People send me stuff.
In my Inbox today was a link to a Science Poll conducted by the Pew Research Center. The aim of the poll was to gauge American knowledge of science and it is a parallel poll to one conducted by telephone. Given the millions spent on global warming/climate change messaging, I was shocked to see the results of this question on Carbon Dioxide. Note what I circled in red.
Similarly, I thought far more people would get this grade school science question right. Only 20% did.
The choices for both of the questions were amazingly simple, and I thought these would score far higher in the general population. One has to wonder about the 24% of college graduates that also missed the CO2 question and the 69% that missed the Nitrogen question. I also wonder what percentage answered “Carbon Dioxide” as the primary gas of Earth’s atmosphere instead of Nitrogen.
I got 100% on the test by the way.
You can take it yourself here: http://www.pewresearch.org/quiz/science-knowledge/
See how your results compare with the 1,006 randomly sampled adults that took part in the Pew national telephone survey and review how you responded to each question.
For more findings from the survey, read “Public’s Knowledge of Science and Technology.”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The actions taken on CO2 policy will always be driven by people who for the most part don’t know or care. The science doesn’t matter because most will not look at the science. That is why alarmists focus on propagating the consensus myth. We’re all guilty to some degree of believing what we’re told without checking.
Has anyone checked to make sure Jupiter is closer to the sun than Saturn? But we teach it because we believe it has been checked and verified by scientists.
Busting the consensus myth is the only way to sway the majority of people who will never check the science.
I don’t care what “most scientists believe”. The game is about what a single scientist can prove. Therefore I am not going to take such a flawed test.
Very interesting. I also “scored better than 93% of the public and the same as 7%” (13/13).
I see that women/female respondents generally did better by a few points on the medically focused questions, perhaps due to their greater traditional role as caregivers. Men generally scored higher on all non-medical questions. Also, college grads always scored the same or higher than those with some college, who always scored as high or higher than those with a high school education or less. I guess that suggests that our level of education actually does something for us with regard to scientific knowledge. Does it make us more receptive to continued development and retention of our knowledge, as opposed to “whut we larned in skul”
The bad thing is that this was not a very challenging test…
A few commenters challenge the first question, and rightly so. But you have to work within the limits of the Pew Trust’s options provided and with the understanding that they, themselves, (and consultants) have been drinking the Kool Aid for a long time.
@ur momisugly Frank: You said: “Too bad they missed the most important part about double-blind testing, i.e. that the half who doesn’t get the medicine doesn’t know they’re not getting it.” There is another very important piece missing: Those who actually administer the drug in a classic “double-blind test” also do not know who receives the medicine versus the placebo.
BTW: Pew may be tracking where the respondents entered the poll from. This sort of thing is not necessarily accurate or valid.
I got 13/13. I should; I scored 800/800 on the GRE Natural Sciences section, a little tougher exam.
I live in the San Francisco bay area. Many of the people I encounter at social gathering are highly educated. Many sincerely believe that Global Warming will lead to the extinction of life on earth in the next 100 years.
In the past, when people would ask me what I thought of global warming, I would go into a long explanation of why I thought the theory was flawed. But this only got people angry.
Lately, when people ask me my opinion I say, “I think equilibrium climate sensitivity is somewhere between 1 and 2. What do you think it is?”
Silence.
Usually followed by, “what’s equilibrium climate sensitivity?”
At this point I’ll ask, “how can you have an opinion if you don’t know what equilibrium climate sensitivity is?”
The answer is always that someone else has told them what to think.
13/13. Sure, there are some problems with some of the questions. But, overall, it is concerning that those willing to go ahead and take the quiz are not doing so well; 50th percentile is 7 or 8 correct.
The quiz was on science and technology. Of those two, continental plate tectonics is probably “science,” rather than “technology.”
We observe plates moving very small distances (meters at most) over a limited number of years (decades at most).
It is extrapolation, not scientific hypothesis testing, that supports the theory that continents move great distances over millions of years.
Science depends upon observable, dis-provable observations of an a priori hypothesis.
We have never observed this happening, so it is outside the realm of proof by science.
The more we measure the continents moving, sublimation of plates, etc., the more evidence we have to support that theory, but the support is based in a convincing theory supported by limited observations and some good reasoning, not by scientific testing. We will have to wait those millions of years for that.
This is one of a few leading mistaken notions about what science is and what it does and does not do. A hypothesis about the distant, un-observable past has about the same status as do climate models: sure, they are scientific-y but they are not scientifically tested hypotheses.
milodonharlani says:
October 8, 2013 at 10:04 am
(snip)
But if you have a better, less silly explanation for the cosmic background microwave radiation at 3 K, please by all means present it here. You could revolutionize astrophysics & cosmology.
Reply;
Helium does not freeze, but forms a super fluid (very high surface tension, stronger than earths gravity) at ~3K, and covers as much surface area as possible on small free floating particles, out on the edges of heliopauses on all stars that are in areas with ambient radiational pressures below 2K. Any incoming radiant energy that strikes these surface films of super fluid liquid helium that as a result, temporarily vaporizes it, when it re-condenses back out at ~3K it generates a heat on condensation photon emission at ~3K. being the second most abundant element in the universe, it results in the even spread of this re-emitted ~3K background emission, with the expected slightly higher levels along the edges of local galaxies that is viewable.
I intended to write a sharp pithy sentence on the “scientists believe” contradiction, but I see that Berényi Péter put it perfectly:
‘I don’t care what “most scientists believe”. The game is about what a single scientist can prove.’
ty Richard, my answer would have been it is simply part of the natural physical processes of the universe……..rather strange to me to think it is some kind of echo from an event almost 14 billion years ago as the other poster claims.
I hate to be the devil’s advocate (ok, no I don’t) but I’m far more optimistic about the results of this test then most people. Think about this; the highest average score achieved on each of the thirteen questions was (with the exception of 2 questions) for the questions that did not involve political agendas. The highest average score, 83%, was for question 5 concerning sunscreen and ultraviolet. The next highest was question 8 concerning the purpose behind red blood cells: that scored at 78%. Questions 4 and 9 were a tie at 77%, and these two concerned the more sophisticated issues of continental drift and antibiotic overuse.
Three of the five lowest scoring questions, out of the 13, involved fracking (51%), CO2 and temperature (58%), and nitrogen percentage of the atmosphere (20%). Think about this. These are the three issues, out of the thirteen, that get the constant drumbeat from the press, the political mechanism, and the environmentalists. And they’re the three in which people are most ill informed. Of these three the nitrogen issue might seem like an outlier, but as a constituent of the atmosphere (and thus ‘seen’ as climate), I don’t think it is.
Now, question 2 involving electrons and atoms (47%), and question 3 involving lasers (48%), may knock my theory out. But, as the IPCC, is want to say; the overwhelming available evidence suggests a discernible political influence on the world’s human mental system. So, outside of political pollution, it appears that, in the balance, people can do just fine. I’d say this evidence should recommend an 80% reduction in political pollution by the year 2050.
I got all 13 right and I just have a high school education.
Anybody notice that women scored better than men on two questions: the antibiotics question and the drug test question.
I took the test some weeks ago. When I got to that warming question the hair on the back of my neck stood up and I got pissed. The I remembered that CO2 does indeed warm the Earth significantly however, now that the absorption bands are nearly saturated it can’t do much of anything additional, even w/ a concentration doubling. So, I relaxed and finished the simplistic test…100%
I wonder what the mean score is of bloggers here vs. SkS, Of deniers, luke warmers, believers?
Algore?
By pointing to this test/survey… Are you not skewing the results badly, by sending waves of science savvy people – to the test. GK
Of course every freedom loving American should be worried by the lack of knowledge among their fellow countryman but what’s even more worrying, at least to me, is their preparedness to blindly sign petitions to ban CO2, the use of oil, natural gas, shale gas, HO2, guns, you name it.
The next thing they sign up to is to ban freedom.
A very, very dangerous development.
Richard Holle says:
October 8, 2013 at 11:27 am
“Any incoming radiant energy that strikes these surface films of super fluid liquid helium that as a result, temporarily vaporizes it, when it re-condenses back out at ~3K it generates a heat on condensation photon emission at ~3K. ”
I do not know if your explanation is the correct one — but I must admit, it is certainly a very interesting approach. I now have something new to think about!
@ur momisugly G Karst: people who take the survey now are merely compared to/with/against those who took the “random survey,” so the results will not be skewed.
However, I wonder if they are capturing the results with the intent to do something else with them. Of course, anyone taking the survey now is most definitely not not a part of a randomized sample, do what they could do is limited.
For those of you who say Hydrogen GAS is what most scientists say warm the earth… I’ll give you that it’s hydrogren fusion, but I don’t believe that anybody actually believes that Hydrogen is in a gaseous state in the core. (I believe that a fusion process involving hydrogen Plasma is the correct answer to that question).
TheLastDemocrat says:
October 8, 2013 at 11:22 am
Reply; There are local lunar/earth tidal bulge effects in the crust as well as the oceans and the atmosphere. As the moon moves in its declinational component daily, it passes over different sections of mid ocean ridges and their associated micro cracks which ooze small seeps of liquid magma into the small gaps that form in the limited areas where the moon is almost directly overhead. The result is a small seepage of magma that fills and solidifies between the plate edges in different places every day.
Then by the same mechanism that (if you have ever had a wrench slip while working in confined quarters and gotten a small slice on a knuckle, that forms a scab for several days) every time you bend that knuckle the scab cracks open and re-heals adding to the size of the resultant scab. By the end of the day you need to soak the wound in warm water to soften the build up scab and debris in order to be able to straighten your finger all the way, when extended.
In ocean ridges this small continual tiny set of moving wedges, ends up being the “push” component of the “push/pull slab driving effects” that make the resultant movement. Analyzing the micro quake data along the ocean ridges and other plate boundaries, shows a robust correlation to the Lunar earth effect tidal bulges, that move with the moons declination.
A lot of folks are hung up on that CO2 question.
Look, even most of us agree that CO2 is, independently of any other factors, a greenhouse gas. A weak one that comprises only a tiny percentage of the atmosphere, but a greenhouse gas.
As is always the case in Test-Taking 101, you pick the best answer presented.
The question is very general – it does not talk about harmful warming, or the only or even predominant cause of warming, just that some gas contributes to warming and most of us would agree with that.
Most of us might also argue that it’s not the BEST answer in the spectrum of possible phenomena, but it’s the only correct answer in the list (unless you’re gonna get oblique and talk about hydrogen fueling solar activity, etc.)
@Berényi Péter,
You have a very common misconception. Scientists aren’t in the business of proving anything. They are in the business of FALSIFYING things. Even the oldest and dearest scientific “Laws” are never said to be truly proven. They are merely the best approximation of reality that we have.
If a scientist ever believes he has truly proved something, he has ceased to be a scientist.
The question on the composition of the atmosphere was a multiple choice with 4 options. Random chance would lead to a 25% correct rate on that one. The 12% rate reported for the demographic with the least education is significantly less than random, and indicates they have been taught the wrong answer.
MattB says: @ur momisugly October 8, 2013 at 8:33 am
Well that was easy. would be curious to see in a few days after all the WUWT’ers take the quiz how far we blow the bell curve on the test.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes, I was thinking the same thing. Anthony just blew their statistics out of the water.
From the results summary for a 13/13 score – “You scored better than 93% of the public and the same as 7%”
So when you score 13/13 you are not in alignment with the 93% public consensus – you are in the 7% category (sceptic). This confirms John Cook’s research results …………………
Robert Thomson
13/13
I sent some feedback on question #12. Please do the same!
tadchem – I believe what you see there is that group has not been taught anything about the composition of air, or hasn’t retained it, but they’ve picked up somewhere the notion that oxygen is required for animal life (including us) so they figure air must be mostly oxygen.