Guest post by A. Scott
There has been considerable discussion about the methodology and data regarding the recent paper “Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, C. E. (in press). NASA faked the moon landing – therefore (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science” (copy here)
This allegedly peer reviewed paper claims their survey data show climate skeptics are supporters of wild conspiracy theories, such as “NASA faked the moon landing.” The author admits, however, no climate skeptic sites were involved in the survey, that essentially all survey results were obtained thru posting the survey on pro-global warming sites.
Due to the serious and legitimate questions raised, I have recreated the Lewendowsky Survey in an attempt to replicate and create a more robust set of replies, including from skeptic users.
Please click on the Lewandosky Survey Page above and you’ll be presented the survey. This survey replicates the questions, both the paper, and several sites have indicated were in the original survey, including those questions deleted from the survey results.
The only change was to use a 1 to 5 ranking vs. Lewandowsky’s 1 to 4, which several people with experience have noted should improve the overall responses.
Each visit to the survey is tracked. Access is password protected for an additional layer of tracking.
THE PASSWORD FOR THE SURVEY IS “REPLICATE” (case sensitive)
Please only complete and submit once. Also, please respond to each question with the answer that best reflects your position, even though the question may not be perfectly worded.
This survey is built on the Google Doc’s open access platform. Results are collected automatically. As no significant randomization or counterbalancing was performed on the original survey none is applied here. Data collected will be provided upon request.
A. Scott
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A whole lot of the questions in there don’t seem to have any perception of the questions raised by skeptics.
It isn’t “Does anthropogenic CO2 ’cause climate change’?” It’s -how much-?. And: Is it -catastrophic- change? And is is -unprecedented-?
There’s no: “Was the Medieval Warm Period warmer/same/cooler?” “Was the Roman Climate Optimum warmer/same/cooler?” “How relevant is solar variability?” “Are thunderstorms adequately modeled?” “The latest prediction predicts a so-called global mean surface temperature in 2020 of XX plus-or-minus YY. Is XX too high/ok/too low. -AND- is YY too high/ok/too low.”
Have to say that I don’t really see the point, although it was interesting to see the actual stupid line of questioning in the survey! A Scott (why no first name?) has at least allowed more ‘freedom of expression’ with a ‘middle for diddle’/non committal response!
In essence, those are silly and ridiculously ‘pointed’ and ‘directed’ questions likely to prompt more ‘definitive’ answers. Area 51? WTF? I’m certain there would be logical reasoning for trying to place those types of questions in a survey and in a certain order to prompt certain responses, but only muppets would fall for that trick? – and I presume the original survey was intended for genuine skeptics who have some scientific reasoning behind them (though I accept that this is not always the case, on both sides!)
There were some dreadful questions in there. Worst one IMO was “Out of 100 climate scientists, how many think human CO2 emissons cause climate change”? or words to that effect. It depends on what you mean by “climate change”. 100% will think CO2 has some warming effect, but opinions will vary widely about how much warming it takes to cause “climate change”.
No, the moon landing wasn’t faked in Hollywood.
Mike, in Houston, who knows.
It is hard to answer the “I think X but Y” questions b/c I usually agreed with X but disagreed with Y. I put “disagree” for these questions. I also disagreed that the free market was “best”, but would have agreed that it is “really good” or “better than most other systems”.
The questions all demand either acceptance of “climate-science” or conspiracy-theory. They leave no room for genuine errors or a mix of those and fraud.
Pamela Gray said (September 8, 2012 at 6:45 pm
“…To replicate a study, you need to use the original (poorly designed) 1 through 4 choices, not 1 through 5. You have not replicated the study, you have improved on it…”
True. If they originally used a 4 choice answer grid, they biased people into making a choice (either agree/disagree) – with the MINIMUM answer being slightly agree/slightly disagree. The addition of the 5th choice between the slightly agree/slightly disagree provides a “no opinion” choice.
If the majority of the questions as worded get a “3” (no opinion), it might show people that, as E.M.Smith said (September 8, 2012 at 6:55 pm) some people think “…I don’t know and neither does just about everyone; so I reserve judgement…”.
Maybe that’s why he used a 4-point response – he didn’t want to get the “I don’t know / I don’t care” answers. Wouldn’t have proved his point.
David Ross says:
September 8, 2012 at 9:22 pm
There are even a couple of sites (which I won’t advertise by naming them) devoted to “responding to” (attacking/smearing/libelling) WUWT.
Couldn’t care less that this goes on. Most people are smart enough to see this for the cowardice that it is. Good of you to not mention names.
A Scott,
Thanks for putting the time and effort into this. Some comments:
1. I support the expansion of the answer block to 5 from 4. 3 represents a “neutral” response without which I consider several of the questions impossible to answer.
2. Lots of people will now get to see the questions. They are blatantly manipulative, one can pretty much describe the political leanings of the author from the questions, and where they do touch on science at all, the questions display a remarkable ignorance of the actual questions being asked in the climate science debate.
3. I was shocked at how obvious the manipulation was. We’re to understand that the author of this survey has a PhD in psychology? I’ve been in sales and marketing for nearly 30 years and a second year co-op student could do better than this (create a survey that produces a desired outcome without being obvious in itz intentions I mean)
4. Strangely, I do know quite a few people who believe in one or more of the conspiracy theories in this survey, and every last one of them buys the CAGW meme hook line and sinker. I’ve always thought it odd that the people who jump all over conspiracy theories don’t see one when they look at climate change issues. My experience of course is anecdotal, but I’m betting if this survey were to be advertized on a few conspiracy blogs, that my anecdotal evidence would be confirmed.
Watch this past the ad.
All this survey proves is that warmista’s are incapable of being skeptics and prefer to be lead by authoritarian figures.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
The planet has warmed less than 40% of the IPPC predicted warming for a 40% increase in CO2 even if a 100% of the 20th century warming is attributed to CO2.
I would suggest the following survey question.
The planet has warmed less than 40% of the IPCC predicted warming, for a 40% increase in CO2. It appears based on the data, that there is something incorrect with the fundamental assumptions and modeling that predicts a 3C rise for a doubling of CO2. (Likely the planet’s response to a change in forcing is negative feedback rather than positive and significant portion of the 20th century warming was not due to CO2 increases.)
Top of the atmosphere radiation measurements vs changes in the ocean surface temperature indicates that planetary clouds in the tropics increase or decrease to resist forcing changes (negative feedback). Dangerous warming (1.5C to 5C) requires that the planet amplify forcing changes (positive feedback). If the planetary response to a change in forcing is to resist the forcing change (negative feedback) the warming due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will be less than 1C.
There is no scientific evidence the warming of less than 1C will cause dangerous climate change.
It appears there is unequivocal scientific evidence that atmospheric CO2 increases will not cause dangerous extreme. Why is this information not discussed in the warmist blog sites or in the media? Is there evidence of data manipulation for ideological reason?
http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/LandseaResignationLetterFromIPCC.htm
After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.
Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4’s Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic “Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity” along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading transcripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.
I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record. … Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).
It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth’s role as the IPCC’s Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity. My view is that when people identify themselves as being associated with the IPCC and then make pronouncements far outside current scientific understandings that this will harm the credibility of climate change science and will in the longer term diminish our role in public policy.
http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen/236-Lindzen-Choi-2011.pdf
On the Observational Determination of Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications
We estimate climate sensitivity from observations, using the deseasonalized fluctuations in sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and the concurrent fluctuations in the top-of-atmosphere (TOA) outgoing radiation from the ERBE (1985-1999) and CERES (2000-2008) satellite instruments. … We argue that feedbacks are largely concentrated in the tropics, and the tropical feedbacks can be adjusted to account for their impact on the globe as a whole. Indeed, we show that including all CERES data (not just from the tropics) leads to results similar to what are obtained for the tropics alone – though with more noise. We again find that the outgoing radiation resulting from SST fluctuations exceeds the zerofeedback response thus implying negative feedback. In contrast to this, the calculated TOA outgoing radiation fluxes from 11 atmospheric models forced by the observed SST are less than the zerofeedback response, consistent with the positive feedbacks that characterize these models. The results imply that the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility. “It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”
Just a few weeks ago, Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius — in other words, a standstill.
http://blogs.forbes.com/jamestaylor/2011/07/27/new-nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-in-global-warming-alarmism/
The questionnaire is cruelly unsophisticated, almost infantile.
A. Scott deserves praise for his contribution to this saga, in particular for revealing (at Lucia’s) that kwiksurveys, who carried out the fieldwork for the two (or three?) Lewandowsky surveys, have been hacked and have lost a lot of data.
But I won’t be completing the survey. Here’s why. First, I strongly agree with several of the conspiracy theories, (secret services assassinate people – that’s their job) and I don’t want that fact being used to dirty the name of scepticism. Of course, my decision is a way of gaming the survey, just as surely as a Tamino reader pretending to be a sceptic. Maybe one will read this and decide to answer in my place, who knows?
Which brings me to the second reason; on-line surveys are a terrible way of finding out people’s opinions. Cheating is easy, and feels morally indifferent, for the same reason that it’s easy to murder people by pressing a button that rains bombs on innocent civilians miles below. You don’t lie to the interviewer who stops you in the street, any more than you lie to the person who stops you to ask the way to the post office. The face-to-face interview is just a stylised version of a normal human interaction. Filling in a form on your computer is like filling in a tax form – but with no chance of your inexact responses being punished.
The third reason is that the whole debate is plagued by confusion between the two meanings of sceptic – between the informed sceptics who’ve thought about the subject and who form the core readership of WUWT, and the sceptic-at-large picked up in opinion polls, who is naturally influenced by his political and cultural ties, and is probably likely to be sceptical of all kinds of official points of view.
Just a final thought for Robert Phelan, who understood these things and could express them far better than I can.
A dreadful, dreadful survey. Questions are childishly biased in order to obtain the ‘correct’ response. Inadequate options are presented – many times I found myself answering questions with responses that I do not actually agree with merely because a response was required. Questions such as the one on tobacco causing lung cancer were naive in their formulation. Yes, smoking CAN cause cancer and the link is proven, but it doesn’t ALWAYS cause cancer and there are many examples of cancer free octagenerians who have smoked for years. Does this mean I think smoking is harmless? No of course not. Just like it doesn’t mean I believe the moon landings were faked. They are unrelated. As is global warming theory.
Also, in my experience, living in a town renowned for its New Age, hippy dippy contingent (think San Francisco amid the rolling hills of England), the people who believe most in those wacko conspiracy theories such as faked moon landings or AIDS being a CIA plot are the very people who are most vocal on climate change being the most serious threat to the world, ie. the exact opposite of what Lewandowsky wants to demonstrate.
Ultimately none of this matters. The outcome of today’s climate wars will be decided by cool, hard science. Not by post modern psychology. The truth will out.
Curious disinterest as to the responders’ background; scientific or otherwise.
Rick Bradford says:
September 8, 2012 at 8:06 pm
I’m reminded of Bernard Woolley, the perfect balanced sample.
I can’t find the clip, but scroll halfway down this page and you’ll find the survey questions asked.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=403748§ion=1.1.1
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Here is the link – a classic.
I started using it in my undergrad lectures and it became very popular with other acadmics as an intro to lectures on research skills.
I agree with Annabelle – the question was essentially meaningless. It would cover everything from “man-made CO2 has a measurable but tiny effect on climate” to “man-made CO2 is the main cause of climate change”. My honest answer was “100”, even though I suspect that the effect of man-made CO2 is more towards the “measurable but tiny” end of the spectrum.
Possibly there should be a rider that “Non-Americans may not know some of these answers”.
McVey, wasn’t she a singer in Fleetwood Mac? Coke’s changed?
DaveA says “the warmists will be discussing this secretly” but of course no sceptics really think it’s a conspiracy…
Can anyone adequately describe and perhaps differentiate social justice from say regular justice?
Annabelle says
It also depends on what you mean by ‘climate scientist’. Since there are few degree courses in ‘climate science’, nor any generally recognised qualification, this term seems to be so loose as to be almost meaningless. Is McSteve a climate scientist – he has published in climate journals? Is Anthony – who publishes the world’s most popular climate website and was a guiding light in the surface stations project? What about Anthony Montford (Bishop Hill)…historian of the Hockey Stick wars? Or me..I have an interest in the subject .. and a second degree in the very closely related Atmospheric Chemistry?
Lewandowsky really must think we – and the rest of the public – are complete boneheads if he believes that he can pass off this poor quality stuff as any sort of ‘science’.
The survey questions tell us a lot more about Lewandowsky’s thinking, or lack of it, than responses that tripe will every tell Lewandowsky about sceptics. Sceptics largely focus on the science,but Lewandowsky writes large his politics. There is panic in the air. How many have been promoting AGW not for science or the environment, but because it could provide an excuse for the implementation of their unpopular political ideologies? If Lewandowsky wants “social justice”, I have some good news! He’s going to get it. Sceptics will never forgive and the Internet will never forget.
I can’t help feeling that this attempt at replication will be screwed up by climate alarmists.
@ur momisugly A. Scott
You do realize, as was mentioned earlier, that you’ll have some warmists who would take the survey and intentionally skew the results, right? Just like they did in the prior survey.