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
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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.