Dr. Richard Tol writes at his blog:
The Tol Poll is a direct result of the series of op-eds in the Guardian on the relationship between the environmental movement and environmental science organized by Alice Bell, and particularly Tamsin Edwards’ call for experts to talk about their area of expertise only. In the ensuing discussion, many noted just how nasty the climate debate has become, and Chairman Al, the Climate Chimp, suggested a poll on nastiness.
So I did, as a joke. Putting together an internet poll is trivial. (Designing a good poll is a lot of work.)
The poll itself is simple. Rate 12 people who are prominent in the British climate debate online, on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 stands for “very nasty” and 5 stands for “very friendly”. There is a bonus question that places the respondent in the political spectrum, rating themselves on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 stands for “very worried about the impacts of climate policy” and 5 for “very worried about the impacts of climate change”. (Some people argued these are different things, which of course they are, but I was not after identifying the agony aunts who worry about everything.)
The expected result: Some people are either loved or loathed, depending on the (in)congruence of their political position and that of the respondent, whereas other people are accepted by both sides of the debate.
The best I hoped for were some giggles, and perhaps a data set that could be used for a class in forensic statistics (as the framing of the poll invites dishonest answers).
I had not counted on Anthony Watts pushing the poll. I had not counted on someone writing a bot to flood the poll with fake results pushing a particular position, and someone else writing a bot to support the opposite position. Or maybe it was the same bot, as its author realized people saw through the ruse. The software I used, Google Docs, is not really suited for handling this amount of data.
As a courtesy to all those who took the time to fill out the poll and who discussed it (in grave, jocular or puzzled tones), here are some of the results. As Google Docs continues to be uncooperative, these are the results for the first 1288 valid replies; there are 11701 invalid replies by the bot(s).
Figure 1 shows that some people are better loved than others. As expected, the host of Watts Up With That tops the bill.
Read the rest here (lots of graphs): http://richardtol.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-tol-poll.html
Note: No Mad Haxor Skillz were used in the publication of this poll.
– Anthony
UPDATE: Richard Tol has a final result now, and it is here:
http://richardtol.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/tol-poll-ctd.html
I always vote for Anthony.
M Courtney says:
Tamsin Edwards standing out as the most neutral
…
That is probably because she is the most neutral.
Nah. It is probably because she is the least well known. When I voted, I gave anyone whose work I didn’t know well enough to have formed an opinion about the middle score. I suspect most others did the same.
LOL! “Much ado about nothing!” Indeed.
The 2nd Bot Creator says:
August 8, 2013 at 3:34 pm
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Kudos for “owning up” and apologizing!
If it came down to “battling ‘bots”, I suspect the skeptics might win. I think we’ve got better “mad haxor skills”. Dr. Jones, besides not knowing how to get a trend line out of Excel, apparently thinks clicking “delete” does something useful. Meaningless, in any case!
Dr. Tol points out that designing a poll to “show” something is easy. Designing a poll to “find out” something is much harder! I think a poll to find out “what skeptics think” might be interesting. Some skeptics post stuff that other skeptics call “voodoo physics”. Clearly, we don’t have a “consensus”! Fortunately, we don’t need one…
Do you think the planet has warmed since 1850 (or so)? How much? How much effect do human activities have? None? Less than half? More than half? All of it? Is this warming (if any) good for us? Bad for us? Do you think we can “stop climate change” by “governance”? Do you think we should, if we could?
Stuff like that…
@JJ
Yes, I agree with you. I also gave Tamsin Edwards a “3” because I had never heard of her before. So I figured I should give her a neutral score. I’m sure that others did the same and that is probably the main reason she appears to be the most neutral in the survey.
Frank – a good set of questions:
Do you think the planet has warmed since 1850 or so?
If yes, how much?
How much effect do human activities have on warming? None? Less than half? More than half? All of it?
Is this warming (if any) good for us? Bad for us?
Do you think we can “stop climate change” by “governance”?
Do you think we should, if we could?
Do you think this questionnaire can be truthfully answered?
Do you think that a questionnaire can be written in such as way as to prevent anyone fiddling with it – perhaps by the normal method of banning second and later attempts from the same email address?
Would you like to see this questionnaire set by someone competent to do so in a manner that the results cannot be faked?
Daniel H says:
August 8, 2013 at 7:10 pm
> I also gave Tamsin Edwards a “3″ because I had never heard of her before.
And me….
Anthony
Your acceptence of Robins appology at 1:42pm speaks volumes. A scientist with any sense of ethics cares more about integrity than the results of any poll or even any experiment. The data from any experiment done correctly is not wrong it simply leads you to create the next experiment to explain the results you already have. The data leads the experimenter the experimenter should not lead the data. As skeptics we should guard our integrity passionately.
If accused of wrongdoing respond quickly and calmly. Set it straight or else it will be used against you later. The popularity of this site is all about integrity and it starts at the top.
Richard Tol:
As what you termed an agony aunt, I would be interested in how those who carefully read the last question and chose the middle ground rated the individuals. My suspicion is that they used more intermediate points on the scale.
Dudley Horscroft says:
August 8, 2013 at 7:28 pm
Frank – a good set of questions:
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Thank you, Dudley! Merely a “first attempt” – infuenced by the Doran and Zimmerman questions. Might need a “How sure are you?” addendum to each. Might want a “political philosophy” question (I’m an old hippie – a “tree-hugger who knows what trees eat.” Few people would consider me “right wing”, although I agree with some “right wing” viewpoints.)
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Do you think the planet has warmed since 1850 or so?
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Probably. If I had to go with “yes or no”, I’d go with “yes”.
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If yes, how much?
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Rounded to whole degrees, about 1.
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How much effect do human activities have on warming? None? Less than half? More than half? All of it?
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I’d go with less than half – probably much less. Like “The shoes and the handbag come to two hundred bucks. How much for the shoes?” There isn’t enough information to answer the question. We are essentially conducting an experiment to determine “How much for two pairs of shoes and the handbag?” At that point, we might be able to answer the question. If the warmists are right, this is a very dangerous experiment! I’m not concerned much.
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Is this warming (if any) good for us? Bad for us?
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Mostly good. Depends upon “How much warming?”, of course. At some point, the detrimental effects would overwhelm the beneficial effects. Several degrees of warming would be a lot easier to adapt to than several degrees of cooling, IMO. Actual observed warming, so far, has been almost entirely beneficial, IMO.
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Do you think we can “stop climate change” by “governance”?
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No. I think an attempt would be more likely to result in the overthrow of the government (by some means or another) than to have any effect on climate.
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Do you think we should, if we could?
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No. Proposed policies that I’m aware of would do more harm than good. If some “good” policy were proposed, I might change my opinion.
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Do you think this questionnaire can be truthfully answered?
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Well, I’ve tried….
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Do you think that a questionnaire can be written in such as way as to prevent anyone fiddling with it – perhaps by the normal method of banning second and later attempts from the same email address?
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“Completely unbreakable” is probably not possible. Some attempt to avoid “gaming” might be nice.
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Would you like to see this questionnaire set by someone competent to do so in a manner that the results cannot be faked?
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Sure! I’m not competent to do so. I think the results would be “interesting”, but might not “mean” much. Asking skeptics what they think would be more interesting than asking warmists what they think skeptics think (Dr. Lewandowski, I’m lookin’ at you!). Thanks for the response!
@richard Tol – as sport it was entertaining; as a joke it was a laugh; as a good survey it wasn’t one . . . as you have kindly now told us.
Thanks
John
@creator
It’s okay.
The bot was easy to spot. The volume was a problem, for which I blame Google for not making sufficient processing power available.
Google graced me with more computing power. All data have been retrieved. Updated results and new ones on priming are at the link in Anthony’s original post. There is also a link to the data to analyze to your heart’s content.
Richard, you should have put pictures next to the names on the polling questions. Then Tamsin would have scored much higher than Anthony or Steve 😉
Richard S.J. Tol says:
August 9, 2013 at 4:27 am
> Updated results and new ones on priming are at the link in Anthony’s original post.
Now if you can come up with some graphs where the text is readable, I’d take a closer look!
@ur momisugly Richard Tol
I think the last question was a stroke of genius and would like to see the results. There are so many different camps in the climate argument from hyper alarmists (the world is going to end) all the way to actual deniers (the world not warming, GHE doesn’t exist) but as far as whether one will support the various climate change action schemes depends really on the one question: Are you more worried about the effects of climate change policy or climate change?
OOPS!
Change “world not warming” to “no 20th century warming”. Man, if I could only edit. Obviously, the case can be made that the world is not warming based on the global average temperature metric for the last decade and a half without being a “denier” of the world having experienced some recent (century scale) warming.
Ric, John
Results are here http://richardtol.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/tol-poll-ctd.html
[Thank you. Mod]
{ I had not counted on someone writing a bot to flood the poll with fake results pushing a particular position, and someone else writing a bot to support the opposite position. }
I think it is becoming increasingly obvious that this guy named BRANDON SCHOLLENBERGER is an out of control,-running amok-barking at the the chickens troublemaker. He hacks SKS, then Dr Richard’s poll, finishing up with a post under a fake alias, i.e. The 2nd Bot Creator.
/sarc