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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

More info at the link.

The thought provoked for me: how many jobs are created by adding the CO2 emissions of an entire country to the burden faced by the atmosphere? Boosters of the project say appromimately 1,800 workers will be needed in the initial phases of opening the mine.

Meanwhile, the population of Denmark is about 5.6 million.

So, promoters of the Kevin's Corner mine are asking us to accept that 1,800 jobs are worth duplicating the pollution footprint of 5.6 million people.

That's a big ask. The plan does not seem like a scalable way to earn economic prosperity. If the approximately 2,800,000 wage earners in Denmark were to be employed using the same scheme as in Kevin's Corner, would the impact still be worth it? A back of the envelope calculation suggests that the result would be to double the CO2 pollution load of the entire planet's human population.

It's a sad thing, when one country's good luck is everybody else's bad luck. Australia is fortunate to be sitting on rich deposits of coal, but that means bad luck for the rest of us. Bad luck for Australia, too, a little bit down the road, perhaps even before the coal's gone and the jobs with it. What's the plan then?

Moderator Response:

[JH] It wouldn't take much for you to transform this comment into a log post article. Please take the time to do so.

wili at 16:10 PM on 4 November 2013

Thawing Permafrost: The speed of coastal erosion in Eastern Siberia has nearly doubled

Agnostic, is this some of what you were talking about going on in Alaska:

http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AlaskaScienceForum/article/far-north-permafrost-cliff-one-kind

100 meter tall cliff of 50,000 year old Yedoma permafrost thawing.

vrooomie at 14:00 PM on 4 November 2013

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

"If one crank gets to speak, why not all of 'em? Why can't we hear about the "Electric Universe" when cosmology is discussed?"

Let's not leave out the phlogiston, and Jeans' ether of space. Fair is fair....:D

Doug Bostrom at 05:08 AM on 4 November 2013

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

As an object lesson perhaps it would be good to begin demanding that the BBC occasionally air viewpoints from HAARP enthusiasts during weather forecasts, or Erik von Daniken fans during segments on archaeology?

If one crank gets to speak, why not all of 'em? Why can't we hear about the "Electric Universe" when cosmology is discussed?

wili at 03:22 AM on 4 November 2013

Thawing Permafrost: The speed of coastal erosion in Eastern Siberia has nearly doubled

Thanks for the addition. Perhaps someone can help with maths and related info.

So 88 to 800 tons per kilometer per year. I eyeball about 3000 k of coast for East Siberia (though as Ag points out, this dynamic is happening all around the Arctic Ocean). 80% of the permafrost is ice. So lets say something a bit lower than that is the amount of carbon, 10-15% perhaps. So about 10-100 tons C/k/y times 3000 k of coast makes 30-300 thousand tons carbon per year now. Doubling every four years gives about 1- 10 millon tons of carbon per year within 20 years without any deceleration (or acceleration). Still quite a few orders of magnitude below the ~10 billion tons C released into the atmosphere currently through burning of ff and other activities. But every bit hurts. And of course it is likely not to stop there. But I may be off in some of my assumptions (or maths) above.

The last bit also seems to imply that the carbon will mostly stay in the water, hence contrbuting to local acidification. Is that accurate. Wouldn't considerable quantities be released into the atmosphere, too?

John Hartz at 23:40 PM on 3 November 2013

Thawing Permafrost: The speed of coastal erosion in Eastern Siberia has nearly doubled

Note: My initial posting of the OP inadvertently omitted the final two paragraphs of the news release. They have been added.

MA Rodger at 21:29 PM on 3 November 2013

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

Rob Nicholls @36.

It wouldn't be so bad if it were solely those "who is completely new to climate science." But it's not.

The BBC recently gave Bob Carter free reign on Radio 4's World At One programme. Complaints were made. One said that this is like "the equivalent of giving a stork the right to reply on every appearance by Prof Robert Winston." The BBC's Head of Programmes' reply was "I believe this completely misrerpresents our approach wich is to give airtime on occasion to sceptics." (Their stress.) The BBC is saying that because not one denier appeared earlier in the day on Radio 4, the likes of Bob Carter is allowed to run riot on the mid-day news.

The BBC said the interviewer "challenged him (Carter) about his credibility comparing the NIPCC's work" with the IPCC's work. Challenged? Here is the transcript (less the shorter following interview with Peter Stott who was asked by the interviewer to explain the IPCC's credibility and then challenged over the 'pause' and on Himilayan glaciers). And Peter Stott was unable to reply to Carter's nonsense because he wasn't allowed to know what Cater had said. (Due to "technical reasons", apparently.)

So demonstrating the complete lack of veracity of the NIPCC reports, perhaps by debunking some exemplar section, does look like a useful peoject. That is, unless you actually do believe storks leave babies under goosberry bushes.

Rob Painting at 18:38 PM on 3 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

I missed the original SkS forum discussion on this blog post. A very enjoyable read it was.

wili at 14:07 PM on 3 November 2013

Thawing Permafrost: The speed of coastal erosion in Eastern Siberia has nearly doubled

So, is this dynamic included in the models? Is burning of the permafrost, as has been seen recently in Alaska, included? Is warming of the area from tree growth included? How much can plant growth offset or dampen these other 'positive' feedbacks?

And why is the melt rate at the northern tip of that island so much higher than elsewhere?

The areas studies are near the Lena river basin, where permafrost can reach about a mile in depth. What happens when the sea waters start hitting those kinds of deep deposits?

Riduna at 14:06 PM on 3 November 2013

Thawing Permafrost: The speed of coastal erosion in Eastern Siberia has nearly doubled

Erosion on a similar scale has been reported from the North and North-West coasts of Alask, from similar causes, notably the loss of protective sea ice.

Which begs the questions: Is this thawing evident along the coastline east of the Laptev Sea and what is the likeliood of increased carbon emissions from this thawing?

Rob Honeycutt at 12:04 PM on 3 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Thumbs upped FB's comment. :-)

Doug Bostrom at 11:57 AM on 3 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

By happy chance, this month's AAPOR Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology is largely dedicated to some important problems brought up by Tom. The current issue is built around an extensive and fascinating "task force" report on non-probability sampling, followed by illuminating comments and then a rejoinder by members of the group producing the report.

Thanks to the necessary background information provided throughout the whole discussion, in sum the November issue of JSSM provides a rich cornucopia of references to both non-probability sampling methods as well as more traditional methods.

J Surv Stat Methodol (2013) 1 (2): 89.
doi: 10.1093/jssam/smt018

KR at 11:39 AM on 3 November 2013

The Sun Has Cooled, So Why Are The Deep Oceans Warming?

grindupBaker - I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you, in particular with "...that same skin layer temperature increase must increase warming to the atmosphere". The 'skin layer' is less than a millimeter thick, almost no thermal mass to speak of. The ongoing warm/cooling of the oceans and atmosphere is determined by the rate of energy transfer, not the instantaneous temperature of any component. And the thermal gradient, the temperature difference top/bottom of the ocean surface has a direct bearing on that rate - if the gradient is decreased for any reason, whether higher exchanges with deep water or with a warm air mass (for that matter, cloud changes), the rate of energy flow from the ocean to the atmosphere decreases.

I think this exchange is getting bent around terminology and implied meanings - but I believe what I've said is correct.

Tom Curtis at 06:31 AM on 3 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Fergus Brown @12, well spoken!

Rob Nicholls at 03:07 AM on 3 November 2013

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

MA Rodger @32 and @35; I agree a line-by-line analysis of an NIPCC report would be a very big task, and I'm sure it's not a realistic prospect. I think a good approach is to focus on one chapter or section, as you did in @20; the comparison with the error-rate in IPCC AR4 is illuminating. I wonder whether someone who is completely new to climate science would be able to spot the difference in quality between IPCC and NIPCC. I'm hoping they would, but perhaps this is a forlorn hope. The fossil fuel barons that invest in the NIPCC via the Heartland Institute must be getting something for their money.

Fergus Brown at 02:40 AM on 3 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Thanks to all for their comments and observations about the original survey. I agree that there were many parts of it which were insufficiently rigorous, but in fairness we do point out in the paper that it is not being presented as any more than a preliminary study, and we also take pains to point out that it is not sufficiently robust for the results to meet the criteria of statistical significance.

It was always our intention really to present a 'first view' of opinion, post-Oreskes, and avoiding that particular methodology. At the time, we hoped to be able to follow up with something more scientific; unfortunately we couldn't, but others have.

The questions were worked hard on, but not with sufficient expertise to meet proper survey criteria; the other criticisms are also fair. But I will stick by the work we did, in that it was prepared, including the sample, with good intention, in search of a fair and representative sample, and no unreasonable claims were made on the back of the work.

The original point of mentioning it (apart from showing off :) ), was to point out the 'coincidence' of the result. That it has given some of you some entertainment is an added pleasure. Lastly, I'd say that anyone interested in doing a similar undertaking should recognise in advance that even a smallish and provisional survey requires a vast amount of work, so kudos to John and the team for their efforts.

MA Rodger at 22:54 PM on 2 November 2013

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

michael sweet @33.

My apologies. It (the outrageous Himalayan-glacier-gate scandal) is WG2. and not as I mistakenly believed WG1.

Dumb Scientist @34.

There were more than grammatical mistakes in WG1 but typos etc are hardily the same as misrepresenting the science. I have so far got through the first two paragraphs of NIPCC 2013 2.1 and there are at least four errors. I say 'at least as there are more if you account them differently because they all sort of fuzz into each other.

Phil at 22:33 PM on 2 November 2013

Hans Rosling: ~~200~~ 300 years of global change

quokka @9

I'm not sure who the "we" is.

I meant the readers of Skeptical Science. The article I linked to is dated 2010.

There are some prominent environmentalists that are "pro" nuclear power: George Monbiot is one. And there is a spectrum of views within a pro Nuclear viewpoint from enthusiatic endorsement to its grudging acceptance as a temporary fix.

Dumb Scientist at 20:59 PM on 2 November 2013

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

Michael @33,

At the bottom of the first column of page 624 in chapter 8 of the IPCC AR4 WG1 report, the phrase “too to the west” appears, which is grammatically incorrect!

Also, the online figures 2.3-2.6 used to be broken, but when I emailed the IPCC they promptly fixed the links.

Other than that? Well, their sea level rise and Arctic sea ice extent projections are starting to look like errors. I'm sure that'll be the top story on WUWT any day now...

michael sweet at 19:27 PM on 2 November 2013

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

MA Rodgers,

When I went to your reference it shows one error in the WG2 report. This was related to a typographical error in one of the grey literature references in the WG2 report. There were no reported errors in the WG1 report. Does anyone know of any "errors" alleged in the WG1 report?

The problem is that the "Skeptics" are allowed any number of mistakes while scientists are required to have a 1,000 page report without any errors at all.

MA Rodger at 18:27 PM on 2 November 2013

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

Rob Nicholls @30.

It would be quite a chore to produce "a line-by-line expert analysis of an NIPCC report." The 2013 version (which surely superceded previous versions) is over 900 pages long. That makes it about the same length as AR4 WG1 which contained one error of no great substance within its 950-odd pages. My reading of the NIPCC 2013 Chapter 2 shows many mistakes per page, often of fundamental importance. The 30,000% more errors figure I used @20 will prove to be far too low.

BillEverett at 17:31 PM on 2 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

In my opinion, the "implicit endorsements" are the strongest endorsements. An explicit statement that "we find" or "we conclude" suggests that the question is open (at least to some extent) before the research was done and the results were examined. An implicit endorsement implies that the question is closed.

It might be interesting to obtain and plot the ratios of implicit endorsements to explicit endorsements of "Continuous Creation" and "Big Bang" in the cosmology/astrophysical literature as a function of time from the 1950s to the present. If this were done, then I suspect it would support my opinion about the relative strength of an implicit versus an explicit endorsement in a scientific field.

grindupBaker at 16:30 PM on 2 November 2013

The Sun Has Cooled, So Why Are The Deep Oceans Warming?

KR #13 I'm quite sure that I'm correct (or at the very least annoying) on this one because it's fundamental, requiring no special knowledge. There's no contradiction here. The SKS post I found on the topic says nothing about reduced ocean cooling causing reduced atmospheric warming just above the oceans and there's no reason why it would given that the reduced ocean cooling is not caused by ocean mixing in this case. The +LWR warms both. The skin layer temperature is increased, slowing the rate of heat leaving the oceans, but that same skin layer temperature increase must increase warming to the atmosphere.

Doug Bostrom at 15:37 PM on 2 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

We had a terrific discussion tonight over dinner thanks to this article. Fascinating. Short of having very favorable extenuating circumstances, Fergus' response was deemed too small to be of much use. Not to say there could be nothing there, just very unlikely to be worth publishing. Useful impressions but short of a finding, so to speak.

Tom's absolutely correct about the difficulty of avoiding bias both in the way elicitations are crafted and via self-selection. It's very hard. However, I understand that neither problem is necessarily fatal or an insurmountable obstacle to further learning. So much to learn about this.

The really interesting part of the conversation was about Google's sampling system. I think it's going to open a world of possibilities that were previously too expensive and too cumbersome to explore.

Andy Skuce at 14:01 PM on 2 November 2013

Hans Rosling: ~~200~~ 300 years of global change

Not only do we need "all of the above" carbon-free energy technologies, but we also need everyone who cares about climate change--and there are all too few of us--to work together and not break into factions over who has doubts or preferences about a given energy solution.

Tom Curtis at 11:29 AM on 2 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

doug @8, Cook et al (2013) surveyed 8,547 authors. Allowing that those surveyed were not all climate scientists, and that not all climate scientists were surveyed, this still suggests that there are around 10 thousand actively researching climate scientists world wide. Dummies.com have a simple formula for confidence intervals relative to sample size. Of the three surveys under discussion, there are 140 responses for Brown, Pielke and Annan; 373 for Bray and von Storch; and 1,189 for Cook et al. Using a population size of 10,000 and a 95% confidence interval, this yields margins of error of, respectively 1.95%, 1.92%, and1.84%. Hardly any difference at all, but this assumes that the sample is random, that the survey was not biased, and that it had a normal distribution. All three suppositions are false for all three surveys.

The sample is not random in all three cases because responses depend on factors which may biase the results. In particular, people with stronger opinions are more likely to respond. In addition, the method of selecting the sample population in Cook et al introduces biases. Further, knowing the name of the people conducting the survey may also bias responses.

The actual survey instrument for Brown et al was definitely biased as discussed above. So also was the question in Bray and von Storch most closely matching that in Cook et al, although not as much as that in Brown et al. The question in Cook et al is not biased, but definitely open to misinterpretation; although ,tellingly, most of the misinterpretations have come after the event, and after "skeptics" initially based their criticisms on a correct interpretation of the survey, which leads me to believe misinterpretation may not be such a large factor.

Finally, the distribution of the sample in Brown et al is tri-modal rather than normal, it is is at least plausible that the distributions of opinions in the population are not normal.

rustneversleeps at 11:21 AM on 2 November 2013

Hans Rosling: ~~200~~ 300 years of global change

I'm with quokka here, and somewhat bemused at the pushback on what seem to be fairly straightforward comments by him/her...

quokka at 10:14 AM on 2 November 2013

Hans Rosling: ~~200~~ 300 years of global change

#7 Phil

<blockquote>Surely, we've known this for some time: 15 "wedges"</blockquote>

I'm not sure who the "we" is. For example there is not a single "environmental NGO" in Australia that does not oppose nuclear power. I'd be delighted to be proved wrong, but I don't think I will be.

Doug Bostrom at 09:46 AM on 2 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

I'm not an expert either, Rob, but as a bystander to properly constructed surveys I've been amazed at how much useful information can be extracted from what looks like not only a terrible response rate but that coming on top of a "small" sample size. My skepticism over these counterintuitive scenarios has been nullified after being treated to detailed explanations. Not to say it's easy. The process reminds me somewhat of people traversing glaciers with crevasses covered witn snow, or something like that. Looks simple, turns out to be quite perilous, can be done pretty reliably given enough expertise.

Given that survey research methodology in detail and as it's used for conducting scientific inquiry is taught at the graduate level, a BSc doesn't seem very predictive of a person's qualifications for assisting Fergus' work, not even if it's a degree in a directly related field. Not to say that Fergus' assistant couldn't have been helpful, just that the BSc isn't sufficient or even very relevant.

I get what Tom is saying, but defocusing a little bit it's fairly clear that all the darts on this board are falling in the same general vicinity; latterday climate change is significant and is mostly thanks to us. However the tea leaves sink to the bottom of the cup, the message is the same. It would be nice if we were permitted to stop trying to evade this conclusion and concentrate on fixing the problem.

Rob Nicholls at 09:43 AM on 2 November 2013

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

Dikram Marsupial, #29, maybe I misinterpreted what you meant by "real canards" when I posted my last comment. I apologise if this is the case. (I thought you meant that just dropping the most blatant falsehoods would improve the debate, but maybe you meant something more than this). Also, my sentence that said "This is encouraging further delays in taking action to reduce CO2 emissions, and possibly / probably causing more suffering for future generations" should have read "This is encouraging further delays in taking action to reduce CO2 emissions, and further delays could lead to more suffering for future generations."

Rob Nicholls at 09:21 AM on 2 November 2013

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

Dikran MArsupial #29, I suppose it might be better if the most blatantly flawed arguments were dropped by the people who don't believe that AGW is real and dangerous, as this would allow more of a focus on the more subtly flawed arguments, but at the same time it would make it harder for non-experts to see that these people really are talking nonsense. Unless it changes radically and actually engages with the totality of available evidence, I don't think the NIPCC's work could really be part of a serious debate about the science, even if the NIPCC acknowledges some of the basics, e.g. that humans have caused the recent rise in CO2 levels and that CO2 is a greenhouse gas etc. The danger of people like Singer is that they know enough to be able to make their arguments look scientifically valid to non-experts, even when they're contrary to what the evidence says. This is encouraging further delays in taking action to reduce CO2 emissions, and possibly / probably causing more suffering for future generations.

I would really like to see a line-by-line expert analysis of an NIPCC report, as I think this would be a great educational tool, but I don't expect any expert has time to produce such a thing.

Rob Honeycutt at 09:17 AM on 2 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Doug... Maybe so. I'm certainly not an expert on polling but it would seem to me, with only 140 data points, and the low end consisting of figures of 1's and 3's, those are not very robust figures when only a few additional data points could alter the conclusions fairly significantly. The method of collection could also have a significant affect on the results at this

The Doran figures are usually critiqued for similar reasons, even though they start with well over 1000 respondents and whittle that down to a small figure representing researchers who have specific expertise in climate work.

But then again, the conclusions of Doran were that the greater the expertise in the climate research, the more likely they were to believe the AGW was a problem.

It seems to me if you really wanted to get a true read on what they seem to be setting out to find, don't you think you'd want to do a bit more work? You'd want a larger sampling. You'd want some way to better test that your phrasing wasn't influencing your results.

Tom Curtis at 09:02 AM on 2 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Doug @5, the authors did in fact elicit the aid of David Jepson, who is described as a "poll specialist" and as having a BSc. What branch of study for a BSc would qualify you as a "poll specialist" is beyond me.

More importantly, the agreement on a 97% concensus is entirely superficial and depends on incorrectly interpreting the Cook et al (2013) concensus as being that "human activities contribute a net positive forcing over the twentieth century", or something equivalent. In fact, the Cook et al "consensus position" is that "humans have caused greater than 50% of recent global warming" where "recent" is undefined, but certainly includes the last 40 years, and probably not more than 130 years. Only 82% of respondents to Fergus' survey could reasonably be interpretted as agreeing to that proposition.

Given the poor quality of the survey, however, I believe that to be an irrelevant data point.

Doug Bostrom at 08:39 AM on 2 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Rob, your remarks seem unduly harsh.

The sample size isn't necessarily a huge problem in itself, depending on what's being tested.

As Tom highlights in his remarks on the methods of elicitation employed for the effort, having more concerted assistance by a social scientist familar with the nuances of survey technique would have been of benefit for Fergus' paper. Unfortunately, social scientists seem to be at a discount among so-called hard science types, one of the reasons physical scientists are flailing so badly in attempting to communcate with the public at large. Fergus' paper is an example of what may happen by ignoring a substantial body of expertise.

What's interesting to me is that despite its limitations, Fergus' experiment produced a result broadly in agreement with Cook et al. "97%" seems to be a point of convergence. :-)

John Hartz at 07:23 AM on 2 November 2013

Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation

All:

Elephant in the Room posted a lengthy moderation complaint laced with sloganeering. It was therefore deleted.

Rob Honeycutt at 07:14 AM on 2 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

I agree with Tom. This just doesn't look like a serious poll. And the conclusion about the significance of the rejection side is, I would think, not supportable at all. Starting out with such a small sample, I don't see why you would even begin writing the paper! You'd be better off just scrapping the results and starting over. Spend time trying to find ways to get a larger sampling of respondents and improving the questions.

Heck, if we were able to get thousands of respondents for Cook et al, it can't really be that difficult a task. (Though, I'll admit to contributing a considerable number of hours collecting email addresses off the internet for Cook et al.)

Tom Curtis at 06:28 AM on 2 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Fergus Brown @2, the article is not peer reviewed - or more probably is peer reviewed and rejected. The reason it could not pass peer review, if the authors even had the gumption to risk that sort of rejection is plain to see. In the methodoligy, they state that:

"A simple, single question opinion poll was carefully constructed to test scientific opinion. "

In fact, a complex compound question is asked, which differs from response to response. That is because each potential "response" introduces new, and not necessarily compatible elements so that ordering responses on a numerical scale is meaningless. Thus response one includes five distinct sub hypotheses, including a claim of no warming, a claim of scientific fraud by the IPCC, and a claim that the physics of greenhouse are "a false hypothesis". Agreement with response one requires agreement with all five distinct sub-hypotheses, and therefore is not a simple measure of the primary question. Response 6, which among other things agrees that the IPCC understates the problem also requires agreement that the IPCC has been politically compromised.

The standard practise in surveys is to ask simple, distinct questions which respondents are asked to rate their agreement with. On that basis, agreement with the basic physics should be separated out as a distinct question. Likewise, agreement that the IPCC has been politically compromised should be separated out as a distinct question. Indeed, ideally, it should be two questions, "To what level do you agree that the IPCC has been politically compromised so as to understate the effects of global warming?" and "To what extent do you agree that the IPCC has been politically compromised so as to overstate the effects of global warming?" Together with a distinct question that "Indicate on a scale of 1 to 7 the extent to which the IPCC underestimates (1), accurately reflects, or overestimates (7) the risks of global warming", this would allow you to tease out the level of disagreement with the IPCC which is simply scientific disagreement.

When faced with such complex, compound responses, respondents must either not respond, respond in a bin that does not truly reflect their opinion to avoid more seriously compromising their position, or attempt to treat the scale as a simple scale in response to the main question. The researcher can have no idea as to which strategy was taken, and as diverse strategies are likely, the proportion of each taken. The data, therefore becomes uninterpretable except at the grossest level.

This problem is compounded by the clear bias in the responses. Out of seven numbered responses, four indicate the IPCC has overestimate the problem, either drastically and fraudulently, or through excessive confidence. This means scientists who agree with the IPCC or believe it understates the problem are pigeonholed into just three position, and are less likely to find a response that matches their actual opinion. They are, therefore, less likely to respond. This bias would explain the significant disagreement in results in what still remains the best and most comprehensive survey of climate scientists results, Bray and von Storch (2010) (despite certain problems I have with it on some questions).

All in all, the survey you link to is almost a complete waste of time. I am, therefore, unsurprised to see Roger Pielke Snr's name attached to it, but disappointed to see James Annan's.

Composer99 at 04:36 AM on 2 November 2013

2013 SkS Weekly Digest #43

VeryTallGuy:

Because I do not intend to portray engineers, as an aggregate, as being likely to become climate science contrarians, I think I shall simply apologize for bringing the speculation up at all and leave it at that.

Fourthly, I'm not aware of any correlation between religious belief and climate contrarianism as you assert. I'd be interested if you can point towards any evidence for this?

As far as this goes, the second survey I linked to in #12 surveys the religious affiliation of the respondents, as well as their views on climate change.

On pp. 28, we see that respondents identifying as Republican come in at 6% with no religious belief vs. respondents identifying as Tea Party coming it at 8%, vs. a national average of 14% (the "None") entry. In other words, these respondents were also more likely to identify as religious than respondents in other categories, as well as more likely to identify as being skeptical of global warming (whether of its existence or of its anthropogenic origin). Tea Party members also appeared to be the most likely to walk the walk - more Tea Party respondents attended a religious devotional gathering more than once per week or participated in "extra-curricular" religious activities than any other group (although curiously they were more likely than Republican respondents to never attend a religious service).

I have found a more useful (in my opinion) survey here, dating from 2008, which examines the relationship between acceptance of global warming evidence as compared to religious belief, without also tying in political orientation. It is worth noting that only respondents who identified as "Unaffiliated" agreed in the majority that the Earth was warming (primarily) due to human activity.

While the largest single bloc of respondents in each other religious group noted in the findings also agreed that the earth was warming (primarily) due to human activity, it remains the case that that bloc represented a minority of respondents. That is, the majority of respondents identifying with specific religious groups (in large enough numbers to be included in the analysis) included some sort of contrarianism in their response.

There is also this report, which also surveyed respondents and found (on pp. 5 - page 6 of the PDF) that, where in 2008 respondents were very unlikely to cite political orientation or religious beliefs (separately) as reasons not to accept the existence of global warming (religious beliefs cited in under 1% of cases), by 2012 they were much more likely to do so (by 2012 religious beliefs cited in 10% of cases).

I found some other surveys related to the topic, but like the one linked to in #12 they mixed political orientation & religious belief together, making it hard to see any separate relationship.

The linked surveys are US-only, so the results may not hold elsewhere. I should also add that, not being a statistician I am not in a position to say whether these surveys are quality evidence or not.

John Hartz at 04:33 AM on 2 November 2013

Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation

All:

Elephant In the Room's comments of today have been deleted for violating the sloganeering prohibition of the Comment Policy. He/she had been warned about the consequences of continued violations of this provision. If I had the authority to do so, I would bar he/she from commenting on SkS.

MA Rodger at 04:28 AM on 2 November 2013

Why climate change contrarians owe us a (scientific) explanation

For those no longer with us, Mike Lockwood has posted at Carbonbrief due to a badly reported BBC interview. Of course, there are those who may consider a scientist writing on his specialist subject cannot be trusted and consider they knows better. But is there a place for such fallacious arrogance in this forum? I think not.

Fergus Brown at 03:46 AM on 2 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Just in case anyone cares: http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d5/jdannan/survey.pdf

Fergus Brown at 03:23 AM on 2 November 2013

How we discovered the 97% scientific consensus on man-made global warming

Hi Mark,

Though the sampling and methods, as well as the questions, were different, and though the presentation was not officially published (though it has been cited since), Our survey in 2007-8 resulted in the following conclusion: (verbatim):

4. Almost all respondents (at least 97%) conclude that the human addition of CO2 into the atmosphere is an important component of the climate system and has contributed to some extent in recent observed global average warming.

Since it was me who constructed the sample list and since my co-authors are not trivial figures in the field, I know that it was a decent stab at getting to the reality, at the time, of Climate Scientists' opinion. What is remarkable is that the 'bottom line' is so similar, though the approach was so different.

Perhaps the time has come to reconsider the original survey and attempt a more rigorous follow-up...

Best wishes, F.

Dikran Marsupial at 03:14 AM on 2 November 2013

US school infiltration attempt by Heartland’s IPCC Parody

Rob Nicholls to be fair to Singer, he makes a very good point in calling for real canards to be dropped, they do the skeptics no favours as at all, and the public and scientific debates would both be more productive if we could stick to issues where there actually was some substantial uncertainty. All "skeptics" should read Singer's article, ... aparently including Singer himself.

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