Fully a third don’t agree that man is the primary driver
Another survey of 4,092 members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) from George Mason University (home of Shukla and the RICO20) on climate change attitudes in that organization was released yesterday. However, the survey itself is tainted with the stench of the RICO20 and their calls for prosecution and jailing of “climate deniers”.
The survey results show a general acceptance of the view that climate change is happening, and that the cause is partly due to human activity, but there is a contingent that sticks out like a sore thumb.
Dr. Roy Spencer notes on his blog:
But what I find interesting is that the supposed 97% consensus on climate change (which we know is bogus anyway) turns into only 67% when we consider the number of people who believe climate change is mostly or entirely caused by humans, as indicated by this bar chart:
Fully 33% either believe climate change is not occurring, is mostly natural, or is at most half-natural and half-manmade (I tend toward that last category)…or simply think we “don’t know”.
For something that is supposed to be “settled science”, I find that rather remarkable.
Even given that 1/3 who don’t attribute man-made causes, personally, I think the numbers aren’t fully representative of what AMS members really think and that 1/3 number would actually be higher.
Two colleagues I know locally also got this survey, and they didn’t send it in because they didn’t believe their opinion or identity would actually be protected. Given that the operator of the survey, George Mason University is a hotbed of calls for prosecution and jailing of “deniers”, and that Edward Maibach is one of the people who signed the letter to the Whitehouse and who operated this particular AMS survey, I can’t say that I blame them. I wouldn’t have sent it in either when the man asking the questions might flag you for criminal prosecution for having an opinion he doesn’t like.
Survey results are available here: https://gmuchss.az1.qualtrics.com/CP/File.php?F=F_cRR9lW0HjZaiVV3
Typo in headline.
What a great way to fill the prisons. Take a poll, and then jail those respondants who disagree with you. I’m with Dr. Roy I just don’t know; and I also have a strong opinion; but it’s an opinion.
I also have another opinion; that we will never know; and that too is just an opinion.
And like always, I’m here to learn. Now if John Christy and Dr. Roy ever say they believe they know, then my ears will prick up. And that’s about as definitive a statement, I can make on the subject. And GMU is still the home of the very handsome, and even smarter Walter E. Williams (never forget the E), so that institution is not totally lost yet.
G
I met Walter E. Williams many years ago. I loved his explanation of how grandmothers could be the top basketball professionals – it depends on the rules of the game. If the rules said you had to knit a doily before you could shoot at the basket, then the grandmothers might have the edge.
I don’t believe the Democrats truly believe in global warming. If there is global warming, and all life on earth is about to be wiped out by catastrophic changes, as we are being told, then their solution (a tax) is just ridiculous. Really? Just give us a tax and everything is going to be hokey dokey pokey. Wow. Who knew?
The carbon tax would increase the cost of oil and gas and people would seek alternatives for home heating and transportation that would reduce their use of fossil fuels. It is pretty simple.
Luke
And all of that 1.3 trillion “new tax money” would go to the government. Who would then use it to reward their friends, their donors, their voters. And NONE of that new wasted money funneled from the working public to the government’s favored classes would reduce the world’s global average temperature by even 0.01 degree. It sure is simple, though. The government gets more money, more control, endless opportunities for more taxes and more control.
Yes Luke, Your response is pretty simple. The poorest among us pay the highest taxes as a percentage of their income. Good idea tax the poor! Also, if global warming were so important why are those proposing the taxes not acting accordingly? They fly here and there to carbon expensive gatherings and come away with a plan to kill off the poor, where ever they may be found! More people DIE from the cold than from the heat.
On the topic of coal, what is it, how was it produced? Coal is highly compressed plant matter. That plant matter was produced under climatic conditions much like what we have NOW! If we burned ALL the coal the worst case scenario would be a lush climate where plants and animals thrive. By all means prevent that with a tax.
RA,
The only carbon tax I would support would return the income as dividends. That way those who are proactive and switch to solutions that use less carbon would come out ahead. From the Carbontax.org website.
A carbon tax is an “upstream” tax on the carbon contents of fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) and biofuels.
A carbon tax is the most efficient means to instill crucial price signals that spur carbon-reducing investment. Download our spreadsheet to input your own tax levels and see how fast U.S. emissions will fall.
A carbon tax will raise fossil fuel prices — that’s the point. The impact on households can be softened through “dividends” (revenue distributions) and/or reducing other taxes that discourage hiring and investing (“tax-shifting or swapping”).
Carbon taxing is an antidote to rigged corporate energy pricing. Unlike cap-and-trade, carbon taxes don’t create complex and easily-gamed “carbon markets” with allowances, trading and offsets.
Bob says:
?w=450&h=290
“If we burned ALL the coal the worst case scenario would be a lush climate where plants and animals thrive.”
And sea levels would be about 70 m higher than today. Do you really want that?
Luke,
Why would modelling show a 1 metre increase in sea levels at 16 degrees by the year 2100 yet empirical evidence shows the piloscene period sea level was 40m higher when the temperature was 15 degrees. Or the fact that the Eocene period was 70 m higher when temperatures we at 18-19 degrees.
Luke, please reconcile this discrepancy if co2 is the driver of global warming. After all, if co2 was the problem, the world would be drowning right now irrespective of which period you chose to compare the modelling to. Over to you Luke, I will be fascinated to read how you will reconcile this mismatch of information.
Luke,
I’m afraid history tends to indicate that increasing the cost of oil via a “carbon tax” (or any other mechanism) has little or no effect on consumption levels or the quest for alternatives.
Price over the past ten years (all over the place)
http://www.forecast-chart.com/chart-crude-oil.html
Consumption over the same period (pretty flat, especially in the USA)
http://oilindependents.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/World-Petroleum-Consumption-OECD-vs-Other-Regions-4-4-12.jpg
A tax of this kind (pretty) simply would not work.
Craig,
There is a time lag. Temperatures are lagging the rapid increase in CO2 and melting of the large ice sheets will lag the rising temperature- just like when you apply heat to a pot of water, it doesn’t boil instantly.
From Climate.gov
Scientists say that doubling pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels will likely cause global average surface temperature to rise between 1.5° and 4.5° Celsius (2.7° to 8.1° Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial temperatures. (Current concentrations are about 1.4 times pre-industrial levels.) The full process could take hundreds of years—perhaps more than a thousand—to play out. Climate scientists call the full temperature rise from doubled carbon dioxide concentrations the equilibrium climate sensitivity.
You mean when you apply heat to a pan, from 93 million miles away, filter the energy through an atmosphere that blocks roughly 30% of the energy from the heat source, and then only apply that heat to half of the pan at a time while the other side cools off. Right?
If you add more CO2 between the pan and the burner, will the water in it boil faster?
Luke,
Thank you for NOT taking the time to explain the discrepancy in the data set you posted. Seriously Luke, you want the planet to worry about what MAY happen in a few hundred to a thousand years time when it there is no clear evidence to show if CO2 is the main driver of global warming?
Perhaps a refresher of Petit et al and the Vostok paper should remind you of the fallacy of writing certainties when other factors need to be considered.
Luke, if you believe CO2 is the problem, guess what, you won’t be around to see any change in the environment as natural variations take place. Really sucks Luke to waste your time being this one eyed.
Craig,
You are missing the point. 70 meters of sea level rise in a few hundred years means significant rise this century. Do you really want your kids paying the cost of dealing with 1 or 2 m of sea level rise?
Luke,
As pointed out by kennethrichards in the Names Hansen thread, absolute GSLR= 1.8mm per year. Or 180mms per century. Or 540 mm in a “few hundred years”. There are 1,000 mms in one meter. So at the current rate of 1.8 mms per year, it would take 550 years to reach even 1 meter of sea level rise. So, it would be insanity to think my children will have to deal with a “1-2 meter rise”. Even if the rate doubled…or tripled! I might worry about my grandchildren but I believe they will have a far better understanding of the planet and more advanced technology by then, so they’ll be fine either way.
But, I do KNOW that if we cripple the world’s economies by stopping fossil fuel use without an equally efficient and inexpensive source of energy to replace it, our kids WILL pay dearly for that! Doing it on pure speculation and miscalculations seems to be a lot closer to insanity (as well as unloving and cruel) rather than prudence don’t you think?
Add carbon taxes and people will reduce use of fossil fuels? Then how come so many of us find a fireplace comforting? Because we don’t have to huddle around a barrel. We can warm the house by way of wood we pick up in the local woods and forests. Kind of like they did in Haiti….
Quote –
Luke
March 26, 2016 at 6:14 am
The carbon tax would increase the cost of oil and gas and people would seek alternatives for home heating and transportation that would reduce their use of fossil fuels. It is pretty simple.
and here’s a no-brainer Luke, what if there really isn’t any alternatives at this time? Do people just freeze to death to pay the tax? And the truth is, there really isn’t any alternatives that they can afford, or they already would be using them.
Not all Democrats, Just Liberals who have always lacked the emotional stability to accept constant rejection of every cause they champion ! As a country, we have long accepted the premise that those who continuously predict the end of the world are deserving of psychiatric counseling at least with log term confinement as the preferred option !
@Luke
The “low carbon” alternative for a lot (but not all or even most) of fossil fuel use was there the whole time, and the republicrats (with emphasis on the crats) made everything possible to make it ridiculously costly, frightening and unmanageable.
(In case you haven’t caught up, it’s called nuclear fission.)
@Luke
Meanwhile 40000 people in Europe die because they can’t afford to heat their homes in winter
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/03/30/green-europe-is-killing-40000-poor-people-a-year/
..That’s like taking a poll in prison and asking the prisoners ” Are you innocent and should you be set free ? ” ..Hmmm, I wonder if they’d get only 97% !! LOL
In Australia we can’t call prisons and prisoners prisons and prisoners. We have to call them “correctional centers” and “inmates”. AND, inmates get laptops too, restricted. Sure, any savvy PC/internet person can get past that “security”.
Aren’t they just Native Neo-Aussies anyway ??
As someone in the Nineteenth Century said, Australia is a nation of convicts, who should be grateful for anything they are given short of hanging.
So there.
Uh…no, not exactly.
Using your construct, it’s like asking prisoners if the prosecutors (not defense attorneys) in their cases were honest & competent.
It appears to me that the “mostly by human activity” camp can fall into the skeptic view as well, as the warming so far observed is far below the IPCC projections, and if that warming is 30 percent natural, then they are even further off. This leaves only one third at best supporting the CAGW narrative. Actually it leaves zero as supporting the CAGW narrative, as none were questioned on the benefits vs. harms of said warming.
Yes.
Heck, I’d answer Yes to both the Orsekes and Cook survey questions. And I am a very strong skeptic. You’d be surprised at how innocuous those questions actually are. Neither addresses amounts, neither addresses danger assessment, neither addresses policy.
Did this AMS survey ask about how dangerous warming was felt to be and what should be done to counter it? (E.g., renewables vs. nuclear.)
You’re a believer. You think the atmosphere heats the planet. You simply don’t agree with those like you, that the mysterious power you all believe in, can damage civilization.
Justin, the potential for GHGs to warm the atmosphere is not mysterious. Any energy in the system, (atmosphere, oceans, land) which stays longer (increased residence time as GHGs do, sometimes redirecting some LWIR back into the lower atmosphere) is warming. Evan Jones position is rational, and likely incorporates the majority of skeptics.
Nearly all skeptics in the journals think a change in atmospheric content can heat the planet. The question always avoided is how much. (And I actually think it can and has helped civilization.)
From what I see of modern climate “science” peer review I doubt most of them read or understood the question before nodding yes and sticking their hand out.
Back in the 1980s, I knew a paleontologist graduate student. We’d sit around and talk about whatever for hours at a time.
Once, I mentioned the Chicxulub crater, and how the impact might have caused a mass extinction (it was a pretty hot subject at the time).
He informed me, in no uncertain terms, that no serious scientists thought that had actually happened. It was just some geologists wasting everyone’s time.
What a straw man argument. What the heck is this anecdote supposed to mean anyways? This doesn’t bust the original survey at all, actually. Opinions oscillate with time and so do the number of responses, so I wouldn’t expect to see 97% exactly on another survey. Added to that, this survey was only to one scientific society, not all of them. And who knows how the surveys were distributed for these supposed results? Were they spread in a random and fair manner? I highly doubt it. How do I know this graph wasn’t made up completely? There’s no link to the actual survey document. This is so laughably unscientific. You trolls have fun denying real science.
I don’t believe that 1% saying “no climate change over the last 50 years” is even remotely true.
Climate oscillates around a mean. So technically there has never in the entire life of the planet been a 50 year stretch with no change. However, when that question is asked that is not what they mean, and we all know it.
It means, “are things out of the ordinary”, and a lot more than 1% know that things are NOT out of the ordinary.
Given the questions in the survey, I’m not surprised 1% checked it. Had they asked “Does the WMO come out with a new climate “normal” every decade for the previous 30 years,” and made it a separate question, that would have scored a lot higher.
Seems to be a rather ill designed survey. Perhaps 97% of surveys designed by climatologists are crap.
Code Tech & Bob
While I strongly agree with the intent of your statements (should be a lot more “don’t know”s”), please consider the audience: the great American public.
That group has at least 2 problems:
(1) Their government has made it highly convenient for them to get a world-class poor education (esp. scientific education);
(2) Now days most people simply refuse to say “I don’t know” – everybody assumes you can get educated about anything in <10 minutes on the internet.
Anecdotal evidence: some absurdly large %age of US citizens cannot point to France on an unmarked map.
They assumed all the respondents were overcome by high CO2 levels and then modeled the answers and then made a few adjustments. Then they got the janitor to double check it.
@Chip Javert
Those types surveys are incredibly demeaning and useless in measuring the public’s general intelligence. If the US were a confederation like the EU (in which each state is independent of one another) and if some from France were asked to point to where Nevada is on an unmarked map. I’m pretty positive that not only would he get it wrong, but 97% of the rest of the world would also. *pun intended*
In other words, everything is a matter of context.
There should be a lot more “don’t know”s .
Checking a box that says “nobody knows” instead of “I don’t know” makes a big difference as well. One gets way more responses than the other. Having to admit personal ignorance rather than make an assessment of the state of knowledge are two very different things. Tells you much about the opinions of those who constructed the survey. Or at least it tells me they are either biased on this issue or inept at constructing surveys.
Quantification of the contribution to climate change of CO2 is scientifically non-ascertainable since there is no known scientific means of empirically measuring it. Thus, “I don’t know” is the objectively correct answer to the question asked, and everyone should have checked that box. .
Well there isn’t even a global climate anyway. Climate is a local phenomenon.
Let me put it this way. …… IF ….. CLIMATE can be quantified by numbers and such so as to be able to describe it in some reproducible way, so ANY practitioner familiar with the process can distinguish one climate from another climate; then clearly climate is totally localized, and the notion of a global climate is just nonsense.
Definition : Global Climate ….. is a ground surface Temperature between -95 deg. C and + 65 deg. C accompanied by a relative humidity between 0.1 % and 99.9% and having total annual precipitation between 0.1 mm of rain equivalent and ten meters rain equivalent, and wind speeds from 1.0 mm per second, and 100 meters per second, accompanied by other conditions too numerous to include in this definition. Or alternatively; Climate is a local phenomenon.
G
“there isn’t even a global climate anyway”
Exactly!
I would like to ask what they mean by “climate change” – I certainly wouldn’t say it’s “global” – any change going on is regional. I would also like to know how many besides the two mentioned in the article, didn’t return their surveys.
I would also likewise say there is nothing out of the ordinary happening – it’s nothing that hasn’t happened before. There are no “new” climate conditions happening that don’t currently exist elsewhere on the planet.
First the corrupt establishment threaten us with prosecution and jail, then they make a survey asking us ur opinion. Who would actually trust them with our honest opinion? Even that 67% is a fake.
…or 67% believe there’s a status quo.
No survey means anything until you can demonstrate that it’s sample represents the population. The last paragraph in this post points out how unrepresentative it probably is.
Gary
Since when did we start voting on science? Whatever the population thinks has exactly zero impact on the underlying physics (I agree it may have some political impact).
Survey results may be of interest if considering remedial education for these poor sheep, but most of the surveys are done for propaganda.
Since when did we start voting on science?
Well, at least since Aristotle’s boys are said to have voted out a member who turned out to be an empiricist. And probably a lot longer ago than that.
The survey results, as published, are bogus. In survey work, to obtain valid percentages, the methodology must either randomize a sample or survey the entire group. In the former case, they would need to publish the statistical margin of error ( error bars )
Well you don’t need the error bars, because the results of any survey are always exact. You get an exact number of responses in each category.
What is greatly in need of error bars (huge ones) is YOUR extrapolation of those exact survey results to YOUR interpretation of what those exact results mean, with no real evidence to support YOUR belief.
That is more a measure of your ability to ask meaningful questions, than it is a measure of what other people besides YOU believe.
G
Right on george e smith!
Polling is about questions not answers. e.g. When brother Dominic lit up during prayers, brother Guido told him that smoking during prayers was forbidden the Abbot had told him so. What did you ask him? asked Dominic. I asked could I smoke during prayers, and he said No! replied Guido. Ah! said Dominic taking a long drag, I asked him was it OK to pray while I smoked, and he said Yes!
There is also the problem that it fails to actually define what climate change is – it is a Humpty Dumpty definition. Global Warming can be defined as an increased in the average temperature as measured from a particular database.
Has climate change occurred in the Atacama desert recently?
..The Alarmist definition of ” Climate Change “.. changes daily, depending on their need for that day !!
“the alarmist definition of climate change” suppose they live in only of those many places where local observation allows “don’t like the weather? just hang around fifteen minutes it’ll change”
Scrolling down through the comments to see if anyone noted just that. The question should have been about AGW. But personally, I’d propose, in this case, that it’s really necessary to lead the question with, ‘understanding that the consensus is that probably all of the measurable GW during the first half of the 20th century was naturally occurring and approximately similar to the GW since 1950, do you think that GW over the course of the past 50 years has been caused . .’
Then, one should follow that up with, ‘understanding that there is really no empirical evidence, other than some warming, of any worsening long term trends in other forms of climate change (drought, cyclonic systems, floods, etc) during the past 50 years or so, as compared to the first half of the 20th Century, why are we continuing to talk about ACC, or CACC, as if it’s currently happening?’
Possible answers to choose from on that one, are:
– Gee, I don’t really know.
– Because we’re really stupid as a group.
– Because the media keeps it on the table.
– Oops
BUT, what would the survey be if “climate change” was replaced with “global warming”?
Can someone at WUWT contact Roy Spencer to tell him his site isn’t loading correctly? All I get is text as the images and stylesheets won’t load. He doesn’t have a contact page so I’m not sure if he knows there is an issue.
I’ll post on his FaceBook page. He’s been having trouble with the ISP for a while.
It looks like there’s a lot of missing CSS for formatting.
I’ve submitted a trouble ticket to the hosting company.
I’ve seen his site do that on occasion using firefox, but looked fine just a minute ago.
I just went to the site and it loaded fine with I.E.
Notice the dishonest way they pose the question, pitting “human activity” vs “natural events”. Human activity is a red herring, meant to obfuscate and confuse. The true question is about man’s CO2, and they know it, and the reason they are being dishonest about it is that they know that there is no “human fingerprint” to the warming of late last century. And what the Christ do they mean by “natural events”? That is simply a straw man, so again, they are lying.
The survey does not bust the 97% consensus. The 30% who did not agree are not “Climate Scientists”.
If, when the survey is repeated in a few years time, more than 50% do not agree with the consensus they, too, will be excluded because they will be deprived of the title “Climate Scientist.”
No matter what qualifications a scientist possesses if he/she does not agree with the consensus they cannot be “Climate Scientists.” On the other hand, irrespective of their qualifications, mathematicians, economists and others qualify as “Climate Scientists” so long as they adhere to the cause.
Solomon
Perhaps in a few years “climate scientist” will be viewed as something like a voodoo witch doctor or even worse than a (gasp!) Wall Street banker…
That’s an interesting comparison. Both industries have thousands of people making millions of dollars pontificating on a process that is best described as a random walk.
Last time I looked, Mann had a PhD in geology, so that would square with your definition, Solomon. But the irony is amazing: You can be a “Climate Scientist” one week, and not be one the next–it all depends on your opinion.
Climate Science–the only non-verifiable profession I know.
The bottom line is that the poll itself is bogus and dishonest, and geared in favor of the Warmunist “consensus”. That in itself would tend to discourage skeptics/climate realists from participating, in addition to the overall climate of fear of retaliation. Despite all of that, they still couldn’t manage to get the results they wanted.
From my experience in dealing with those who adhere to the AGW hypothesis, the opinions of meteorologists on matters of climate are irrelevant. They prefer to listen to the opinions of bona fide climate scientists.
Ahh but now that the CAGWers talk of nothing but weather, the Meteorologists are back in!
just when I think I’m out….
😀
And yet the AMS is listed as one of those ‘200 scientific organizations’ which agree AGW is happening. Would you agree then that we should strike them from the list?
“And yet the AMS is listed as one of those ‘200 scientific organizations’ which agree AGW is happening. Would you agree then that we should strike them from the list?”
Apparently they should be so struck of the list. It is a good start … now about a survey for the members of the Academy of Sciences …”
FJ
WoooooWheeeeee! You funny guy!
You mean “bona fide climate scientists” like Cook, Lewandowski and Al Gore? What am I missing here?
“You mean ‘bona fide climate scientists’ like Cook, Lewandowski and Al Gore? What am I missing here?”
Not Al Gore – he is not a scientist of any sort. The CAGWers try to spread a great distance from that guy; they are not that stupid.
Chip, like myself, you need to go back and read what he said again- and this time, listen to it being said in Sarcasm 😛
Well, I am a skeptic and I participated in this poll. You’ll see me in the 5% block in that bar chart above. The actual survey was conducted by an independent online survey service, so GMU personnel would not have access to personal information by questions answered. It was an anonymous survey to them, as well. The survey did give the AMS definition of “climate change” at the start and based questions on that definition. The AMS definition of “climate change” is basically that the climate changes. I’m surprised even 1% disagreed with that. Of course, when the results are touted, the definition is NOT given and people are left with the impression that “climate change” = “global warming”.
Still it is gratifying to see that I am not alone in my stand on climate, even if I am in the minority. I am used to that. About 87 AMS members have become more skeptical about AGW over the last 5 years. And for the majority of them it was due to the scientific literature or the arguments put forth by climate scientists. I feel I am in good company.
This – the content of the definition – is a very important distinction. If the anthropological part is left out of the United Nations ‘official’ definition – and the respondents realize that fact (It must be made very clear) the answers should be very different. Many times the people surveyed will simply revert in their thinking to the definition they are in the habit of using and respond accordingly.
Human ego is limitless and few in authority can accept that there really might be some things that man CANNOT change – at least not yet. And they cannot accept that fact because that would mean there is an inherent limitation to their authority which they would have to admit.
Ah! indeed, the climate changes and glory be to that.
Carbon dioxide, is a life giving gas but water in its three forms is the mover and shaker and in its close relationship with that big golden orb in the sky.
The ant(hropoidea)’s scratch the surface and produce carbon dioxide and mother earth laughs and nothing is changed, the earth likes order in chaos and equilibrium is the outcome but it may take eons and anyway by that time – probably we’ll have ceased to exist………Gone and unnoticed, ants are, just ants. On, a time scale where even the great wall of China will be eventually ground down to micro grains of silica and mica glinting in a river bed, waiting to be carried down, a trench, fused remade as rocks and risen again greywacke, what an age it is.
We certainly affect the micro climate; we dry up inland seas, we dam rivers and change land use…. but after that, our input is infinitesimal, neglectful, negligible.
How many of these surveys were sent out? How many returned?
It is reasonable to suspect that many scientists who would not agree with AGW would not want their identity to be known by George Mason University.
Calling this a “bogus survey” is being way too kind.
A week is a long time in climate science.
“A week is a long time in climate science.”
Especially when they are trying to predict the weather.
…or quantify the climate.
Did they know John Holdren and the WH were only expressing John’s personal opinion about extreme cold caused by global warming prior to this polling question?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/what-believing-in-god-does-to-your-brain-a6950956.html.
Do CAGW also suppress the analytical areas of the brain?
The response rate was not listed, so I have my doubts about that. I agree with other posters that doubts about just how anonymous the survey really was would lead to skewing the outcome towards people who endorsed climate change as human caused.
Let’s keep in mind the time frame of the “climate change” in the survey – 50 years (1967 – 2016). The temperature increase has likely been around 0.5 degrees Celsius. “Mostly anthropogenic” warming of 0.01 degree per year is the mainstream skeptical opinion.
This same survey was conducted a couple of years ago, wasn’t it? As the subject is so politically supercharged (even tho’ it’s supposed to be scientific in nature) which influences opinion, and as a very high percentage of AMS haven’t/aren’t engaged in serious examination and study of climate change issues, this survey doesn’t really tell us much. It’s a pulse of AMS members – that’s about it.
Of course the survey is presented as scientific gold in some circles …
John@EF
On the other hand, you probably don’t want to be a TV weather man who claims there is little/no AGW.
This is not necessarily a derogatory statement about AMS members, just a realistic statement of the (pick one or more: savage, career-ending, unethical, corrupt, immoral, scientifically-ignorant, brutal, nasty) forces arrayed against them.
@ Chip and John@EF, that is a good point, I wonder what happened to the French Weather announcer that got fired a few months ago, has anybody heard what happened to him? ( the 15 minutes of fame seems to have turned into 15 seconds these days)
Merely anecdotal.
One must ignore these surveys, they have nothing to do with anything. Even if 99% disagreed, it is still irrelevant, but there are those that want to see debate and arguing over this, because that is the only possible purpose that survey could serve, media rubber stamping apart
The survey does not appear to include the crucial policy questions of how much ATGW is occurring or if AGW is “dangerous”.
In light of that, put me in category 2. I think over half is likely to be anthropogenic. But not much change. And not dangerous (in fact, highly beneficial, so far).
How many of them feel intimidated by such surveys?
This email survey was conducted in Jan 2016. The participation rate (per the report) was 53.3% (4092 AMS members). The results of the survey are interesting but hardly conclusive of anything. 46.7% of the AMS members chose not to participate. The number of AMS members who feared retribution if their opinion was shared is unknown.
That is a very good, not to say, exceptional participation rate. General marketing surveys IIRC, for instance, consider 10% to be a very good response.
Addressing an association of meteorologists, did they really use the weaselly euphemism ‘climate change’ to hide the words ‘global warming’? Was there any recipient that did not find this an insult to his intelligence?
/Mr Lynn
Maibach, the wrong horse.
========
BTW, the survey was not anonymous. The organizers of the survey knew precise identities of the surveyed individuals. And there is a tale telling sentence in the report:
It is important to note that 3,364 people (43.8% of our total sample) did not open any email associated with this survey.
Usually an email sender does not know whether the recipient has opened the email or not. The organizers of the survey either lied in their paper, or had actually employed some underhanded tracking technique. Modern email programs are pretty good at warning the users of such tracking attempts. In the current political climate, administering such “survey” seems as an act of intimidation.
Especially given 5 (five!) additional reminders that were sent to each target. In the second thought, it also looks like harassment.
The beatings will continue until morale has improved.
==========
“Thank you, sir! May I have another?”
Several things jump out at me…
No tabular data of actual counts, only graphs. Perhaps when the full paper comes out?
The way this was was issued, The only valid statistic in the whole thing is the % of those who responded.
If they are going to report invalid stats, then I want a chance, too. Here would be an invalid statistic: surveys were sent to 7677 ASM members. Of them, only 51% responded that they think climate change is happening…
On the subject of the survey, while it is not possible generally to determine if an e-mail has been opened, if the survey is linked via URL, then the act of accessing accessing the link can be counted, as can the elapsed time for taking the survey.
Looking at the grant abstract… This whole program is about MEDIA.
Shaping a narrative, sculpting its unreality. Not so much unveiling the statue within, as moulding the sickened clay.
===============
Does it really matter what the percentage of the consensus is? Suppose those who believe what the consensus is based on suddenly disagree with and only 3% remain of the old consensus. The result is another 97% consensus but with an opposite view. But it is still a meaningless consensus. There is no place in science for consensus-based empowerment. You’ve lost the debate when your strongest point is a that yours is a consensus opinion. This has been proved again and again throughout history.
yeah, except 97% is still a powerful meme with the masses.
Great. Cheer a study that actually counters the meme in a substantive way ….
It takes a while after it is busted for it to be rubbed out Dr S. The Guardian have dropped the consensus page 😀
Also the mindless masses that just don’t believe CAGW because of similar reasons why the mindless masses do believe it, now know the 97% was propaganda.
Greatest advert for the use of the 97% was the head of the Sierra Club, when asked what the pause was he replied “An event in the 1940s”, when further asked about that he just started bleating “97%” in response to the following questions. Utterly embarrassing.
That rag is fast becoming useless, as far as I can see, only crack pots now use that as a defence
It is useful in these discussions to separate science from politics. The 97% has been (an may continue to be) powerful politically even if it never made any sense scientifically. It was great politics even if it were never true.
Illusively great, tremendously fragile. Nature rules narrative, iron-handedly.
=============
I would have chosen “largely or entirely by natural events”, but I would have been tempted by “there has been no climate change over the last 50 years”.
The “no change” for 50 years option, to me, includes the fact that the climate has been recovering from the Little Ice Age and that except for a few minor swings about the small upward curve in temperature there has been nothing to write home about.
“And the unbelievers were very wroth and did rise up to smite the Golden Calf, and overturn the holy places, and did burn down its sacred groves, and did visit upon the high priests with great vehemence, and would not suffer them but did verily anoint them with rocks and did make of them for a burnt offering unto the Sun.”
Words mean things. There is no hypothesis of Climate Change. There is a hypothesis call anthropomorphic global warming. So the survey has no meaning.
no mention of CO2 specifically – maybe that was to evade the hot-button issue – but it leaves the conclusions up for interpretation
every person is entitled to an opinion of course but there is no empirical evidence that warming is related to fossil fuel emissions
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2725743
For those interested, here is the abstract on the NSF grant web page.
http://nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1422431
interesting reading.
Anthony – I think your numbers are wrong.
So 43.6% could not be intimidated into answering the survey for fear of retribution.
I would strongly expect that most of these folk are overwhelmingly NOT in the climate alarmist camp.
I bet all of them.
Lets break this down.
Survey of 4092… 43.6% don’t answer because they are worried about being harassed, fired, demoted, or otherwise shunned because they don’t believe in CAGW. That’s 1784 non believers.
1/3 that answered are self-professed non-believers, or 1362 people.
That leaves just 946 CAGW believers, or about 23%.
Said another way… Only 23% of those sent an AMS survey believe in CAGW.
From the survey…
Respectfully, I think your numbers might be off. Or, maybe I’ve got it wrong.
I interpret this such that the 4092 represents the 53.3% that responded to the survey, and that a total of around 7677 were initially requested to participate (i.e. 3585 didn’t bother to respond). That interpretation seems to change your calculations above. If 1/3 of the respondents are non-believers (1364 people), then the other 2728 respondents are believers. This seems to mean 35.5% (2728/7677) are believers using your logic. Slightly higher number but same basic point.
One other consideration for you…
You use CAGW (C = “Catastrophic”) and I don’t see in this post where there is a link between the responses about the cause of climate change and whether it is catastrophic or not.
Ahh but by Cookian methods, those that express no opinion just vanish and are irrelevant and not representative at all of the field in which they work 😛
Boulder Skeptic gives us information that the identities of the participants were known:
otherwise how were they able to send reminders to the ones who had not participated?
Re: AMS Survey Consensus, 3/25/16
The bishops have taken the measure of the flock.
The survey asked about climate, but nothing about science qua science. How many, they should have asked, believe that science is about belief? How many believe that science is about consensus forming and estimating? Raise your hand if you believe science is about peer review and publication.
Conversely, how many think science is about facts? Or that facts are observations reduced to measurements and compared with standards? How often to you require your science to make valid predictions: (a) never, (b) sometimes, (c) always?
The survey reveals a 30% weaker faith than previously claimed for academic climatologists, riding on a unanimous undercurrent of science illiteracy, from the bishops on down.
Humans cannot change the climate in any predictable way no matter how hard we try. Natural variation drives the climate. The most human activity can do is to very slightly modulate at the edges the wave of natural forces, with the Sun being the engine along with orbital mechanics.
What climate change?
The climate changes? Who’d a thunk it? You mean before us? C’mon, Grampa, tell us another good one from the old days.
====================
Wellll son – When I had a dinosaur for a pet…
An entire survey on whether ‘human activity’ causes to any degree ‘global warming’ is meaningless to decide what to do about it.
What ‘human activities?’ Heat Island? Growing Population?
I can answer that and stlll believe fossil fuels and CO2 are not the alleged culprit.
But, alas, these 97% type surveys…or 67%….will misused to later suggest what human activities THEY were talking about.
Why don’t they just say human activities in the form of fossil fuel usage?
Stealthily come the fantasia and their phantoms.
============
No, human activities in creating mathematical artifacts and calling them data sets
Good questions!
Perhaps they should also include a survey of people who in the last ten years have dropped their AMS membership because of the leadership stance on global warming. I dropped mine a few years ago after hearing congressional testimony by Marshall Shepherd.
Quote: “Even given that 1/3 who don’t attribute man-made causes, personally, I think the numbers aren’t fully representative of what AMS members really think and that 1/3 number would actually be higher.”
The graph pictured does not state that 33.3% don’t attribute man-made causes. There are only (a max of) 19% (total of the last three columns) who suggest or imply that man has no part. Even the 4th column states “mostly by naturally occurring events” suggesting that man many have some influence.
We have to be careful not to read more into the chart than is actually shown.
Only 1% dare to tell the truth. Pathetic.
That would be consistent with say North Korean surveys and Cuban.
At least North Koreans have good reason to tow the line!!
I remember a time when the opinion of meteorologists didn’t count, because they weren’t climatologists. How things have changed.
Just as weather now matters when for the past decade it was just weather.
It’s sad really, to this this is humanity, in 2015.
We are clearly capable of wiping ourselves out completely, mind you not via CO2. 😀
Can someone refer us all to the story about Nucatelli and his friends, pasting each others’ facial photographs on Nazi Third Reich leadership photographs when they were burning down Russia and beyond?
I don’t know if there is actually a WUWT story on it but I saw some people talking about it.
A large round up story of the seriously evil-crazy people involved with the Green House Gas AGW movement would be an excellent thing. Certainly stuff for a book:
”The bizarre, criminal, and nefarious acts, statements and ways, of the 21st century’s first government employee driven chemistry scam.”
Well according to these numbers fully 1/3 of all scientists have concluded (recently) that they were incorrect about blaming mankind for ‘climate change’ and/or ‘global warming’. I wonder what caused such a remarkable shift in opinion? I think such a huge change in such a short time is unprecedented. Whatever the cause is, the problems with the quality of climate science’s conclusions about ‘causation’ must be worse than we thought.
I love it that despite how many ways this survey could have been manipulated, and most likely was, to bias the outcome, it could not get anywhere near a consensus! That has to be extremely frustrating, puzzling, annoying to the AGW folks.
Seems like if we engaged in the same oily, shady, lying tactics “some” people used, we could holler: “The percentage of skeptical scientists has grown from 3 percent (according to misrepresentations of Cook etc all) to 33 percent in just 3 years!!!”
Or something like that. 😊
“…the climate change that has occurred…”
That seems to me to be the psychological “out” that would allow those who don’t believe in the CAGW hypothesis to answer ‘yes’ to something that would keep them in relatively good stead with the consensus forgers. It’s vague enough to allow someone to think in terms of localized “climate changes” while they answered the survey question.
The idea that those asking the question didn’t realize they were asking a question that had such an “easy out” is ludicrous to me.
Good lord, for the last 3 billion years, the ‘climate’ has always ‘changed’!
Calling this latest hysteria ‘climate change’ is fraud. They do this deliberately. This survey was all about theology, not science.
So 81% said humans are responsible for at least half of climate change over the last 50 years..that’s a blow to the folks here that say C02 has no effect on the climate.
Oh dear, some still think consensus means anything concerning scientific research.
I think you had a blow.. on the head mate
Half of “not very much, and in a good direction” is not very much, and in a good direction.
..Maybe you should change the name to ” SPAZZZ ” !!
Wrong answer, thermobilly, half the people wouldn’t even deign to answer it because it was so reprehensibly written and administered.
Earth’s carbon cycle contains 45,000 Gt (E15 gr) of stores and reservoirs with a couple hundred Gt/y ebbing and flowing between those reservoirs. (IPCC AR5 Fig 6.1) Mankind’s net contribution to this bubbling, churning caldron of carbon/carbon dioxide is 4 Gt/y. Doesn’t seem to me that amounts to much.
Mankind’s alleged atmospheric CO2 increase between 1750 and 2011 added 2 W/m2 of radiative forcing to the earth’s atmosphere. (IPCC AR5) Incoming solar RF is 340 W/m2, albedo RF is 100 W/m2 +/- 30, latent heat RF from the water cycle’s evaporation is 88 W/m2 +/- 8. That 2 W/m2 is obviously trivial. The popular GHE theory is a perpetual loop flowing from cold to hot violating two fundamental thermodynamic laws. What really counts is the net RF balance at ToA which 9 out of 10 balance models (Trenberth et. al. 2011) show cooling, not warming.
Every year that the pause continues IPCC’s atmospheric and ocean general circulation models diverge further from reality.
As Carl Sagan observed, we have been bamboozled, hustled, conned by those wishing to steal and waste our money and rob us of our liberties. Hardly a new agenda.
A real survey: Use standard opinion survey telephone techniques, not misleading email self-selection. Ask respondents to assume that current estimates of global surface temperatures over the 20th century are reasonably accurate. Ask respondents to assume the current IPCC estimate of human carbon emissions being responsible for the majority of the late 20th century global warming (X degrees) is generally accurate. Ask respondents to choose which of the following is responsible for the early 20th century warming (about the same X degrees): A. Humans; B. Nature; C. A Combination; and D. Don’t Know.
[Hit Reply by mistake.] Next question: If respondent answers “C” ask him/her/it which of the following most closely match the relative responsibility of Humans vs. Nature (H/N): A. 50/50; B. 75/25; C. 90/10; D.25/75; 10/90; E. A Bit More H Than N; and F. A Bit More N Than H. Ask “C” responders if their answer affected their opinion of late 20th century warming causation A. Human CO2 Is The Primary Cause; B. Human CO2 Plays A Role; and C. CO2 Has Little Or No Effect.
Asking people if they believe or think that humans cause CAGW is not the same asking do you know.
When IPCC itself talks about the share of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is only “a part” of more than half of the global average temperature [50.1% is also more than half], how can the second bar with 38% go into the far group. That means more than two-thirds are against the human contribution [even under human contribution, there are several factors other than greenhouse effect].
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Seems we all have lots of questions about this survey.
You know how they always discount and shred our opinions because we’re all “shills for big oil”?
Perhaps we should just “consider the source”?
Or sponsor someone less threatening, like the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) or social psychologist Dr. Jose Duarte, to do the survey correctly (e.g. specific definitions, questions that are unambiguous and correctly structured, etc.).
I’m surprised nobody mentioned the 2003 online survey by Professor Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, of Germany’s Institute of Coastal Reseach. I know it’s been 13 years, but it was also before the “Pause” was definitively identified. They conducted a survey of 530 climate scientists from 27 countries. The statement was, “to what extent do you Agree or Disagree that Climate Change is Mostly the result of Anthropogenic Causes? They were asked to rate the statement on a scale of 1 through 7, with with 1 being Strong Agreement and 7 indicating Strong Disagreement. 42% were either Neutral or Disagreed, with 29% either Disagreeing or Strongly Disagreeing with the statement (that is 13% were Neutral). Only 9% Strongly Agreed that Climate Change is mostly the result of Anthropogenic Causes. The mean answer was 3.62. The capitalization of some words, like Agreement/Disagreement, was my doing.
3 ¢ Worth…
…got some linky goodness? I vaguely recall that, and I’d like to re-read the survey.
TIA.
67% of these folk must have evidence that they have been keeping hidden from us all.
This George Mason Univ. poll [run for them by the Harris polling organization in 2007] http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html surveyed 489 randomly selected members of either the American Meteorological Society or the American Geophysical Union. It did not cherry pick the respondants who gave them the answer they wanted, and it asked more sophisticated questions [than the Doran and Anderegg surveys], below:
Under its “Major Findings” are these paragraphs:
IOW, 59% doubt the “catastrophic” potential of AGW. I suspect that number would be higher now, after six more flat years.
However, WaPo is reporting that this GMU survey found AMS members more worried than they were in a survey Identical to this (superficial) one about four (?) years ago.
So 81% of AMS members believe that AGW is real, and is responsible for 50% or more of the total warming that has occurred. I’d call that a substantial majority. Especially given that 6% said they don’t know – it is not correct to include those with the respondents who say that AGW is small or not a factor in warming that has occurred. Saying you don’t know is not a rejection of AGW (nor an endorsement). That leaves 13% that say no warming has occurred, or that AGW is a minor or negligible contributor to warming. 81% to 13% is a ratio of 6.2 to 1; the 81% figure would increase to 86% if you remove the “I don’t know” respondents from the totals.
Yes, 97% and 81% are substantial majorities. But (as someone said here a few weeks ago) there’s a vast difference between a 3% minority (ignorable cranks and crazies) and a 19% minority (a non-dismissible minority).
It’s not a 19% minority, it’s 13%. The 6% don’t knows should not be lumped in with either category. So it’s 81% against 13%. Yes, 13% is more than 3%, but that ignores the bigger point. In the skeptics talk about lack of total consensus, that position implies that a total consensus is required before action can be taken. That is just not the case. Secondly, it ignores the cost of doing nothing. Unlike, for example, a debate about the origin of black holes, which doesn’t directly affect life on earth, the AGW issue has real impacts, and delaying action until there is 100% agreement has costs.
Chris,
You’re babbling like an idiot.
Honest science has nothing to do with ‘consensus’. Science is all about evidence, observations, and facts.
Your side has NONE of those things. All you have is politics.
Get lost, chump.
As always, db trots out the tough guy talk when he can’t win with logic and facts.
Chris,
Wake me when you have any logical arguments. That will be a first, chump.
db, I’ve got most everyone on my side, chump. You’re the one who needs to come up with data to convince the rest of us. Keep patting yourself on the back here on WUWT, in your tiny, infinitesimal corner of the world.
Chris says:
“I’ve got most everyone on my side…”
Both of you, eh, chump? You’re still babbling like an idiot with your ‘consensus’ nonsense.
All you’ve got is your corrupt political arguments. You never had any credible scientific arguments. Trolling with politics is all you ever had. Chump.
Chris, that still leaves a majority not supporting the CAGW meme. Its dead Jim.
David, per the numbers I discussed, the vast majority support the AGW conclusion, and commitments and action by companies and governments are already underway. Skeptics hang their hat on CAGW since they’ve already lost the AGW battle.
Chris,
Keep dreaming your delusions. The “vast majority”, heh. You can’t even quantify AGW with a verifiable measurement, but you presume to declare victory??
You’re nuts, you know that?
Probably not.
dbstealey, I’ve posted articles before about the direct measurement of the change in balance of LWIR, as well as quantified measurements taken. You’ve ignored them. Haha, I’m nuts, am I? Then you are saying the Fortune 1000 companies are nuts, the oil companies (Exxon’s own scientists said AGW is real), the world’s scientific organizations. We’re all nuts, and only the small skeptic community here on WUWT and other skeptic sites are correct. Keep dreaming your delusional dream, db.
Chris,
Wake me if/when you can produce an empirical, testable measurement quantifying AGW. So far, you’ve failed, just like the rest of your alarmist ilk.
When you can’t even measure what you claim is gonna cause climate catastrophe, you’re just another climate alarmist clown.
dbstealey said: “Wake me if/when you can produce an empirical, testable measurement quantifying AGW. So far, you’ve failed, just like the rest of your alarmist ilk.”
Stay asleep, db, it doesn’t matter what you say. Nobody is listening to you that is in any position of influence. Nobody. The ‘alarmist ilk” have not failed, we have the Fortune 1000 who agree with our conclusion, governments, most climate scientists, the oil companies, the insurance companies. So how have we failed? Just because we didn’t convince you? So what?
As to your request for an empirical, testable measurement, there are a number of videos showing lab level demonstrations of the greenhouse effect of CO2. There are satellite measurements of the change in radiation balance over the last 30 years. But I am sure you are demanding something that can be individually tested on a planetary scale – in other words, you are demanding something that cannot be done. It cannot be done for CO2, or for El Nino, or AMO, or volcanoes, or orbital variation – because it is not possible to vary only one of those while holding all the others constant.
Chris says:
Nobody is listening to you that is in any position of influence. Nobody.
That applies in spades to Chris, the anonymous troll. But based on the numerous responses I get,it’s clear I have far more influence than Chris is willing to admit.
Next:
…there are a number of videos showing lab level demonstrations of the greenhouse effect of CO2.
Not one of them is credible. They all fail. The standard for credibility is that the measurements must be acceptable by all sides of the AGW debate, so it’s just wishful thinking on your part. Your ‘videos’ are meaningless pablum, fit only for religious True Believers like you. Skeptical scientists — the only honest kind of scientists — have been waiting since before Arrhenius for the first verifiable measurement of AGW. It still doesn’t exist.
Next:
…radiation balance…
…is just more deflection. MEASUREMENTS that quantify AGW are what’s required, but neither you nor anyone else has produced those measurements. Your alarmist clique missed the biggest, most significant temperature event of the past century: the fact that global warming stopped for almost twenty years! If you could measure AGW, you would have predicted that. But you failed. As usual.
Next:
… you are demanding something that cannot be done.
Wrong as always. Quantum physics measures subatomic forces to more than a dozen decimal places — but you whine that AGW can’t be measured! More deflection. The fact is that AGW can’t be measured with current instruments, because it is simply too minuscule. And since it is so tiny, it is a non-problem.
Maybe you can come up with similar pathetic excuses to the ones above. Post ’em, and I’ll knock those out of the ballpark, too. You’re trying to sell a pig in a poke. But the fact is, you’ve got nothin’.
Chris,
“There are satellite measurements of the change in radiation balance over the last 30 years”.
The radiation balance changes all the time. We cannot currently accurately measure it directly, not even with satellites.
Trenberth et al 2014–
“Quantifying the absolute energy imbalance requires a level of accuracy not available from any direct measurements whether from satelliteborne instruments (e.g., Loeb et al. 2009) or others. It can be estimated from climate model simulations, which in turn require validation to provide confidence in their results, and the results also depend on the veracity of the specified climate forcings. It can also be estimated by an inventory of the rates of changes of energy stored in all components of the climate system, the most important of which is the ocean and thus changes in the ocean heat content (OHC).
“The changes in TOA energy imbalance over time do not require accurate knowledge of the absolute values, but rather they require a consistent stable set of instrumental measurements with adequate precision. That is, they may be biased in some, perhaps unknown, way. While The planetary imbalance at TOA is too small to measure directly from satellite instruments are far more stable than they are absolutely accurate with calibration stability <0.3 W m−2 decade−1 (95% confidence)
Chris- do you actually believe that lab test results with contained CO2 molecules can be directly extrapolated to atmospheric CO2 in an open, chaotic system? Do you believe it's logical to extrapolate the dynamics in your family fish tank as being equal to or the same as to those in the ocean?
"But I am sure you are demanding something that can be individually tested on a planetary scale – in other words, you are demanding something that cannot be done. It cannot be done for CO2, or for El Nino, or AMO, or volcanoes, or orbital variation – because it is not possible to vary only one of those while holding all the others constant."
And yet YOU are insistent that if we DO adjust, add, or cut back on just ONE element-CO2-all of those other things will remain or revert back to "constant". AGW theory depends upon human beings changing just ONE thing…The amount of CO2 in the air. And all of those models are based upon varying just one thing…CO2 levels, all other things remaining constant to what they think they know about them, and yet those models are all wrong. But that doesn't stop you from demanding changes on a planetary scale without a shred of proof that it would change anything! Hypocrite.
Anonymous Coward ‘Chris’ says:
it doesn’t matter what you say.
It sure matters to you, doesn’t it, AC?
All you have are your failed appeal to authority arguments. But the one thing you do not have, and have never had, are emprirical, testable measurements quantifying what you’re trying to sell.
Science is all about data. Measurements are data. But you’ve got nothin’.
Keep posting about your fictitious videos. Maybe seaice will be impressed. No one else is.
Finally, you ask:
So how have we failed?
You failed miserably when neither you nor anyone else was able to predict the fact that global warming stopped for almost 20 years! It’s hard to imagine a bigger failure than that, AC. You’ve never gotten anything right, Mr. Failure.
From day one the 97% idea had virtual of meaning or value , to get 97% of people to agree with anything is hard enough to do that subject that is far from settled impossible, it was and still is a purely political point designed to show truth but to offer support to that which if honesty was used would lack it .
And it worth remember at this stage that NO ONE even knows how many climate scientists there are , in fact there is not even agreed definition of what makes someone a climate scientists , a term applied in the past to failed politicians and railway engineers .
So basic maths , to know what percentage of a whole group a number of people are , you must know the size of the whole group to begin. And in this area that is unknown, the 97% literally has meaning , so perfect for climate ‘science ‘
If there’s a poll; a question is
‘You have the advantage to steal an expensive car. You take it: yes, no, maybe.’
Then that’s a studie about a topic and the interviewer should bring a characteristic profil of the cohort.
________
Just send a copy of the e-mail with the pdf questionair at your own account ‘depending: don’t lead me astray.’
‘yes, no, maybe’ – equal show you’re as trustful as EVERY other man.
10 ys later in troubles with your employer that e-mail is proof of harrasment!
Yes, my dinglish –
If there’s a poll; a question is
‘You steal an expensive car without risk. You take it: yes, no, maybe.’
Then that’s a studie about a topic and the interviewer should bring a characteristic profil of the cohort.
________
Just send a copy of the e-mail with the pdf questionair at your own account concerning : don’t lead me astray.’
‘yes, no, maybe’ – equal show you’re as reliable as EVERY other man.
10 ys later in troubles with your employer that e-mail is proof of harrasment!
Regards – Hans
And I assure You – all employers know that. Thei’re just men like the others.
Another issue: 1% believe there has been no climate change in the last 50 years. Given that there has been climate change in the last 50 seconds, how are we to take this? Obviously, how we are to take it is that respondants were left to their own devices in defining climate change. For instance, I would be in that 1% not because I believe we have had no climate change, but because we have had no climate change that fell outside of normal historical bounds. That is how I would have defined “no clmate change”–no change in the range or degree of change.
The whole survey is meaningless not just because the survey creators have consciously created a fear of imprisonment among those who answer “incorrectly,” but also because the meaning of the terms is imprecise such that most respondents could be moved one or more categories over depending on their sense of what the words mean.
Climate occurs over longer time periods than seconds. It’s the average of WX for at least decades, but more meaningfully, centuries, millennia and longer intervals.
They have the demographic data, so why weren’t the views of “climate experts” reported? A common defense by pro-AGW crowd is the “deniers” are non-experts. Similarly, much (all?) of the argument against the 97% concensus focuses on the small sample of “experts”. With over 30% of respondents describing themselves as climate experts, I’m interested in their opinions and how it contrasts with the 97% survey. Perhaps this info is in a paper that’s under review? Or perhaps the >2/3 that think man is mostly or entirely responsible is dominated by the non-experts who base their views on reports made by the MSM and will never see the light of day.
And then – that precautionary thingings,
– that Renee Descartes logic
– that ‘don’t ask what what your country does for you but ask what you can do for your contry.
+ that religious dilemma:
believing in God – will he believe in me; wait and see.
His problem not less than mine: agnostic both.
doze away, my god.
Religion is NOT settled.
full stop.
Hans
NW sage, 3/25/16 5:43 pm, said,
This – the content of the definition – is a very important distinction. If the anthropological part is left out of the United Nations ‘official’ definition – and the respondents realize that fact (It must be made very clear) the answers should be very different.
+1! Too bad the UN doesn’t agree with him. Science does.
One problem with the (UN)IPCC is that its Glossaries are showcases of definitions, supplied as a façade. Some key definitions there do not apply to the main bodies of the Assessment Reports.
A most obvious example is its definition of Lifetime for atmospheric gases in which the Mean Residence Time for atmospheric CO2 works out to 0.68 – 2.1 years using IPCC data. The simple formula is high school physics for a leaky bucket. However, in the main body of its Reports, anthropogenic CO2 lasts for thousands of years, a self-conscious tempering of Archer’s extreme 30 – 35 Kyrs. An exaggerated lifetime is necessary to convert the Keeling curve into a global master series for calibrating all the CO2 measuring stations into agreement, for its radiative forcing model to produce the desired catastrophe from the accumulation of anthropogenic (but not natural) CO2 emissions, and for the bonus bogeyman of ocean acidification, which, like Archer’s estimate, benefits form the ludicrous assumption that the ocean surface layer is in thermodynamic equilibrium.
With regard to the AMS survey, the problem at the UN begins with the fact that the UN has two different definitions of climate change. IPCC faithfully supplies both in its careful, scientific Glossaries. E.g., AR5, Glossary, p. 1450. UNFCCC defines climate change as strictly anthropogenic, which IPCC, acting as the wise professor, restricts on behalf of UNFCCC to mean climate change, the anthropogenic part, versus climate variability, the corresponding natural phenomenon. But for IPCC Assessment Reports, it says that climate change includes both natural and manmade, the definition supplied by AMS in its survey, and the definition rationally impossible to deem fictitious.
IPCC’s first step in modeling climate is to cleave the cause of climate in two. It assumes that the natural part, climate variability, proceeds in some (undefined) kind of equilibrium, so that by design its model only represents the added, uncoupled, manmade part, a part which obeys different physics. The result has been an embarrassment for IPCC, a manifestation of the two-decade old pause. Its GCM prediction of ECS, its only testable prediction, at 3.0ºC for a doubling of CO2 is now being measured with satellite data at 0.77º, valid at a 2.2% confidence level, extrapolating IPCC’s probability distribution. A Popperist might be able to rationalize this as a falsification clause.
But none of that matters to IPCC. It devotes no ink to justifying its failure to rely on its own definitions. Perhaps that is the subconscious course followed by AMS member respondents. Instead, IPCC subtly fades from climate change to global warming, a term that is (1) definition-free, and (2) used two to three times as often as climate change, notwithstanding that the CC in IPCC stands for Climate Change, notwithstanding that each of its Assessment Reports is titled Climate Change [year].
IPCC’s climate change usage is absolutely flat, appearing 94 time in the TAR (Climate Change 2001), 117 times in AR4 (Climate Change 2007), and 92 times in AR5 (Climate Change 2013), a growth rate of 1 followed by 15 zeros. Global warming usage is 185, 305, and 385, respectively, a growth rate of 6.3% per annum, showing IPCC’s ever-increasing intensity in relating its anthropogenic tale. (Numbers include usage in titles and references.)
IPCC uses global warming to finesse its readers, specifically policymakers, into blindly accepting it as a synonym, and (a) always positive, (b) equivalent to climate change, and (c) to mean anthropogenic, which morphs IPCC’s terminology into the carefully distinguished UNFCCC definition, plus (d) unwittingly to transfer the obvious certainty of the fact of climate change onto the failed conjecture of (anthropogenic) climate change.
Among definitions in climate, the term Anthropogenic Global Warming, AGW, is important because it helps focus the public on the fact that IPCC is purveying a faux science. AGW never appears in the latest three Assessment Reports. And of course never could appear.
Jeff Glassman,
Excellent analysis. The IPCC is always playing those word games. AGW has never been quantified with empirical measurements. It’s always been just a giant head fake.
And 2nd I’ll assure You:
What Abraham, Mose + Isa Ben Mariam told was live long learning; a proto science witness, high modern contemporary then, provisory ‘Religion’ – classical first steps to science from our view now.
So 3rd, what Jesus really said: don’t stuck in my heels. Leave orthodoxy and go further!
I think there may be an axiom demonstrated here. ‘If the majority think something is so, it is likely to be wrong.’ The majority of the majority don’t think, rather they pick sides on ideological or other reasons. A small minority do think and probably more than two thirds of the whole minority side also just simply picked that side for non scientific reasons (ideological, etc.) . A minority of one, may turn out to be correct but this is very low probability except at the very discovery stage. When, as in climate science, there is no discovery stage but rather a premise that they want to support, this is even more skewed to a majority being wrong.
Even if the methods of Cook on consensus were proper, I would be sceptical, simply because with such a fledgling, complex science, such a high ‘consensus’ is just not possible. An honest figure would be closer to 50-50 on logical grounds, but with the effect of my axiom, a two thirds majority being wrong is about …er… right.
Gary Pearce,
I agree with your axiom (which isn’t original with either you or me; the Madness of Crowds made that case a long time ago).
Good comment anyway. Whenever a large majority ‘knows’ something, it’s likely to be in error. The climate alarmist propagandists know that, of course, but they don’t care. In fact, they use it to their advantage. Obama knows that by simply repeating the ‘carbon’ canard, he will influence the one-quarter or so of the population that still admires and adores him. That’s a lot of ignoratii.
I was having a pleasant conversation with an eye doctor a couple days ago. I mentioned WUWT, and the fact that a lot of well educated folks in the hard sciences wrote articles and comments. She expressed interest, seemingly because ‘science’ fascinated her.
So we delved a little deeper. When I mentioned that CAGW is politics, and that the hard sciences do not support the ‘carbon’ scare, it was like I turned off a light switch. She became cold and distant, and I knew immediately that she was very likely one of Obama’s 25% of the eco-lemming contingent. She was impenetrable to any facts, so I wisely backed off.
The clique pushing carbon taxes knows exactly what they’re doing. If you can get 25% of the population to close ranks and go in one direction, that’s a very powerful force in politics. And that is the problem skeptics have. Education isn’t an overnight thing. It is tedious, and it must be constantly repeated.
Truth will eventually prevail. But there will be enourmous destruction before that happens.
I would like to see the human factor broken down into sub categories of emissions and changes in land use. I am sceptical of the impact of CO2 it being over rated whilst feeling the impact of land use is under rated.
Regional climates began to change when the era of wooden boats and the need for easily accessible timber saw the harvesting of natural forests and the subsequent impact on the biotic pump that carries moisture to inland regions. Now modern society is forever expanding huge heat sinks primarily in coastal areas which are basically deserts as far as mother nature is concerned. Agriculture has recognised the impact old cultivation practices had on local climate and has adopted low till methods whilst ever expanding cities are seemingly ignorant of how local climate is changing.
If one gets 97% confidence he is in line with Stalin, Ceaucescu and Kim Il Sung.
The question ‘would you steal a expensive car’ yields worthless answeres.
The 97% number was never about “meteorologists” but referred to climate scientists. By now, the number for publishing climate scientists is over 97%. A big majority of meteorologists understand and support climate science. However, you don’t need to understand climate in order to predict short term changes in weather.
Re: 97% climate consensus, 3/25/16:
James Watson wrote about what the Democrats … believe (3/25/2016 8:04 am), evoking this correction from Robert (3/30/16 2:23 pm): Not all Democrats, just certain ones.
Watson wrote like a lawyer, which Robert mistook as science. For a deep study on the use of plurals in law, see John P. Finan, Lawgical: Jurisprudential and Logical Considerations, Akron Law Review, 15:4, Spring, 1982, pp. 675-711. Law thrives on ambiguity, in this instance whether Democrats means for all Democrats, or for some Democrats. Ambiguity is fatal to science, where the plural always means for all. Lawyers introduce the unquantified plural, legally meaning for some, to appear to the unwary to mean for all.
Chat rooms wander aimlessly between different styles of writing, ruleless except for occasional PCedness, never to converge on anything. But as Wittgenstein observed in the conclusion of his Tractatus, these observations are senseless. What seemed important in reading Watson v. Robert was what seemed to be an analogous path found in climate discussions.
Although the AGW/Climate Change/global warming problem is expressly about the statistics of weather, discussions effuse over wide and narrow weather phenomena, over effects as if they were causes, of noise as if signal, all as if they were climate. Examples: radiation absorption, ocean acidification, measures of one-dimensional layers of the atmosphere or of the ocean, El Niño/La Niña, the MOC/THC, glaciers, aerosols, clouds, urban heat islands, and human effects. The climatological question is a vast, three-dimensional mobile, with elaborate, seemingly endless scientific and technical branches, an amusement park for discussions to rage among techies who simply ignore that the mobile is not connected to a ceiling.
Some top level connecting links in the climate story are misrepresented, while others are completely missing. Misrepresentations include reliance on equilibrium and human fingerprints in climate, that science is about publication, peer review and consensus instead of predicting. Examples of missing bits of physics include the heat and carbon pump of global, surface and deep ocean circulation. Missing is Henry’s Law, which accounts for the ocean being a vast CO2 reservoir while regulating its atmospheric concentration. Missing is dynamic cloud cover, Earth’s positive feedback to solar variations and its negative feedback to warming from any cause.
AGW doesn’t even hang by a thread.
Anthony, you were mentioned in the Financial Post in Friday’s edition in relation to this post.
http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/u-of-ts-decision-not-to-divest-from-fossil-fuels-is-still-all-wrong-about-climate-science