Does Bob Have a Problem With Gender Equality?
by
I only ask because, as a female sceptic myself (and very much not alone in that respect) it would seem from his comments that he likes to think that a vast majority of climate sceptics are male; even worse, crusty old white balding men not dissimilar to himself. As principal evidence for his theory, he points to the predominance of old white men at the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which Bob also appears to have a problem with, probably not entirely related to its supposed glaring gender imbalance. But hey, that’s as good a reason as any to have a go at them, so Bob dutifully decides that he’s going to report GWPF for the crime of being dominated by old white male climate sceptics – and gets short shrift from the Charity Commission who tell him:
there are no legal requirements around gender balance in governance and that under s20(2) of the Charities Act, the Commission is precluded from interfering in the administration of a charity.
Bummer. Never mind. Bob is many things, including some which rhyme with his Christian title, but he is never daunted, no siree. Bob is the self-appointed slayer of ‘sceptics’, the Chief Holder to Account of Deniers and it is no problem whatsoever to re-appoint himself to that role even when he suffers the odd catastrophic set back.
Thus, he drones on,
The Foundation may be dominated by older men because climate change denial is simply not popular among women and young people. Numerous studies have suggested that climate change ‘sceptics’ are usually older and male, with political views that place less value on the environment. However, recent polls of the UK public suggest that there is little gender difference among the small proportion of the population who are hardcore ‘sceptics’.
A tracking survey commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy showed that, in March 2017, 7.6% answered “I don’t think there is such a thing as climate change” or “Climate change is caused entirely caused by natural processes”, when asked for their views. Among men the figure was 8.1%, while for women it was 7.1%
So Bob advances a reason why old men might dominate at the GWPF then shoots down his own pet theory in the very next sentence by quoting a survey which shows that, in the population in general, there is not much gender difference among those people who seriously question whether man has dominated recent changes in climate. Having failed to validate his supposition, he then weakly suggests that “it is the men who are most vocal about their [climate scepticism] views” and that those men “tend to lack any training or qualifications in climate science, but still appear to believe that they know better than the experts”. Which is odd really. Because this describes Bob to a tee, barring the minor detail that he is not a climate change sceptic but an avid believer in the unquestionable authority of The Science.
Notwithstanding the fact of Bob’s oldness, his maleness, his lack of expertise, his apparent chauvinistic and dismissive attitude to female climate change sceptics, he then launches into a tirade of accusations about the chauvinistic attitudes of old, white, male climate sceptics, whose bigoted views apparently are directed at women climate ‘experts’ in particular, suggesting that these old, white, male ‘non-experts’ may be resentful of the fact that cleverer women in the know are telling them things they don’t want to hear. He really is a card is our Bob.
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Does Bob Have a Problem With Gender Equality?
Josh is on the case:
What the hell?
I wake up this morning to this WUWT thread, and initially assumed it was satire. I have no idea who Bob Ward or Jaime Jessop are (the more I read, the less I want to know), but one (the female) accuses Bob (apparently an old, white male) of assuming most climate skeptics are old white males.
Everybody on the planet knows most of the people on both sides of the argument are old, white & male. Bob (whoever he is) wins this argument, which Jaimie appears to be having with herself.
Have we had any “women against heat” marches? No
Have we had any “Mexicans against against heat” marches? No
Have we had any “blacks against heat” marches? No.
Polynesians against heat marches? Are you kidding?
Frankly, nobody give a crap (unless you are getting grant money…), and even the white guys are losing interest.
Since you asked….
http://www.c40.org/women4climate/mentorship
http://www.greenlatinos.org/climatechange
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/06/climate-change-racist-crisis-london-city-airport-black-lives-matter
https://asiapacificreport.nz/2016/06/29/polynesian-leaders-group-gather-in-tahiti-for-climate-change-update/
Did you actually read what I wrote Javert? The subtlety seems to have escaped you?
Should I unfollow Climate Chicks now, despite all the laughs their Tweets bring me? 🙂
Sallie, Joanne, Jennifer. Do they look like men or beautiful women?
http://ds9.ssl.berkeley.edu/solarweek/SCIENTISTS/baliunas.gif
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aS9g1H33msI/S5LuWgebRJI/AAAAAAAAAJg/u-fvFWfbC6s/s1600/Joanne%2BNova1.jpg
http://jennifermarohasy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/A02V9617-OZused-1024×682.jpg
Gender identity is verboten.
In matters very personal to me, gender is highly relevant. I believe that my children appreciate my revealed preferences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference
I count 6 women and have run out of fingers and toes for the men in the comments above. Similar figures for all the other posts today.
You counted 20 men and concluded they are responsible for 344 million views on WUWT? Your finger count is more credible than the survey cited in the article? 8.1% men and 7.1% women
Bertrand? a.k.a. Bob Ward
Bertrand, so what?
BTW, how did you assign the various pseudonyms?
I didn’t assign the pseudonyms.
A binomial test on just this thread gives p < .01 under the null of no difference between the sexes.
Assuming it's a random sample (which it may not be in that men may be more likely to post on message boards), why isn't this a way to examine whether there might be a gender bias? Seems better to base one's views on some data rather than just throwing around opinions and the odd cherry picked counter-example.
I didn't make any comment on the old, or political views.
Jamie
Brilliant, but may I point out that
>>Notwithstanding the fact of Bob’s oldness, his maleness, his lack of expertise, his apparent chauvinistic and dismissive attitude<<
You forgot baldness.
Ah, yes, I did, in that particular sentence, though I make up for it elsewhere: “. . . . . . even worse, crusty old white balding men not dissimilar to himself.”
I visited the link for the Wave 21 survey, and found, unsurprisingly, some shenanigans with the reporting about it. There were two questions identified as being about “climate change”: how concerned is one about it, and what were the perceived causes of it. While 71% of respondents were at least “fairly concerned”, when it came to causes, the report said that “total human activity” was at 43% and “total natural processes” was at 14%. However, these were the actual results:
Climate change is entirely caused by natural processes 4
Climate change is mainly caused by natural processes 6
Climate change is partly caused by natural processes
and partly caused by human activity 43
Climate change is mainly caused by human activity 29
Climate change is entirely caused by human activity 14
I don't think there is such a thing as climate change 3
Don't know 1
No opinion 1
Total Natural Processes 10
Total Human Activity 42
Looking at those results, it’s apparent that only “entirely caused by natural processes” and “mainly caused by natural processes” were counted as “Total Natural Processes,” and “mainly caused by human activity” and “entirely caused by human activity” were counted as “Total Human Activity” (though they got the wrong answer somehow when they added 29+14; should have been 43% instead of 43%).
They left out the 43% who responded “partly caused by natural processes and partly caused by human activity.” The actual results should have been reported as “10% at least mostly caused by natural processes”, “43% at least mostly caused by human activity”, “and 43% partly caused by natural processes and partly caused by human activity.”
Does that mean the “both” respondent put the blame at 50% each for natural vs. human processes? Seems like a very poorly-worded question, and notice that CO2 wasn’t even put forth as a cause, but was rolled into “human activity.” That response should have been left out altogether, since the entirely/mainly qualification covered the same ground.
Also amusing was the response to the “carbon capture” questions. Only 4% “knew a lot about it”, with another 18% “knowing a little”, but a whopping 60% “never heard of it” and another 19% was “aware of it but didn’t know what it was.” For the support question, 54% were listed as “total support” with only 7% as “total oppose.” Yet another 38% that didn’t get mentioned neither supported nor opposed. I’d call that as 54% support and 45% not-support. That’s a pretty high level of support though, considering that only 22% knew anything about it at all. The power of the media, I suppose.
In the UK (where debate over GW/Climate change is banned by order of the BBC), I have never met a woman who was a climate sceptic.
In the UK climate scepticism seems to be almost exclusively a old, male thing. Please feel free to prove me wrong, females of all ages and young men.
“Please feel free to prove me wrong, females of all ages and young men.”
Actually Andrew, I think it would be more encumbent upon you to demonstrate that your lack of ever meeting a female climate sceptic in the UK is proof that they don’t exist.
Apparently as a female sceptic you also don’t understand how science works.Well done.
It is certainly worth us considering demographics
On the Alarmist side we have
: Subgroup#1 Professional PR people who work for lobby groups funded by oligarch’s named Jeremy Grantham who happen to run enormous Green-Hedgefund’s (oh that describes Ward)
On the Skeptics side we have
: None in Subgroup#1
…. Indeed very few PR professionals work for Skeptic bodies ..Maybe I’d count Marc Morano , whereas on the Alarmist side there are literally hundreds of these people :sitting close to the top of multinational eco-lobbyists like GP, WWF, FoE, the Futerra PR agency itself , There are whole building full of different green lobbying groups eg ECIU, Carbon Brief etc.
I am guessing the salary pool of Alarmist PR professionals is 100 to 1,000 times bigger than that paid out to Skeptics
We skeptics SHOULD consider things like If our demographic has enough women or artists or teachers in ? and whether we should do something about it.
There are different types of skeptic, depending on their involvement
#1 Normal people who have the life experience to know that the lib-establishment plays us false narratives. In my area that is the majority of engineers and older people , whether they are male or female; they know that when Greenblob sells something as magically bad/good, that means is something to be suspicious of..they know solar/wind power is not magic and only exists cos of subsidies the public pay for.
#2 Blog followers/activists.. People like me and you that take a close interest and will travel to lectures/debates
We have to recognise that, most of us do seem to be male engineery types
Though we know somefemales hide behind male pseudonyms
I’d say generally ..all experienced engineers are Skeptics
… whereas almost all ARTISTS are alarmists except for Josh, and people like Scott Adams (Dilbert creator)
… We have to accept that in the education business there is tremendous intimidation against skeptics, so skeptical teachers have to stay in the closet
.. 95% of media people are lib-establishment so are alarmists
#3 The high level people – The scientists, publishers, politicians who have a high profile
People like Antony, Dr Roy Spencer, Curry, Nova , Andrew Montford etc.
There certainly are women, but at a conference a woman would be more likely to be only person on a panel etc.
Whereas for alarmists A lot of their high level people ARE women. There is no intimidation of them , things like the “think of the children narrative” sits well with them
…. In our culture some topics are more favoured by women : yoga, cooking, languages (not necessarily thru genetics etc. ..everyone is equal and has a free choice)
Note how anti-MMR fanatics are much more likely to be women, and they’ll be other similar examples.
So BW is wrong to suggest that when a movement has a high number of females that makes it something that will be proved right.
Maybe, as a (slightly) manic (former) beancounter I am being a tad biased, but I believe it is worth checking data claims against the original data. I have examined Bob Ward’s following claim.
From the data in the tracking survey, I found (in ascending order of importance)
1. When rounding, use the conventions of rounding. 8.17 – (46+43)/1090 – and 7.16 – (37+41)/1090 – round to 8.2 and 7.2.
2. When opinion poll experts take time to weight their results for accuracy, one should not take the raw data. On this basis, Ward should have reported 6.7% for females, 7.6% for males and 7.1% overall.
3. If males tend to be more sceptical of climate change than females, then they will be less alarmist than females. But the data says something different. Of the weighted responses, to those who opted for the most extreme “Climate change is entirely caused by natural processes“, 12.5% were female and 14.5% were male. Very fractionally at the extreme, British men are proportionality more alarmist than British women than they are sceptical. More importantly, British men are slightly more extreme in their opinions on climate change (for or against) than British women.
I have the links to check the data for yourselves. My summary table of the opinion survey is below.
I am a global warmer. I believe it is warm and it may get warmer. This isn’t just my belief. All paleodata indicates it should be warm right now. Who the hell says it should be colder right now????
That said, some thousands of years from now, it will get colder.