Readers may recall this survey announced at WUWT: An AGW opinion survey for your participation.
Some preliminary results were announced Monday. From Mike Haesler:
The Scottish Climate & Energy Forum has been conducting a survey on the background and attitudes of participants to online climate discussions. The survey had a massive response which will take time and resource to process. However initial analysis already shows that the actual views and backgrounds of participants are in sharp contrast with some high-profile statements being made about the participants. Therefore I felt we should make these initial results known as soon as practical to avoid further damage, both to the reputation of those involved in the online debate, as well as those making the unfounded and presumably mistaken accusations of “denial”.
As such, I am releasing the following statement regarding the survey.
A sceptical consensus: the science is right but catastrophic global warming is not going to happen
A recent survey of those participating in on-line forums showed that most of the 5,000 respondents were experienced engineers, scientists and IT professionals most degree qualified and around a third with post graduate qualifications. The survey, carried out by the Scottish Climate and Energy Forum, asked respondents for their views on CO2 and the effect it might have on global temperatures. The results were surprising. 96% of respondents said that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing with 79% attributing the increase to man-made sources. 81% agreed that global temperatures had increased over the 20th century and 81% also agreed that CO2 is a warming gas. But only 2% believed that increases in CO2 would cause catastrophic global warming.
So what’s going on?
Above all, these highly qualified people – experts in their own spheres – look at the published data and trust their own analysis, so their views match the available data. They agree that the climate warmed over the 20th century (this has been measured), that CO2 levels are increasing (this too has been measured) and that CO2 is a warming gas (it helps trap heat in the atmosphere and the effects can be measured). Beyond this, the survey found that 98% of respondents believe that the climate varies naturally and that increasing CO2 levels won’t cause catastrophic warming.
What next?
Overwhelmingly participants in this large scale survey support the science, however this is not how they have been portrayed in the media and this has led to deep and bitter divides between those who hold different viewpoints. This debate should be based on the evidence and that not only includes the scientific evidence on the climate, but also the evidence of the real participants involved in the debate. Given the huge number of responses and detail of questions a full assessment will take up to one year to complete. This is a huge commitment from an organisation that has no outside funding and is reliant on one full-time volunteer (Mike Haseler). We will therefore be approaching the Scottish and UK government with a view to obtaining funding to complete the analysis.
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Mike Haesler
Please check your statement:
“The results were surprising. 96% of respondents said that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing with 79% attributing the increase to man-made sources. ”
That statement implies that 79% believe ALL the CO2 increase is due to “”man-made sources”.
I do not think that is what the questions asked (but don’t have access to the questions.)
Please clarify you statement with “part”, “some”, “most” or “all” depending on how the CO2 increase questions were stated.
You may meant to say:
“with 79% attributing some of the increase to man-made sources.”
Or
“ with 79% attributing most of the increase to man-made sources.
Please add the questions asked on CO2.
Count me in the group that believes:
1. Temperature records have been fiddled and diddled so much lately that it’s impossible to quantify just how much warming has occurred in the last century. However, warming has occurred, since we know the planet warmed out of the Little Ice Age.
2. The “THEORY” of CO2 causing warming is fine, but nobody has in any way, shape or form proven that the effect is significant in any way, since it is overwhelmed by other forces. If anyone is aware of any credible proof that this theory is correct, feel free to enlighten us all.
3. CO2 levels have risen in the last few decades, but the reality is that we do NOT have accurate records of what they were 100 and more years ago. This is because chemical tests made long ago have been simply discarded since they showed levels similar to today.
4. Human output of CO2 is likely not the cause of atmospheric CO2 rise, since human contribution is such a small portion of the estimated CO2 flux that it could easily be absorbed just by a small increase in overall plant growth.
Count me in with Codetech.
While I accept that most scientists think that human fossil fuels are responsible for rises in CO2 levels, I see little or no evidence to support that conclusion. I also see almost 800.000 years of icecore evidence that suggest that CO2 lags temperature – not the other way round.
As for temperatures – I stick with the CET (http://www.climate4you.com/CentralEnglandTemperatureSince1659.htm).
If a human fingerprint exists, then its also in the individual station – and I see nothing unusual
there. See for example the natural warming between 1690 and 1710.
Antonio the Grammar Nazi, get your own sentences in order before lambasting others…..
” Do scientists working in chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy, etc, ever talk about, “the science”?”…..the comma after “about” and before “the…” is not correct.
Don’t be so damned petty.
Interesting.
The majority of respondents appear to support the following:
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
Wonder if they also support:
“Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
Perhaps the Petition Project is the consensus?
My question is this:
Is Mauna Loa Volcano the only CO2 readings that are used?
If so, how can one set of readings be reliable or valid?
Alberta Slim, there are several monitoring stations around the world that are roughly tracking with Mauna Loa. I personally don’t in any way question that it’s a valid approximation of global trend.
…I personally don’t in any way question that it’s a valid approximation of global trend…
I believe that the Mauna Loa station results are probably accurate for that station. But I don’t know that CO2 has been proven to be well-mixed. And I don’t know anything about the other tracking stations, many of which may have been commissioned to support the AGW hypothesis.
I would like to see a satellite reading of CO2 concentrations across the globe before accepting that an ‘average CO2’ reading can mean anything…
5000 people took this survey… 5000 more targets for Michael Mann to sue…
While logical to assume that CO2 levels are increasing since more fossil fuels are being burned shouldn’t we be seeing a higher rate of increase if its affect on the atmosphere is so lasting and dramatic?
If Mosher likes it, it’s gotta be good.
Alberta Slim says:
February 25, 2014 at 6:06 am
My question is this:
Is Mauna Loa Volcano the only CO2 readings that are used?
No:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/
Look down the page for the heading ‘The Carbon Tracker observing system’.
ALL the millenial/current data shows that temperature rises FIRST and C02 follows so above not accurate
@Billy Liar…… the part I don’t like in the link is NOAA.
Are they not already guilty, or suspected of, “data tampering”?
This should be communicated to as many newspapers as possible. Only a few will actually acknowledge and write about, but still, even a few news items would make it worthwhile.
Excellent work.
@- CodeTech says:
“Count me in the group that believes:
1. Temperature records have been fiddled and diddled so much lately that it’s impossible to quantify just how much warming has occurred in the last century. However, warming has occurred, since we know the planet warmed out of the Little Ice Age.”
But then sea level ri8se and ice-cap melt are impossible to fiddle and diddle, the energy required to expand the oceans ande melt that much ice has to come from somewhere…
@-“2. The “THEORY” of CO2 causing warming is fine, but nobody has in any way, shape or form proven that the effect is significant in any way, since it is overwhelmed by other forces. If anyone is aware of any credible proof that this theory is correct, feel free to enlighten us all.”
Satellite measurements combined with ground measurement of the downwelling IRLW is a direct, observational confirmation of all that MODTRAN radiative transfer theory.
https://climatedataguide.ucar.edu/climate-data/ceres-ebaf-clouds-and-earths-radiant-energy-systems-ceres-energy-balanced-and-filled
The CERES-EBAF product provides 1-degree regional, zonal and global monthly mean Top-of-Atmosphere (TOA) and surface (SFC) longwave (LW), shortwave (SW), and net (NET) fluxes under clear and all-sky conditions. EBAF is used for climate model evaluation, estimating the Earth’s global mean energy budget, and to infer meridional heat transport.
@-“3. CO2 levels have risen in the last few decades, but the reality is that we do NOT have accurate records of what they were 100 and more years ago. This is because chemical tests made long ago have been simply discarded since they showed levels similar to today.”
Chemical tests made long ago were very error prone and were often measurements of ground level in the lab, in a town. If the levels measured now from ice cores are not accurate then the evidence that CO2 is rising from plant growth and ocean ph changes would not make sense.
@- “4. Human output of CO2 is likely not the cause of atmospheric CO2 rise, since human contribution is such a small portion of the estimated CO2 flux that it could easily be absorbed just by a small increase in overall plant growth.”
the total seasonal flux of CO2 between the atmosphere and the biological sinks does exceed the annual human contribution. but that does not logically negate the obvious role of the human contribution in increasing the total amount of carbon in the cycle both in the atmosphere and in extra plant growth. No other source for the increwase is credible.
Stephen Richards, sorry but I can’t agree. We have to keep the flux and the increase separate. Comparisons to the flux make as much sense as saying that since a water tank has 1000 gallons per day flowing into it and 1000 gallons per day flowing out, then adding 3 gallons per day makes no difference.
While human emissions are small compared to the flux if we agree that there is an increase as observed by Mauna Loa and the other possible evidence from fractional isotopes then we have to conclude it is possible that a goodly portion of the rise is from our activities.
If we go by the accepted measurements and CO2 has gone from 280 to 400 ppm that is an increase of 120 ppm and some percentage must be from our activities. To suggest the entire increase is from natural causes flies in the face of common sense and I think it just as unlikely that we are responsible for the entire increase. Hence my term a “goodly amount”.
Didn’t know where to post this. But an interesting document released on Wikileaks ..
https://wikileaks.org/tpp-enviro/
I dont know Anthony’s email address so if someone could pass this on, ta!
REPLY: We have a Tips and Notes page, plus contact under “About”, both under the menu bar above – Anthony
@izen
But then sea level ri8se and ice-cap melt are impossible to fiddle and diddle, the energy required to expand the oceans ande melt that much ice has to come from somewhere…
1 – sea level rise is not impossible to fiddle – it depends on measurements and corrections
2 – we don’t have a good enough record of sea level rise and fall to determine what is a reasonable natural variation
3 – What ice-cap melt? Average ice has been pretty constant.
4 – if you are talking about the Arctic alone, then you are obviously trying to present a one-sided view of the data. And I would point out that although we do not have precise historical data on the Arctic extent, we do know that it has melted in similar ways several times before over the past few hundred years.
Silly to ask for government help. Set up a PayPal account and ask here for financial help — you’d be pleasantly surprised at how much money you could raise by simply asking for the help of the kind souls you read here. If you need help with this rather simple matter, I’d be glad to help. Who was that Canadian skeptic that financed her trip to testify to the UK Parliament by asking here?
I am concerned about this:
Given the huge number of responses and detail of questions a full assessment will take up to one year to complete.
Obama has a pen and a phone. The Congress just wrote him a blank check for as much ink as he wants. Look at the news: the Smear is on high. We don’t have a year.
Do you want some volunteers? I’m game.
I would be very tempted to use Spotfire Cloud which would allow for workgroup development, public display and interactive filtering for readers own analysis. What can we turn around in two weeks – a month?
We can start with some crowd sourcing for the directions of analysis and hypotheses.
List the questions again.
Without first looking at the raw data results,
The Crowd could propose some cross tabulations and stratifications that should be of interest.
{ Richard Tol (@RichardTol) says:
February 25, 2014 at 12:07 am
98% > 97% }
LOL!
@- Dodgy Geezer says:
” 2 – we don’t have a good enough record of sea level rise and fall to determine what is a reasonable natural variation”
Yes we do, if there had beenh an6ything like the sea level rise measaured over the last century in any of the preceding 3000 years the past lunar elclipse dates/times would bve off.
So it is certain that the recent sea level rise is unprecedented in several millenia.
@-“3 – What ice-cap melt? Average ice has been pretty constant.
4 – if you are talking about the Arctic alone, then you are obviously trying to present a one-sided view of the data. And I would point out that although we do not have precise historical data on the Arctic extent, we do know that it has melted in similar ways several times before over the past few hundred years.”
I was not refering to the Arctic as an ice cap. because it isnt one.
But the Greenland ice cap and the Antarctic ice cap, ie the ice on land has shown measurable mass loss, as have the glaciers globally. Just the other day there was a report here about the PIne island Glacier in Antarctica showing a melt rate comparable to the Holocene optimum 8000 years ago.
@BillyLiar
Is Mauna Loa Volcano the only CO2 readings that are used? – No: (see) http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/
This tracking system shows several things, including a completely unmixed spread of CO2 between about 383 ppm over the whole Southern Hemisphere, 390 over much of the Northern Hemisphere, and hot spots of slightly above 395. I thought that the models always assumed that CO2 was well mixed?
The second point is that the tracker network itself states that it is ‘uncertain’ The following comment appears on the site:
It is important to note that at this time the uncertainty estimates for CarbonTracker sources and sinks are themselves quite uncertain. They have been derived from the mathematics of the ensemble data assimilation system, which requires several educated guesses for initial uncertainty estimates. The paper describing CarbonTracker (Peters et al. (2007), Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. vol. 104, p. 18925-18930) presents different uncertainty estimates based on the sensitivity of the results to 14 alternative yet plausible ways to construct the CarbonTracker system.
@izen at 9:03 am
RE: Dodgy Geezer ” 2 – we don’t have a good enough record of sea level rise and fall to determine what is a reasonable natural variation”
Yes we do, if there had beenh an6ything like the sea level rise measaured over the last century in any of the preceding 3000 years the past lunar elclipse dates/times would bve off.
So it is certain that the recent sea level rise is unprecedented in several millenia.
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/deltaT2.html
Stephenson and Houlden (1986), and Stephenson (1997) show the contrary.
They show a cumulative delta-T in seconds for difference centuries from 1600 back to 1500 BCE.
In the 1986 work, they have an acceleration term of 45 sec/century^2 from 1100 to 1600, but earlier in the MWP the acceleration term is 93 sec/century^2, a bigger drag and therefore a higher sea level. If you use their 1997 data, the accelerations jump around from -100 to +200 sec/century^2 without much pattern.