number of scientists.
“A world in which atmospheric CO2 levels were at 2000 ppm might be “harmless” and even “beneficial” if you’re a tropical plant, but really bad if you’re a human or even one of the many grain plants like wheat and corn that we need for our food supply.”
False, humans would do quite fine at those concentrations and all plant-life on this planet would idealy be at around 2000PPM. Wheat, corn etc all grow much better under those levels, need less nutrients, grow faster, need less sunlight, and need less water.
So what is there that is bad about CO2 at that level?
But yet, you might have a point that at some point too much of a good thing might not be good.
Heck, water can kill you, so lets ban that while we are at it, right Rgates?
Ban di-hydrogen monoxide TODAY! Let me give you a hint on this just to help you along. The correct application of the pre-cautionary principle forbids its own application! It is a simple logical fallacy to ever use and to use such platititudes as “well we are adding more CO2 and it must be bad” is such bad science as to just be laughable.
If you really want to figure out the truth on this subject, go back to square one and learn about the basics of CO2. That is what most of us sceptics did when we figured out the that there were logical and reasoning fallacies in the entire AGW theory in the first place. And after you apply the basics you come up with such a terrible house of cards to be just laughable.
Indeed, if humanity has had a measurable impact on temperatures why haven’t we seen a tropospheric hot spot that get HOTTER as CO2 concentrations rise? Indeed, that is your missing link and it will remain missing as we continue to “fail to warm” due to such a terrible theory that forgot the first steps in the scientific theory which of course is to invalidate the null hypothesis.
just the usual out of date cant,
Mr Watts
I am submitting a short ‘paper’ for your estimable bloggers peer review.
subject to the normal critisims and corrections i intend to subit it to the IPCC.
THE PLEADING ROSE
I am a vivid flowering rose,
delighting eye and balm to nose,
i thrive on heat and morning dew
but most of all on Co2.
so please dont limit it the nigh
or elso i will just wilt and die,
i grow in rain and sun from skies
and gas to photosynthesize.
i’m not a scientist like you
with mega grants and peer review,
please explain to a plant like me
the workings of IPCC,
can it be wise to stop the clock
then turn it back to an epoch,
when i was cold and half this size
true scientists helped me hybridize.
all those airmiles and pulp from trees
to promulgate those treatise,
designed to spread alarm and fear
of a trace gas which i hold dear,
your past deliberations show
if you were honest – ‘you dont know’,
what future tempreatures will be
i hope it’s warmer – just for me!
perhaps you could add a poetery section to your cartoons/humour section above?
plenty more MMGW doggerel where this comes from
regards
Pat Healy.
R. Gates says:
November 21, 2011 at 11:42 am
“Then what do you base your belief (your words, not mine) that humans are causing climate change on? If you can’t measure it, or see any functional difference, then how would you know it is occurring?”
Simple. Humans are emitting greenhouse gasses which includes altering atmospheric water content. Humans are also adding to atmospheric aerosol content. Those factors do contribute to climate, hence climate “change”. The question that remains unanswered is exactly how much, and what is the net sign. I will concede a small flaw in my statement about functional difference, but that cuts to UHI, and not the principle issue we’re really discussing here, which is CO2.
But you’re asking about my beliefs and my proofs.
You yourself are clever at warping the words. Note I said “believe”, and you acknowledge that where you say “belief”. I don’t need proof to say belief.
R. Gates says:
November 21, 2011 at 11:53 am
A world in which atmospheric CO2 levels were at 2000 ppm might be “harmless” and even “beneficial” if you’re a tropical plant, but really bad if you’re a human or even one of the many grain plants like wheat and corn that we need for our food supply.
==============================================================
Gates, why didn’t you just shoot your whole wad, go for broke, and claim CO2 levels of 40,000 ppm?
What we grow for wheat and corn have absolutely nothing to do with the original wheat and corn..you know that.
We will just develop new strains of wheat and corn, just like we have in the past, and just like we are doing right now……………….More than likely much more productive strains
Cherry picking the data for the “right” answer. Just like the hockey stick!
97% of every group is likely to believe that their group is right.
I’d also bet real money that 97% of leftists believe Dubya was a horrible President (the remaining 3% believe he was never President at all, what with the hanging chads…)
On the face of it, the entire item from GMU is complete and total crap, a painfully transparent attempt to make people believe something that just isn’t true. Your 97% might very well believe something, but the overwhelming number of scientists in other, related disciplines saying otherwise can’t be ignored.
On the other hand, the GMU item is accomplishing its goal: convincing the uneducated, the ignorant, and those who just don’t care enough to find out the reality.
“Misunderstanding the extent of scientific agreement about climate change is important because it undermines people’s certainty that climate change is happening, which in turn reduces their conviction that America should find ways to deal with the problem,” says Edward Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University.
Well that is well into ” He would say that” territory which is the nub of the issue. On what basis do we trust the witnesses?
It is the presence of the Edward Maibach’s and his ilk that are the problem. By his job title, he simply appears to be a propagandist like Al Gore and all the others.
This caught my eye:
“Mason provides students access to diverse cultural experiences”
Does Mason also provide diverse views on climate change?
Does anyone happen to know what concentration of CO2 is reached in, let’s say, a crowded theater, or a den with six adults hyper-excited and watching football for hours, or a convention center by humans merely breathing. I’d be very curious just what actual high levels of CO2 we commonly “survive” every single day.