Survey of Climate Scientists: What do they think?

I would love to see a good survey of climatologists. The Global Warming Alarmists are always crowing about how they are the overwhelming consensus. I don't believe that's the case. Here is a relatively recent survey (in 2003) which suggests that their consensus is not all that strong.

http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/Bray.htm

or here:

http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Scienceletter.htm

The question asked was "To what extent do you agree or disagree that climate change is mostly the result of anthropogenic causes? A value of 1 indicates strongly agree and a value of 7 indicates strongly disagree."

There were 530 valid responses. The results were::

Mean = 3.62; Std. Error of mean = .080; Median = 3.00; Std. deviation = 1.84
Frequencies:
1...... strongly agree 50 (9.4% of valid responses)
2...... 134 (25.3% of valid responses)
3...... 112 (21.1% of valid responses)
4...... 75 (14.2% of valid responses)
5...... 45 (8.5% of valid responses)
6...... 60 (10.8% valid responses)
7...... strongly disagree 54 (9.7% of valid responses

This is a slight rise in consensus for the same survey conducted in 1996 that resulted in a mean of 4.1683 to the same question (Five countries USA, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Denmark only in 1996 survey, N = 511). So I guess the consensus is growing slowly - from 4.168 to 3.62 - or 13% in 8 years

I wonder how the result would have changed if the question specified "result of CO2 emissions?" instead of "result of anthropogenic causes?"
There are lots of other anthropogenic causes besides CO2 emissions (Land use, aerosols, methane, black carbon, dissipated heat from industrialization).

The result you get depends on how the question is worded.

 

Go away Navier. Just leave and never come back.

 

I am curious, how many climatologists get grants and funding from big business. Can you research this and report your findings????

 

Virtually none. The big bucks, which will approach $4 billion this year, is from the government grants. Unless you play along with the crowd you don't get funding.
The sad tale of the triangle of alarmism (taken from a paper by Richard Lindzen, Alfred Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, MIT): is as follows:

Scientists make meaningless or ambiguous statements >>> advocates and media translate statements into alarmist declarations >>> politicians respond by feeding scientists more money. And so it goes. How do you make people wake up?

 

_______________________
The truth must be getting through!

 

Some, not all:
"...About 44 percent of environmental scientists were employed in State and local governments; 15 percent in management, scientific, and technical consulting services; 14 percent in architectural, engineering and related services; and 8 percent in the Federal Government. About 5 percent were self-employed..." (U.S. DoL, bold mine)


That means that five-percent of the people who are in environmental studies are freelance. They are not there through government grants (they would be listed as belonging under the government), but through private funding. Private funds/grants will have their scientists do exactly what you said:

True! Now, if we wanted to dive deeper, I am sure we would find that falling under the 15% and 14% categories we would also have people privately funded. Not to say that all the companies are out there to prove there is no global warming, some of these companies are out to prove there is. But, if you are GE, wouldn't it behoove you to have a scientist under your belt saying that the PCB's you have dumped into the Hudson River isn't bad when faced with a $480 million dredging bill?


Doing the math, that puts us at 34% total who are out there for private funding. Some recieve federal grants - yes. Go here if you feel like researching the actual federal grant statistics. I don't feel like jumping through hoops to get the password. The $4 million you quoted probably goes to the 48% who are working for the government in some form or another.

My question: How are you so sure that everything you are saying isn't applied to you as well? The problem (and wonder) of words is that almost everything has a double meaning. I have a lot of respect for MIT, but if they have to play the game to please whoever they are being funded by - - - then they are going to say whatever they have to.

We might already be the ones who are awake. What can we say for you?

 

The success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research, increasing from the millions to the billlions of dollars. Whatever industry spends is negligible by comparison, and besides industry is more and more climbing on board to feed at the government trough.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear (hurricane specialist and G.W. skeptic William Gray at Colorado State is one example) their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. The "environmentalist" popular writer Ross Gelbspan is one of the worst offender at personal attacks and slander.

How is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? I think that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear.

But the discussion should be based on the science, not on these other peripheral extraneous factors. Somebody answer me why, if G.W. is such a threat, have we seen only 0.6C temperature rise in the past century? Why was the global climate getting cooler from 1945 to 1975 while CO2 concentrations were rising? (in the 1970s the press were actually raising the alarm of "global cooling") Why was the Arctic and Greenland just as warm or warmer in 1930s as today? Why does most of the today's global warming occur during winter nights in the north latitudes? (better explained by increased cloud cover than greenhouse gasses), and why at the same time is most of antactica getting colder? Why is the daily temperature range (DTR) decreasing? What causes the el Ninos Southern Oscillation (ENSO)? or the decadal Pacific Oscillation? or the North Atlantic Oscillation? Why does the lapse rate in the tropics disagree with greeenhouse theory? Greenhouse theory can't explain these and many other things, such as the ice ages And the computer models which Gore and other alarmists rely on for their dire predictions are all based on this unproven theory.

 

Let's hit this arguement blow-by-blow, shall we?

When you think something is going to adversely affect you industry and your people, I would agree to the funneling of money. Makes sense to me. You have to protect your assets and your ass.

Links please? If your going to make controversial statements of people getting snowed over global warming and scientists silenced - then you better have the proof to back it up. News websites, .org, .gov, and .edu sites count. Anything else will be considered conjecture and opinion. Otherwise I am inclined to believe you are making this up to prove a point. I am also not going to do the work for you.

I would hardly call it junk science. This is junk science. By claiming this, you are stating you have a political agenda in the matter. People who throw the term "junk science" around usually think that the other side is biased in its workings, and not seeing the value of important data and scientific findings. Even if you didn't agree with the concept of global warming, you would see the value in the studies for other purposes. You feel that this line of thinking is an attack on your way of life, and I suspect you don't want to change your habits to fit what is best for the earth. Mr. Immelt, is that you? Your name is quite ironic.

Actually, it's that extraneous factors that make the discussion. The reason why the proverbial "canary in a mine shaft" is thrown around with global warming discussions is because extraneous factors point towards this upcoming threat. How do you know you are sick? You cough, but that doesn't mean your sick. Your nose runs, but that doesn't mean your sick. You're tired, but that doesn't mean your sick. Each of these symptoms left alone would just indicate an allergen or a minor annoyance. It's when you group them together that you know something bigger is going on in your body. Seeing all the "extraneous" things and piecing them together gives us the picture of global warming. You have to stop looking at the smaller picture ("It's not occuring!") and see the big one ("how will this effect my and my children's future?").

That is an example of why statistic's is a beautiful thing. You can get the numbers to say whatever you want them to say, and not ever be lying! If someone who is from the U.S. looked at that number, 0.6C, they would think: "Oh my! 0.6 C! That's such a low number. I don't know why these environmentalist's are so worried!" Okay, so I am exaggerating. Let's look at the flip side.

The average temperature of the Earth has risen between 0.5 F and 1.0 F. Hmmm. Looks different now. Also, might I point out a word? Average. In order to get an average you must have numbers higher and you must have numbers lower. That means that in area's of the world the temperature rates have risen to degrees above 1.0 F.

Looking at the U.S. alone:

Cooling. That's not such a bad thing. That's good right? Actually, no. It's a sign that something is wrong. Naturally the Earth heats up and cools down, but for the most part it remains constant. Such is the natural order of things. However in the past 100 years or so, the temperatures are going out of wack. As the CO2 rises, heat rises as well:

So the more C02 that we have in the atmosphere, the more heat gets trapped. Causing higher temperature rates.

Really? Where is your data for this? Interesting though, I did some digging and this is what I came up with in regards to global cooling:

"...However, the Earth is not considered to be cooling at this time, but rather to be in a period of global warming primarily attributed to human activity."
Whoa! Let me say that one again: "...primarily attributed to human activity." Reading further in that article we see that the cooling trend has ended. We are now in a heat trend where the earth is starting to warm up.

Broken record: information on this?

Easy, shape of the earth and the position of the planet. Sadly Christopher Colon, the earth is not "round". It's more elliptical.

The Larsen Ice Shelf would disagree with you on that one. If Antartica was truly getting colder, there would be more ice forming on the shelf, rather than it disappearing all together.

Scientists don't know about this effect.

"No climate model yet devised can fully account for the observed diurnal variations and hence the recent observed warming."

They actually are unable to correlate the two. It could be nothing, it could be something. It could be a part of global warming, and then again...who knows? We will have to wait and see.

Can you figure this one out yourself? I don't think I should have to be the one that explains it to you. But if you insist: Go here.

And here.

And also here.

*cough* That's why they call them phenomenons. No one is really able to explain why they occur. Can you?

 

Navier-Stokes, are you a climatologist? Im not saying this because I agree/disagree with what you say its just you've named yourself after an equation, in particular a fluid dynamics one.

In general I think that global warming is being caused by man made sources, simply because of the rate its happening. Its very easy to pick holes in this kind of science simply beacuse of the difficulties of modelling it. The climate is a massive and very non-linear system making accurate modelling nigh on impossible and I dont find it suprising that the models rarely match reality. Indeed looking at teh basics of non-linear maths is prolly a good before bashing climate modelling. So I like to use the oldest of all experimental science techniques, look out of the window, in my opinion this supports the global warming theory. Any first year physics/chemistry undergrad will be able to say that CO2 can cause a greenhouse effect. Which leave each and everyone of us with a simple question, do YOU think that pumping millions of tonnes of a greenhouse gas into the atmosphere is related or not to the rapid increase of the Earths average temperature?

Incidentally why do global-warming-sceptics never state possibly the strongest piece of evidence for their case. The fact that the ice caps on Mars are melting faster than ours, I dont think even the most ardent of environmentalists could blame that on Bush.

 

That's an interesting point, I never knew that one.

I do believe that Navier has disappeared though. I would love to hear/read his reply to this.