When hockey stick creator Dr. Michael Mann responds to valid questions about his science by blocking the person asking the questions as well as deleting them so that others can’t see them, is it really any surprise that distrust of climate scientists is on the rise?
From Stanford University
Support for climate change action drops, Stanford poll finds
The drop was concentrated among Americans who distrust climate scientists.
By Rob Jordan (Stanford)
The study found that, overall, the majority of Americans continue to support many specific government actions to mitigate effects of global warming.
Americans’ support for government action on global warming remains high but has dropped during the past two years, according to a new survey by Stanford researchers in collaboration with Ipsos Public Affairs. Political rhetoric and cooler-than-average weather appear to have influenced the shift, but economics doesn’t appear to have played a role.
The survey directed by Jon Krosnick, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, shows that support for a range of policies intended to reduce future climate change dropped by an average of 5 percentage points per year between 2010 and 2012.
In a 2010 Stanford survey, more than three-quarters of respondents expressed support for mandating more efficient and less polluting cars, appliances, homes, offices and power plants. Nearly 90 percent of respondents favored federal tax breaks to spur companies to produce more electricity from water, wind and solar energy. On average, 72 percent of respondents supported government action on climate change in 2010. By 2012, that support had dropped to 62 percent.
The drop was concentrated among Americans who distrust climate scientists, even more so among such people who identify themselves as Republicans. Americans who do not trust climate science were especially aware of and influenced by recent shifts in world temperature, and 2011 was tied for the coolest of the last 11 years.
Krosnick pointed out that during the recent campaign, all but one Republican presidential candidate expressed doubt about global warming, and some urged no government action to address the issue. Rick Santorum described belief in climate change as a “pseudo-religion,” while Ron Paul called it a “hoax.” Mitt Romney, the apparent Republican nominee, has said, “I can tell you the right course for America with regard to energy policy is to focus on job creation and not global warming.”
The Stanford-Ipsos study found no evidence that the decline in public support for government action was concentrated among respondents who lived in states struggling the most economically.
The study found that, overall, the majority of Americans continue to support many specific government actions to mitigate global warming’s effect. However, most Americans remain opposed to consumer taxes intended to decrease public use of electricity and gasoline.
Rob Jordan is the communications writer for the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
Media Contact
Jon Krosnick, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: krosnick@stanford.edu, (650) 725-3031
Rob Jordan, communications, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: rjordan@stanford.edu, (650) 721-1881
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Here’s the survey in PDF form: http://woods.stanford.edu/docs/surveys/GW-Policy-Trend-2010-2012-1.pdf
It is a disgrace that climate scientists, and their pseudoscience, are damaging public confidence in real science.
I speak as a real scientist who totally disgusted by them!
It is almost like the mafia pretending to be good citizens but everyone knows that they are hoodlums.
I like to think skeptics had something to do with the decline in polls, but the warmists have been their own worst enemies. Their tactics have been so “bald faced” propaganda and their science declarations, so obviously misleading and devious, that the public vomited. I have been waiting for a demand for “comeuppance” for some time. GK
It is as well that trust in science is dropping. Scientists are men, not gods, and sometimes we need to be reminded of that.
When scientists are properly skeptical, the amount jof good they can do is awesome. That fact will eventually be reaffirmed.
I remain horrified that most Americans STILL believe that the foundation of life (CO2) is a pollutant and that temperatures associated with increased biodiversity need to be “mitigated.”
HMMMmmmm, I can not say I am really thrilled with their idea of a survey. It had som trickyness to it.
One question was:
This is listed as an also ran “minority view” (how good is the survey in sampling the real population?)
Another question was:
however it is reported as
Now I would call that a bit tricky, but this one is worse.
I am very much in favor of hydroelectric but not large scale wind, and solar power so how the heck do I answer that question?
And this last is fraud in my view. It is not a poll question and therefore the topic should have been left “unreported” Heck why didn’t they ask THAT question about trust first!
Why combine the democrats and independents?
Mann is losing the PR war as well as the facts.
Apart from MAYBE in the Arctic (see also soot, wind, currents, natural oscillations), what other effects? Where is the evidence? Emperor penguins double than previously thought? Polar bear numbers up since the 1950s? Antarctica? Declining rate of sea level rise? Global malaria declining? Droughtflood in Australia. UK droughflood? It’s just the climate doing its thing with very little assistance from the trace gas co2. Look to airport tarmacs and lying climate scientists for ‘evidence’ global warming.
Lady Life Grows says:
May 8, 2012 at 3:46 pm
….I remain horrified that most Americans STILL believe that the foundation of life (CO2) is a pollutant and that temperatures associated with increased biodiversity need to be “mitigated.”
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A rotten education system with no real science, math or logic taught coupled with living in cities and Dr. Spock has produced a couple generations who can not even tie their shoes.
It’s called climate change – because the climate always changes and it always has done. As for Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming – it’s “just a thing of the past.” Why is it no longer mentioned as loudly as before? Answer = it’s a scam, reach for your wallets.
I know that there’s something wrong with this poll. In contrast, a reputable Pew poll showed that only 19% of Republicans believe in man-made GW: http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/01/modest-rise-in-number-saying-there-is-solid-evidence-of-global-warming/ (you need to dig in the fine print to find that 19% number).
So how can ~ 50% of Republicans support climate change action — when only 19% of Repubs believe in AGW? It’s impossible. Something about the poll is fishy. As a Republican, I can tell you, hardly any (close to zero) Repubs support action to mitigate climate change. Do others here agree with me on that?
And lets not let this be a justification for Romney to take up climate change again. Or to nominate for VP that rotund RINO climate change spouter NE Gov Chris Christie.
as some of u may know, the Melbourne Theatre Company in Australia is presenting “The Heretic” by English playwright, Richard Bean, which has a CAGW sceptic edge (Bishop Hill covered it when it played at the Royal Court Theatre in England):
9 May: Andrew Bolt: On being abused by Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics
Former Greens candidate Professor Clive Hamilton is furious:
Who would have thought the Melbourne Theatre Company would get into bed with Andrew Bolt?…
Yet in response to the MTC staging a play with the sceptic as a hero, Hamilton lets fly with a truly extraordinary stream of abuse:
…discredited … rat-bags … denier .. conspiracy theorists … fossil-fuel industry hatchet men … cyber-bullies … shit-spreaders … shock jocks … bullshit … insidious … grubbier … distortion … cowardly … artistic wanking … poison … slippery falsehoods … travesty.
Wow. You’d laugh at the hypocrisy – this very epitome of the rabid shock-jockery Hamilton imagines in his foes – if Hamilton didn’t also stoop to the most vicious smearing of the playwright:
Perhaps Richard Bean’s next project will be The Heretic 2, another “funny, provocative and heart-warming family drama” in which the maverick academic David Irving, lone defender of the truth, uncovers definitive evidence that the Holocaust never happened. Sent to Coventry by his fellow historians — a spineless lot who have for years been manipulating the evidence to protect their funding and their reputations — David is in the end vindicated; the Holocaust was a Zionist plot after all…
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/ormer_greens_candidate_professor_clive_hamilton_is_furious/
“Do you favor or oppose the federal government giving
tax breaks to companies that burn coal to make
electricity if they use new methods to put the air
pollution they generate into underground storage areas
instead of letting that air pollution go up the
smokestacks at their factories?
Favor 62.3% 58.5%
Oppose 34.4 36.9”
With highly dishonest questions like these favoring the CAGW cause, the numbers in favor of such policies, although dropping, are still much higher than they would ordinarily be.
Similarly, many people may see nothing wrong with the government requiring or bribing with taxpayer money car manufacturers to build cars which have better mileage, or with requiring them to make electric cars (though support for that is a bit lower):
“Building cars that use less gasoline
Require by law or encourage with tax breaks 78.1% 65.1%
Stay out of entirely 21.6 33.0”
Would they be as supportive, though, if they knew that such policies inevitably mean moving in the direction of socialism, and that in exchange for higher-mileage cars they will almost certainly have to sacrifice in the areas of the car’s weight, meaning its size choice of materials, and in safety? I highly doubt it.
Very interesting. We poll our electric consumers regularly regarding their preferences for different generation resources and find that any survey that doesn’t ask the complementary question of cost is quite irrelevant. Most people will tell you they want an electric supply with zero emissions, but then overwhelmingly respond with a tolerable price increase in the order of 0 to 5%.
Still, looking at the trend given such a biased questionnaire I’m encouraged. I’ll bet an unbiased survey would show at least twice the decline.
@Oatley. “I’ll bet an unbiased survey would show at least twice the decline.” Yes, this bogus poll is definitely hiding the decline.
Without any information regarding the poll structure and sample, my first reaction is suspicion that there is bias in both sampling and the form of the questions. Pollsters need to show that they are not “push polling”.
The poll must be wrong. Everybody who has read Chris Mooney’s work about the defectiveness of the republican brain knows that liberals and independents must show the absolute opposite behaviour. Probably Tea Partiers have posed as liberals to distort the results. /sarc
Chuck Nolan says:
Why combine the democrats and independents?
Good eye, Chuck! I would guess that the author is a Democrat and would like to think that Independents are going to vote for his guys.
Chuck Nolan says:
May 8, 2012 at 4:14 pm
“Why combine the democrats and independents?”
Because the purpose of the poll was to single out and slam the Republican party. If they had the Independents as a separate category and they largely agreed with the Repubs, it would have made the Dems look bad (i.e. the fringe minority viewpoint).
These polls, much like Climate Science, are little more than propaganda campaigns. And it doesn’t matter which side of political fence (left or right) the pollsters are on.
Yeah, hide the decline! (In the dropping level of interest by independents.)
Politicians, with their policy-relevant research requirements, bear the majority blame.
Catastrophists, not the catastrophes, are what we must fear.
As CERTAIN climate scientists chose to abandon scientific methodology and reason for faith based advocacy and dogmatic zealotry it should come as no surprise that people no longer trust them .
As an independent, I find it offensive to be grouped with Democrats like that. Generally, I don’t like federal gov’t to decide (regardless of which party) of what we should do, etc but I tend to find Republicans more tolerable. At least where I live.
Not sure about the chart at the start of this blog. It appears more than 100% of folks, republican or democrat/independents, believe scientists can be trusted and distrusted.
Or maybe I am just sleepy.
‘The Stanford-Ipsos study found no evidence that the decline in public support for government action was concentrated among respondents who lived in states struggling the most economically.’
Now that’s interesting. Without any further information as to what they mean by ‘struggling economically’-typically vague-I’m going to guess that maybe because there was no decline in public support for government action might just be the reason
those states continue to struggle.
I will recant my last post. I think I see the error of my ways. That aside, looking at the poll results, it appears folks are quite stupid. Asked if they support raising taxes on electricity or gasoline to promote green, they are against it overwhelmingly, no matter the political affiliation. But if the government is to spend money to promote green agenda, they seem good with it. One effects the pocketbook directly, the other apparently others pocketbooks. Yes we are in trouble.
ROTFL…….where did they find Republicans that would not only do some stupid phone survey, but give out their address so they could receive a $10 gift certificate?
Republicans don’t survey…..they hang up
Gail Combs says:
May 8, 2012 at 3:59 pm
“A question measuring trust in climate scientists was included in the 2010 survey. It asked: “How much do you trust the things that scientists say about the environment – completely, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, or not at all?” However, this question was not asked in the 2012 survey. Therefore, we constructed a measure of trust for respondents in both years using the following method.”
******
They must have used tree ring proxy data for the 2012 bit.
Would that also include ‘education’ on finance, and how our financial system works, the logic and use of fractional reserve banking for instance? And how our banking system actually came together as opposed to relying on G. Edward Griffin’s conspiracy-based fabrication “The Creature from Jekyll Island”?
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I don’t think it shows so much a distrust in scientist as a distrust in the the sciecobable that has been generated in the guise of science…and then used by others to further a political (read “power over others”) agenda.
(On another thread someone alluded to The One (tree) Ring to Rule Them All. They didn’t quite put it that way, but I Ioved it.8-)
I think that the mantra of global warming is excellent for obtaining research monies. In every begging letter I send to the respective authorities for reseach cash, I ensure that the words “Global Warming ” are mentioned at least once on every page. PS. I am a biotechnologist and my reseach has absolutely nothing to do with climate. See? I have manageded to mention Global warming three times here without even trying.
Funny no global warming for 15 years and they have a poll suggesting government should act to curb the non event. Polls for global warming profits are popular. Polls that are intended to generate a consensus that government should be in charge of the intimate details of your life. Polls paid for by the government indirectly. Polls to export the jobs to countries not controlled by people that believe that government should be in charge of the manufacturing and assembly lines.
This is a classic push poll.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/push+poll
The questions are worded in a way designed to get a specific response. When you ask people, “Should we have less pollution?” of course there is no surprise that a large majority agrees. Similarly, asking if we should have cars with better gas mileage or more efficient appliances without mentioning increased costs or lowered performance is quite simply dishonest.
And of course, they decided to just make up the data about trust of scientists since they didn’t even ask that question! Which is ridiculous.
James Fosser says:
May 8, 2012 at 7:54 pm
I think that the mantra of global warming is excellent for obtaining research monies. In every begging letter I send to the respective authorities for reseach cash, I ensure that the words “Global Warming ” are mentioned at least once on every page. PS. I am a biotechnologist and my reseach has absolutely nothing to do with climate. See? I have manageded to mention Global warming three times here without even trying.
===========================================================
You didn’t capitalize “Warming” in your last sentence.
Grant denied!!!
“The study found that, overall, the majority of Americans continue to support many specific government actions to mitigate global warming’s effect. However, most Americans remain opposed to consumer taxes intended to decrease public use of electricity and gasoline.”
Have to laugh at this summary don’t we? We say we support government actions while we oppose paying for them. This is today’s social science. We must be ignorant and/or confused should be the conclusion of this poll.
These results stem from poorly designed survey questions.
Here are some questions I would like to be asked of the public:
Do you think that a politician or even a political party can change the weather better than some other politician or party in your lifetime?
Do you think that carbon should be outlawed?
Do you know the definition of the scientific method?
Do you know what a climate model is?
Any other basic questions I may have missed?
I would like to thank the people for seeing through the f***ds before they looted us back into the stone age, and that includes Anthony (it’s about time), but I suspect the moderator will refuse to allow that term. Please don’t. It’s about time skeptics called spades spades.
It is good to know that in 2010 75% of Democrats and independents had a high trust in (climate?) “science”, and 70% had a low trust. That’s 145%. Democrats and independents, well done!
Stanford U still employs Paul Erlich, whose treatise, The Population Bomb began with this statement: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate”
With astute scientific predictions like that, how can they expect any credibility in current predictions?
>>
A question measuring trust in climate scientists was included in the 2010 survey. It asked: “How much do you trust the things that scientists say about the environment – completely, a lot, a moderate amount, a little, or not at all?” However, this question was not asked in the 2012 survey. Therefore, we constructed a measure of trust for respondents in both years using the following method.
>>
In view of who conducted the poll, one can hardly imagine it was conducted objectively
It’s well known that you can show what you want with such polls. It’s just a case of framing the questions to get the answer you want.
It’s pretty clear they did not want the answer to this one.
The fact that they did a comparative poll yet omitted such an important question clearly demonstrates that this was a propaganda exercise from the outset.
Hint to gullible readers: California is not America. Now, Rob, which “America” did you actually survey?
Whatever else Stanford is and does, it is home to the Hoover Institute. Their position(s) on Global Warming have been anything but sanguine.
The Pseudoscience of Global Warming, by Bruce Berkowitz, 2001 – http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/7944
I don’t think that scientists across the board are being distrusted, just climate scientists pushing tha AGW scam. It’s real scientists doing honest science who are showing up the flaws in their argument.
Bogus scientists are teaching the world how NOT to do science (now that the world is finally beginning to pay attention and is seeing how shoddy their work is).
Real scientists are the heroes in all this. They shine. Enough said.
We’re going to be seeing a lot more of these campaigns based on “polls”, not least because after the Shakun mauling and a few others like it more recently, it’d take a brave climate scientist to come up with a suitably alarming paper, which was so bullet proof, it couldn’t be torn to pieces in public
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/lies-damn-lies-and-polls/
Pointman
These polls show that the majority, even in America, still believe in the CAGW scam. In Europe that majority is significantly larger. We have a long, long, way to go to get the great unwashed to understand.
I would like to repeat what I said before, in WUWT and elsewhwere:
“I am getting bored. The globe can be getting warmer or colder, but the idea that the human contribution from burning carbon fuels has anything to do with it is not only IMHO the biggest political and intellectual fraud ever – but so says the IPCC itself: http://cleanenergypundit.blogspot.com/2011/10/west-is-facing-new-severe-recession.html. The ongoing discussion pro and con is becoming akin to the scholastic argument as to how many angels can dance on the head of a needle. Which is, of course, exactly what is intended in order to achieve worldwide disorientation away from the actual IPCC aims of their monetary and energy policies – and bringing a whole, if not all, of science into disrepute. Even the UK Royal Society has become Lysenkoist.”
The Poems of Our Climate says:
May 8, 2012 at 6:01 pm
Chuck Nolan says:
Why combine the democrats and independents?
Good eye, Chuck! I would guess that the author is a Democrat and would like to think that Independents are going to vote for his guys.
____________________________
Fat Chance That! an Independent (I just wish I had something to vote FOR this time)
Sounds like more dinosaur farts to me.
There is a distinction between scientists and climate scientists.
Real scientists create solutions, climate scientists create imaginary problems.
The great benefit of creating imaginary problems is that it creates massive funding for them, but ordinary scientists suffer. The main stream media have been very supportive of climate alarmism as promoting fear and hysteria has become profitable.
The difference between Y2K and climate change:
Climate change is endless.
_Jim says:
May 8, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Would that also include ‘education’ on finance, and how our financial system works, the logic and use of fractional reserve banking for instance? And how our banking system actually came together as opposed to relying on G. Edward Griffin’s conspiracy-based fabrication “The Creature from Jekyll Island”?
________________________________
Jim I learned to read BEFORE I went to school. Moreover, I have read A PRIMER ON MONEY. SUBCOMMITTEE ON DOMESTIC FINANCE. COMMITTEE ON BANKING AND CURRENCY. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Wright Patman Chairman
Wright Patman was a DEMOCRAT. He and others introduced articles of impeachment against Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. Henry B. Gonzalez, another DEMOCRAT proposed an audit of the FED in 1993. He introduced an impeachment resolution, H.R. Res. 101, against Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and ten other members of the Federal Open Market Committee and H.R. Res. 102, against Volcker alone. He introduced two additional impeachment resolutions in the following two years. All his resolutions fell into a black hole.
I only mention Griffin’s article as a dumbed-down version for people who do not seem to have the attention span or the reading skills to get through Patman’s A PRIMER ON MONEY
I am sure Gonzalez, who was referred to as a “communist” by Rep. Ed Foreman (R-Texas) in 1963, would roll on the floor laughing if he was accused of being a “Bircher”
You ask whether I understand “the logic and use of fractional reserve banking” of course I do. According to the Bankers it is to “expand the money supply to facilitate commerce” of course the bankers fund the economics departments at the big schools, so that is what is taught.
Bankers created $1961.967 billion dollars (M2) in fiat currency starting from 1964 ( $54 billion ) to the end of 2010. In that time frame the national average wage index (according to Social Security) went from $4,086.76 to $41,673.83. For a new home the 1964 median price was $30,000, for a new car the average cost was $2,250, a gallon of gas was 25¢ and a Stamp was 5¢.
Looks to me as though the increase in the money supply just added a zero, increased our taxes though the “progressive tax” and moved a lot of wealth from the peons to the bankers through fraudulent contracts that trade newly minted fiat money for labor.
So how does fractional reserve banking actually work? Graham F. Towers, Governor of the Central Bank of Canada (from 1934 to 1955) explained it very plainly.
Q. “Will you tell me why a government with power to create money, should give that power away to a private monopoly, and then borrow that which parliament [Congress] can create itself, back at interest, to the point of national bankruptcy?” GEE, isn’t that the question people in the USA, the EU and elsewhere should be asking their reps in government?
For some reason, I can just never get past…
Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences
Professor-Communication
Professor-Political Science
Professor (by courtesy)-Psychology
Every single one of these “studies” is conducted by people with such bios.
Bill Parsons says:
May 8, 2012 at 10:44 pm
By Rob Jordan (Stanford)
The study found that, overall, the majority of Americans continue to support many specific government actions to mitigate effects of global warming.
Hint to gullible readers: California is not America. Now, Rob, which “America” did you actually survey?
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He polled eastern Massachusetts and southern California. See, he covered coast to coast and north to south that way. You just have to know how to do these things right Bill.
You lost track of what was actually found.
1) There was loss of support for government action.
2) It was in all states, not just struggling ones.
So it is false that “there was no decline in public support for government action”. Anywhere.
Separate the independents from the Democrats and you might find evidence of the lemming left that does not read or question anything about their green pogroms. Their information sources tend to be constricted compared to others and filled with predictable buzz words in place of facts or independent thinking or fact finding. In other words the term Yellow Dog Democrat applied to critical science issues and massive policy inertia is dangerous and costly, especially in the presence of a society already in slow decline mode. Call it Green Stagflation, right Jimmy?
Gail Combs has it right. The survey is loaded. It ASSUMES CO2 is Pollution. It isn’t.
And more…
The other point is ‘respondents’. We used to get the Nielson Poll of TV preferences. They would give you a quarter to fill it out. My folks gave it to the youngest kid in the house to ‘respond’. (That was me). Now as an adult, I respond to no polls. Selection bias…
Finally, the interpretation.
It looks to me like there are two cohorts. Those that have gotten a clue that the science is being cooked, and those that have not yet. The latter are flat lines. The former are every growing, so ever less interested in funding the boondoggles. That Republicans started off a bit more cluefull than the “Democrats and Independents” is interesting, but not particularly meaningful. One group was just more steeped in the Dogma and Propaganda and has further to go.
More about starting points than POV. More about rate of exposure to the issue vs cocoon of friends in the echo chamber of AGW.
So truth is slowly beating back the multi $Billion propaganda machine of UN / NGOs / Govt. Kinda nice to know that all it takes is some well placed questions…
I think if you take out the Democrats who, even if data is not supporting CAGW, will still go for the mitigation strategies and government intrusion anyway (“Let’s exaggerate the problem, or lie about it if necessary because we want to go for green tech and do away with evil fossil fuels” – remember Schneider’s justifying lying to the public to get the “desired” policy accepted.), then there is no essential difference between the majority of Americans. The curves simply indicate that ~5-10% of Americans are Post Normal in their science.