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
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