From Forbes writer James Taylor:
Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
The survey results show geoscientists and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.
According to the newly published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the “Comply with Kyoto” model. The scientists in this group “express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause.”
…
The survey finds that 24 percent of the scientist respondents fit the “Nature Is Overwhelming” model. “In their diagnostic framing, they believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth.” Moreover, “they strongly disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal lives.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/02/13/peer-reviewed-survey-finds-majority-of-scientists-skeptical-of-global-warming-crisis/
…
The paper:
Science or Science Fiction? Professionals’ Discursive Construction of Climate Change
Abstract
This paper examines the framings and identity work associated with professionals’ discursive construction of climate change science, their legitimation of themselves as experts on ‘the truth’, and their attitudes towards regulatory measures. Drawing from survey responses of 1077 professional engineers and geoscientists, we reconstruct their framings of the issue and knowledge claims to position themselves within their organizational and their professional institutions. In understanding the struggle over what constitutes and legitimizes expertise, we make apparent the heterogeneity of claims, legitimation strategies, and use of emotionality and metaphor. By linking notions of the science or science fiction of climate change to the assessment of the adequacy of global and local policies and of potential organizational responses, we contribute to the understanding of ‘defensive institutional work’ by professionals within petroleum companies, related industries, government regulators, and their professional association.
Full open paper here: http://oss.sagepub.com/content/33/11/1477.full
PDF: http://oss.sagepub.com/content/33/11/1477.full.pdf+html
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Organization Studies (OS) publishes peer-reviewed, top quality theoretical and empirical research with the aim of promoting the understanding of organizations, organizing and the organized in and between societies. http://oss.sagepub.com/
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I would love to see this study and its methods expanded, to include not just Canadian scientists and other experts, but American ones, and even a worldwide study at some point. The study is excellent in its approach to actually trying to understand expert opinion on climate in a nuanced way, but the limits of its scope also limit its significance to the wider debate.
@rgbatduke.
I wouldn’t get too hot under the collar about surface tension and heat transfer if I were you. You are of course quite right but my reading of the green fraternity (and sorority) is that they know no science, can’t do maths and are completely impervious to any sort of reason. I suspect that most of the people who come up with these stellar concepts are liberal arts/sociology types.
RMB says:
August 13, 2013 at 8:39 am
You wrote:
You can’t put physical heat into water through its surface. Thats why there is heat missing all over the place. The only energy that goes into the ocean is sun’s radiation. Quiet sun= cold planet.
I say that sounds like a testable hypothesis!
A licensed mechanical engineer (retired) who has been researching this issue for 6 years, and in the process discovered what actually caused global warming, has four papers on the web, that you may find of interest. They provide some eye-opening insight on the cause of change to average global temperature and why it has stopped warming. The papers are straight-forward calculations (not just theory) using readily available data up to May, 2013.
The first one is ‘Global warming made simple’ at http://lowaltitudeclouds.blogspot.com It shows, with simple thermal radiation calculations, how a tiny change in the amount of low-altitude clouds could account for half of the average global temperature change in the 20th century, and what could have caused that tiny cloud change. (The other half of the temperature change is from net average natural ocean oscillation which is dominated by the PDO)
The second paper is ‘Natural Climate change has been hiding in plain sight’ at http://climatechange90.blogspot.com/2013/05/natural-climate-change-has-been.html . This paper presents a simple equation that, using a single external forcing, calculates average global temperatures since they have been accurately measured world wide (about 1895) with an accuracy of 90%, irrespective of whether the influence of CO2 is included or not. The equation uses a proxy which is the time-integral of sunspot numbers. A graph is included which shows the calculated trajectory overlaid on measurements.
Change to the level of atmospheric CO2 had no significant effect on average global temperature.
The time-integral of sunspot numbers since 1610 which is shown at http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post_23.html corroborates the significance of this factor.
A third paper, ‘The End of Global Warming’ at http://endofgw.blogspot.com/ expands recent (since 1996) measurements and includes a graph showing the growing separation between the rising CO2 and not-rising average global temperature.
The fourth paper http://consensusmistakes.blogspot.com/ exposes some of the mistakes that have been made by the ‘Consensus’ and the IPCC
I wouldn’t get too hot under the collar about surface tension and heat transfer if I were you. You are of course quite right but my reading of the green fraternity (and sorority) is that they know no science, can’t do maths and are completely impervious to any sort of reason. I suspect that most of the people who come up with these stellar concepts are liberal arts/sociology types.
Why not? Bad science is bad science. False statements or ideas left uncorrected propagate. I’m not “hot” about it, I just want to correct it before it becomes entrenched as a meme — “surface tension in water doesn’t permit heat from the air to penetrate” — to further muddy the proverbial waters or give AGW enthusiasts still more ammunition (“Look how silly this skeptical argument is. You just can’t trust climate skeptics.”).
As for AGW proponents being bad at math and not knowing any science — do you seriously think that? The global circulation models may well be wrong, but they were not built by people who were ignorant or mathematically incompetent. If they were, they wouldn’t run at all. Some specific climate scientists — Michael Mann and James Hansen come to mind — may well be incompetent or pursuing some sort of secondary agenda, but I very much doubt that the vast majority of climate scientists, including those that believe that there is enough evidence to support the CAGW, are anything but sincere, well meaning, and at least reasonably competent.
One can be competent, sincere, honest, well meaning, and mistaken. Quite easily, in fact. To quote Bertrand Russell (IMO one of the most brilliant minds of the last two or three thousand years) — Even when the experts all agree, they can be mistaken. And indeed, historically, often enough have been.
I find the evidence and arguments for CAGW (given so far) to be unconvincing. I’m at least moderately competent in physics, mathematics, computation including large scale numerical simulations, statistics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, and have been working through topically relevant climate physics such as the contents of Petty’s book on Atmospheric Radiation or Caballero’s book on Climate Physics. I’m sincere in my being unconvinced. I’m reasonably honest (Trust me, he says, would I lie?:-). I mean well — I’m sincerely, honestly convinced that the CAGW scare has caused an economic depression in Europe that has its currency teetering on the edge of extinction, has cost the people of the United States a small fortune in misdirected investment, excess taxes, and artificially inflated energy prices, and is perpetuating crushing levels of global poverty and literally killing millions of people a year as a consequence.
I could be wrong!
Maybe CAGW is completely accurate, and in fifty years we’ll all be amazed that anybody could have thought otherwise. Or (since I’ll be dead) humans who are alive then will think that.
If there is a conceptual sin in climate science, it is that those four words are never uttered by climate scientists. In physics, a transluminal neutrino is provisionally reported, and I didn’t hear one single physicist assert that the observation was “impossible”, or “wrong”. Physicists all were mentally prepared to reserve judgment and wait to see if their seriously well-supported beliefs in relativity were about to be crushed. Climate scientists, on the other hand, are certain that their predictions of the Earth’s climate fifty to a hundred years from now are accurate even as they fail badly on as short a time scale as fifteen years.
rgb
Another run at this wonder study.
As usual in climate scienciness, AGW is not defined in the survey.
Do you believe in manmade effects upon weather?
Of course I live in a city.
But asking a technically trained person, if they believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming, without defining this thing, is no more valid than asking if they believe in the tooth fairy.
Are we debating microclimate changes, as in deforestation? As in city expansion?
Or local climatic effects as in the destruction of the Ural Sea?
Aral Sea according to google, but the point was, questioning ones belief in a poorly defined term, will not produce intelligent results, very useful results for pre-planned propaganda, but results devoid of meaning.
NOAA Scientists and others appear to be manipulating historical temperature data. Currently (routinely) reported “Daily and Monthly RECORD Warm Temps” are actually significantly lower than well-remembered (and recorded in local newspapers) thermal highs in the past. Local historical July temps in Fresno CA, for example, historically have exceeded 11OF. in almost all years of record, according to the Fresno Bee newspaper records, taken from National Weather Service. But NOAA’s currently used online data show only rare dates exceeding 107F. (in only four years of record since 1968). Has anyone else noticed bogus reports of ” new records” reported by NOAA? If so I suggest you look into past HARD-COPY temp records (not governmental internet databases, as these are easily manipulated).
Also, re: the % of scientists agreeing or disagreeing with global climate change, science is not about concensus; rather, it is about repeatability / predictability. If scientific concensus was an operative factor, then the Earth would be the center of the universe and it would be flat.
MattN says:”This has been “out there” for almost a year and this is the first I’ve heard of this.”
I believe this experment shows when a tree falls over in a forest it doesn’t make a sound
Mike SG says:” The survey is of members of the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta. No potential for bias or conflict of interest there!”
Since all Engineers and Geologists in Alberta is required to get their licencing through APEGA I do not see how there could be a bias? Unless someone has a bias against Canada? You been watching to much south park.
I’ve been an operational meteorologist for 32 years. On radio for a year, then television for 11 years, then forecasting crop yields during the growing seasons and energy demand based on the effects of weather.
No, I have never had contact with anybody in the oil industry, though some accuse me of that when I express my views.. I trade commodities for a living with my own account from my house, doing 100% of my own research and forecasting.
In the 1990’s until around 2002, without doing extensive research on climate change and believing much of what came from the experts, climate scientists, I had several assumptions, that included:
1. CO2 was probably responsible for most of the warming and have these potential consequences
2. Future hurricanes may be stronger because with warmer oceans
3. Melting ice would cause sea levels to rise and people living on the coastlines would have mounting issues.
However, I wrote several articles stating that before any actions, costly or otherwise are taken, we should study the potential harm vs benefits of increasing CO2. There were also some benefits:
1. CO2’s role in photosynthesis is clear. This fact alone and the increase in crop yields and world food production seemed greater than all the negatives combined
2. Energy consumption for heating would be reduced. Yes, increases for cooling in the Summer but my calculations should a big net benefit annually
3. Earth’s creatures have always done better when our planet is warmer and worse when its colder. Not only this, if CO2 had this effect, it might be worth the warming just to minimize the risk of a future ice age. An ice age would cause an unimaginable crisis with over half the world starving to death. Heck, just a mini ice age would cause world wide crop failures and catastrophe.
I stopped believing everything the climate scientists and other experts emphatically stated with confidence because it was always completely one sided. An objective/honest source would at least point out the benefits that I was certain of in my mind.
The game changer for me in becoming convinced of the fraud was the role of CO2 in increasing crop yields and world food production that was being suppressed and lied about.
I spent thousands of hours doing my own research. I learned to recognize bias and extreme bias in papers and studies. For instance, there were many studies that showed increasing CO2 would decrease crop yields. They usually got there by speculating about things like the warmer world would result in more insects overwintering and then damaging crops the next growing season or that intense heat waves and droughts would do more damage than the benefits of CO2 fertilization or that CO2 fertilization caused weeds to grow faster than crops and they would offset all the benefits.
Knowing alot about agriculture and crops, some of this junk was laughable but was from peer reviewed papers.
The world was being bamboozled and legit science had been hijacked by a bunch of scientists that for some odd reason were producing all these results that already had a preconceived assumption and conclusion before they started the research and were getting there with tactics that shocked me(in ways that my expertise/experience verified as being incorrect).
The last 11 or so years, its no longer a shock but still very sad. One of my saddest moments was last year, my 1st grade daughter who goes to an excellent school here in Indiana came home with her science book. They had been talking about climate change in their science class. The book and teacher taught her that carbon dioxide is pollution and you know the rest of how that goes.
I’m a chess coach at 3 different schools and am friends with all the science teachers there.
We have great discussions on many things but they avoid this topic with me. They are great teachers but they and their books are teaching the wrong thing about climate change and CO2. This also goes on in most colleges.
We are indoctrinating our youngest generation to be members of global warming/climate change religion. This is what makes me the saddest.
They are brainwashed with junk science. PHOTOSYNTHESIS is not a theory. Sites like this one are helping to offset the tremendous costs that these zealots have caused. Much money has been flushed down the toilet chasing CO2 as pollution but the biggest cost has been our young people minds.
rgbatduke says:
August 13, 2013 at 10:18 am
I find you the most entertaining, educational and provocative poster here. Why don’t you team up with the Dane, Bjorn Lomborg, and write a book about real science, good economic analysis, and common sense being applied all at the same time?
Meant to say my first grade “grand” daughter not daughter.
Don’t you think that studies of “defensive institutional work” should more properly be focused on government agencies, academia and NGOs? Where that type of activity is the standard operating procedure!
rgbatduke says:
August 13, 2013 at 3:13 pm: “…I’m sincerely, honestly convinced that the CAGW scare has caused an economic depression in Europe that has its currency teetering on the edge of extinction, has cost the people of the United States a small fortune in misdirected investment, excess taxes, and artificially inflated energy prices, and is perpetuating crushing levels of global poverty and literally killing millions of people a year as a consequence….”
As well meaning as these people are, in light of the facts of malaria and starvation and so on and on, they are monsters. An objective review of the outcomes of their medicine and the failures of their projections should have made them seek further answers; instead, they just become more hardened in their approach. I hope there is a special place for them.
Really interesting survey of Geoscience experts in Alberta Canada undertaken from a distinctly alarmist orientation, but at least somewhat scientifically, is getting some oxygen because it shows there is no such consensus unless it is of the un-alarmed type.
There are various summaries around, which is really useful since the paper itself is hard work, but the following comments I thought were particularly interesting. They are wrestling with how to pursue the alarmist agenda in the face of the scepticism by analysing the scepticism. Good on them. See the results:
…..We find that climate science scepticism is not limited to the scientifically illiterate (per Hoffman, 2011a), but well ensconced within this group of professional experts with scientific training – who work as leaders or advisors to management in governmental, non-governmental, and corporate organizations.
Our study confirms that there are significant framing differences regarding the existence of anthropogenic climate change and the consequent calls for action or, equally often, inaction on the policy and organizational level (see Hulme, 2009), even within professional experts in one particular geographical context. The vast majority of these professional experts believe that the climate is changing; it is the cause, the severity and the urgency of the problem, and the need to take action, especially the efficacy of regulation, that is at issue…….
Although most experts are positioned somewhere in the middle [of organisational influence], our results indicate that those who are more defensive occupy more senior organizational positions and are much closer to decision-making than activists. This can only partly be explained by adherents of defensive framings being older and more likely to be male compared to activists. More importantly, this entanglement of frames and identities with economic positions raises the question for future research whether these individuals adapt their frames as they move upwards in the hierarchy of industry’s organizations or whether a defensive attitude towards environmental regulation is a prerequisite to such a career. This evidently has an impact on organizational strategies to address climate change and may partly account for the reluctance to develop and implement adequate strategies. Given the impact of this industry on Alberta and the Canadian economy as a whole, it seems unlikely that the defensive institutional work by those in powerful positions within fossil fuel-related firms and industry associations can be breached in the near future without global enforcement mechanisms. And from a policy perspective, the continuing scientific disagreement regarding anthropogenic climate change together with the increasing weariness and fatigue about the subject on the part of the electorate is unlikely to increase policy-makers’ inclination to further regulate GHG emissions……………
And the conclusion and adjustment to strategy is……a change to Climate Risk?
As our analysis of the different storylines shows, reframing climate change as a risk to be managed – as has been promoted by the IPCC in their recent report (IPCC, 2011) – has the discursive potential to provide a bridge (Snow et al., 1986) to integrate various frames (except ‘fatalists’ who seem generally apathetic) and inject a legitimate diagnosis, established prognoses, identity scripts, and motivational consensus. Financial risks would resonate with ‘economic responsibility’ adherents, environmental risks with ‘comply with Kyoto’ and ‘regulation activists’, regulatory risks with all anti-regulationists, and risks of contamination could resonate with ‘nature is overwhelming’…………………
See the survey
The categories are fairly self-explanatory? Only Comply with Kyoto and Regulation Activists are truly alarmist.
And you people fall for this kind of misleading information??
How sad.
You are being played by liars and fools,
By the same kind of propagandists who once blogged in support of the Third Reich.
Wake up. Please.
97% of those that believe AGW is a crisis believe AGW is a crisis.
Sedron L says: “Wake up. Please”
*rubbing eyes*
*yawns*
*looks around*
Whaaat?
You have something to say?
rgbatduke writes “The surface layer of the ocean is constantly warming from sunlight and contact with warmer air (when and where the air is warmer!), from falling rain (when it is warmer), from condensation at the surface, and sometimes from heat transport up from underneath (when the ocean thermally inverts so that the surface is cooler and more dense than water underneath it).”
You missed an important one.and that is downward longwave radiation which cant penetrate the ocean beyond a few microns but is absorbed right at the very surface. Hence more DLR means more evaporation with everything else being equal.
So in fact the very effect global warming enthusiasts say is warming the surface is also cooling about 70% of it through increased evaporation.
It is clear that it’s time to fire a few people and replace them with friendly ones. The authors of the paper and the editors of the journal will go first.
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
Consensus is not science, but it is nice to know what the workman class of science and engineering think. They tend to be practical, and closer to the truth the big names.
Meteorologists: skepticism in short term forecast models. The weather will kill you…not the climate. Butterfly effect’s a B. Climate modelers are not held to the same scrutiny/accountability as a forecaster who screws up a severe weather/life threatening forecast.
Geologists: zoom out on climate focus and look at 100/1,000+ year trends. Nothing to see here. We’re in an interglacial. Warming has helped our civilization thrive. In an ice age…we’re much worse off.
Climatologists: capitalizing on a coincidental rise in C02 to match a recent time of warm ocean cycles /more active sun cycles of the last half century, ‘adjusting data’, having urbanization aid in heat island effects…only focus on 30 year trends. No accountability on models that grossly over predict warming. No criticism about past model failure and inability to forecast the future. Make outlandish claims in order to futher government funding.
Pretty simple to see who’s justified and who’s not.
As an engineer, I agree with the assessment of other engineers heartily. Climate science is anything but reliably predictive yet. I havent seen them predict 20 year climate change with even the remotest of reliability, let alone 100 year prediction.
That said, this paper is very poorly written. I wont hang my hat on this particular paper, even if their results are actually statistically valid. I have a hard time this is actually being published somewhere. Must be a very low grade publication where the standards are low
Gary Pearse says:
August 13, 2013 at 10:20 am
“It loses impact here because of the population surveyed is largely in the oil business,…”
And yet Gary, we accept that (the “97% consensus” survey) a survey of people who’s livelihood is supplied in the form of research grants, researching the very subject they are being surveyed about, is completely credible.
Clearly, this article from University Alberta is high-brow satire.
Gary Pearse said @ur momisugly August 13, 2013 at 10:20 am
Environmental geology includes:
Managing geological and hydrogeological resources such as fossil fuels, minerals, water (surface and ground water), and land use.
Studying the earth’s surface through the disciplines of geomorphology, and edaphology (the influence of soil on living things, particularly plants, including human use of land for plant growth);
Defining and mitigating exposure of natural hazards on humans
Managing industrial and domestic waste disposal and minimizing or eliminating effects of pollution, and
Performing associated activities, often involving litigation.
Gary Pearse has yet to explain why he believes these are not legitimate discipline areas for geologists to be involved in. I thought we got over this more than a year ago.