Last week a new ComRes/ITV poll came out in the UK. The poll of 2,047 people from across the country shows that the population is split roughly into thirds. A third are skeptics, a third are believers, a third don’t know. Overall about 60% of UK citizens are not convinced that humans are changing the weather.
What was also really interesting but unreported about this study is that the wealthiest and most educated are more skeptical and those with the lowest income or shortest education were more likely to believe that humans are affecting the climate. In the upper middle class 36% think the floods are due to human activity, and virtually the same percentage — 35% are skeptics. In the manual worker and less skilled social bracket 44% think humans are to blame, and only 28% are skeptics. The skeptic message is winning over the upper class, better educated bracket. Presumably the rest will follow.
Firstly, most people think the weather is getting worse (red bar) — 65% of all the population. This belief is most common in the lowest income and less educated bracket.
Figure 1: Results from the question “Weather in the UK seems to get worse every year” graphed according to social grouping.
A belief that the weather is getting worse does not necessarily mean that it is due to man-made emissions, and “weather” can mean storms and floods rather than hotter or colder temperatures. The next few questions provide more definition, though two of them still use the confounded and almost useless term “climate change”. We don’t know if people answer the question using the literal meaning or the coded one where all climate change equals man-made change.
But we can see that when people say the weather is getting worse, quite a lot of them are are referring to storms and floods, but about 15% are thinking of hotter or colder weather or don’t think this is a a true change in the climate, or a man-made effect but perhaps is only a natural patch of bad weather.
One question asks if the recent storms and floods show climate change is really happening, and the 65% who thought the weather is getting worse falls to 50% who think the climate is changing. Note the stark divergence across social groups continues. I’ve colored the more skeptical answers in blue and those more likely to be concerned about concerned about the climate with the red bars.
Obviously, the IPCC message rings with uneducated and low income groups. The more educated and the higher the income, the less convinced people are. Alarmists would probably say that rich people are more likely to be deniers and the poor are more concerned, the predictable spin. But I say this has more to do with education and information sources.
Looks to me like skepticism is driven by those who can read and are online. Those who rely solely on TV news will be the last to find out. (Can anyone find a older version of a study like this so we can see how the proportions of social groups are shifting? Since skepticism is growing, but a predisposition to selfish “denial” in the population probably stays the same, it would be a safe assumption that the more educated are driving the rise in skepticism.)
The propaganda message that CO2 is “pollution” is failing first in the well read classes. The intellectual debate is being played out in the influential upper middle classes.
Figure 2: Results from the question “The recent storms and flooding in the UK show that climate change is really happening”, graphed according to social grouping.
Turn the last question inside out and a curious thing happens. The number who believe climate change is real and causing floods and storms drops from 50% to 44%. So for at least 6% of the population any statement of belief in climate change vanishes if the opposite question is asked. The change appears to occur in the lesser skilled, lower income groups. These are what I call “passive skeptics” — they tick boxes on surveys saying “yes” to propaganda, but if given the merest excuse to dump the official approved line, it’s dropped. Climate activists don’t know these people exist, because they never discuss the skeptical view with any approval so they don’t realize how fickle some of their “fans” are. They never see the other side.
Again, unskilled workers, the unemployed and pensioners are more likely to say that storms and floods are due to “climate change”. Again, the divergence is obvious, the highest proportion of skeptics are in the upper middle class. Those who believe, are in the low income, less educated groups. Interestingly the most uncertain group are the lower middle class — perhaps caught between knowing the official dogma, but hearing increasingly skeptical messages from friends or colleagues in the influential wealthier more educated group?
Figure 3: Results from the question “The recent storms and flooding in the UK are no worse than they have been in the past and are probably not a result of climate change at all” graphed according to social grouping.
Finally, thankfully, there is one question that uses the phrase, “human activity”. And now the 44% drops to 38% who agree with the officially approved conclusion. Fully sixty two percent of the population are skeptical. The stand-out feature of the responses graphed below is that there are fewer skeptics and more belief in the official line among the poorest and least educated.
Figure 4: Results from the question “The recent storms and flooding in the UK are probably a result of climate change mainly caused by human activity” graphed according to social grouping.
Al Gore and Tim Flannery et al can’t be happy about this. Many climate activists push the meme that if they only communicated their message better more people would agree. The fact that skepticism is on the rise, and that the most educated are the most skeptical, betrays the fallacy that better propaganda will achieve anything. Instead it shows that belief in carbon dioxide driven calamity largely rests in the unskilled or low income class. Presumably the message is filtering through.
Notice also that when activists want to convince us that they have the majority on their site, they are more likely to use vague confounded survey questions like Figure 1 or 2 above, and not the more accurate questions as in Figure 4 (which don’t usually get asked).
A note on the social groupings used in the UK
The study referred to social grade in the UK as AB, C1,C2 and DE (see below). I translated those into headings on the graphs above. The results unfortunately blend 6 or 7 social groups into 4, so is low resolution in terms of picking apart the strata. AB is quite a broad grouping with everyone from the uber-rich to middle management. Likewise, DE is unfortunately broad — D is “working class” or semi and unskilled manual workers, and E is state pensioners or the unemployed. So includes both those with little education and those who may have university degrees but are retired.
National Readership Survey (NRS) demographic categories
| Social Grade | Social Status | Occupation |
| A | upper middle class | higher managerial, administrative or professional |
| B | middle class | intermediate managerial, administrative or professional |
| C1 | lower middle class | supervisory or clerical, junior managerial, administrative or professional |
| C2 | skilled working class | skilled manual workers |
| D | working class | semi and unskilled manual workers |
| E | those at lowest level of subsistence | state pensioners or widows (no other earner), casual or lowest grade workers |
REFERENCE
ITV News Index Survey: ONLINE Fieldwork: 3rd-5th January 2014 The full results are available here.
UPDATE: Australian results on a similarish study were reported two weeks later.
UPDATE#2: Only 43% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC “95%” certain claims that man-made CO2 is the major driver of climate change.
Now if everybody would read this and then we’ll do the poll again Jo.
We’re getting there.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/andrewbolt/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/paltridge_this_warming_pause_may_destroy_the_reputation_of_science/
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Jo
I think with this guy the content of the comment is intimately related to whether or not the appropriate medication has been recently taken.
We should not attack him, we should offer him our help and sympathy in the hope that he may one day stop babbling and instead become coherent and start to think logically.
People like this are sad and lonely, hence their need to strike out in order to try and generate some sort of reaction. We should feel sorry for him, even though he can be a tad irritating at times.
—–
Peter, sorry, when I realized BA had hijacked the top of the thread, and I’d approved it (with barely a whole sentence, and no connection to this post) I retracted my approval. Thus your comment in reply to him is now orphaned, chucked out of its nest, because his has gone to “moderation”. There is nothing I can do — this message is doomed to stick to the bottom of the thread forever replying to a comment that is not there. Apologies – Jo
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I like the idea of being attached to doom
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Well you’ve certainly hitched your ideology to the right bandwagon then, haven’t you. Be careful what you wish for…….
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Careful Winston, you are now attached too.
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It sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings. Like a curse that one can’t get rid of, or something….
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In the wake of the criticism that I hijack comments to get to the top, I should point out that I read these blogs from the top and comment on them where I think appropriate. As one continues down, one encounters the same comments anyway.
In fact I was going to comment here first but my first attempt said that the connection failed. So I proceeded down and thought of replying to Eric.
Now that the reply window seems to be working here, let me comment on the link.
“…there has been no significant warming over the most recent fifteen or so years…
In the light of all this, we have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem … ”
The premise here (in italics) is dubious to say the least. I have demonstrated eleswwhere that periods as short as 15 years are unlikely to ever be statistically significant as far as demonstrating warming, cooling or a pause is concerned. The calculations can be found at 1.3.1.1.2
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/forgotten-historic-hot-temperatures-recorded-with-detail-and-care-in-adelaide/#comments
Short term data sets are useless as a demonstration of any trend, even more so than one or two years of extreme events which I cover below.
But even as a headline trend, ignoring the error margins, there is no evidence for a “pause” for the last 15 years.
http://tinyurl.com/khlxtc9
The null hypothesis in this case is that non statistically significant short periods are no different to the statistically significant trend for the last several decades in which they are embedded.
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A trend is statistical construct. It should predict, but obviously that is not a requirement in all cases. It can be changed over and over and over by changing beginning and ending points. What those points are seem entirely dependent on who wants what answer. I have yet to have any climate change believer explain to me in detail why their endpoints are correct and skeptics are not. I get that graph from SkS (regression line versus stair steps) that is not related to reality in any way, and that’s about it. I provide references showing that regression may not be the best fit–that stepped statistics and other methods of calculating may actually fit better. Yet the one thing that is virtually always used is regression. Why? Why the length of the intervals? Why are skeptics wrong and not the believers? I have yet to shown any evidence that the methods used by warmists are valid. I’m still waiting for the explanation of why “global mean temperature” has any meaning and why anomalies from it have meaning. Where is the evidence that the globe has a mean temperature and the deviating from it means anything whatsoever? It’s all just numbers and statistics, which generally prove whatever the user wants.
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Sheri,
You raise very important points so excuse if this is a little long. And before I attract don’t likes from the knee jerk head kickers, note that there is nothing here that is pro or anti “warmist”. It is about mathematics which should be of value to everybody who wants to discuss data meaningfully. If you want to use correct mathematics to back skeptic arguments, that is all I ask.
Yes a trend is a statistical construct, but that construct is after all the basis of the claim that “It has not warmed for 17,16 15 etc years.” And trend does not really predict the future. It is only about the existing data, and it may or may not be sensible to extrapolate from the past into the future.
The first rule of statistics is make sure your sample size is big enough for your result to be meaningful.
That is where end points come in. It’s not really the end points that matter as such, but the number of years between the endpoints, or how big the data set. That is why I harp on about short data sets. Because of the “noise”, relatively minor variations in temperatures between different data bases can lead to significant differences between linear fits for short time frames. With longer time frames the signal to noise ratio improves and there is good agreement between the linear fits.
When comparing the two satellite data bases UAH and RSS which began in 1979, the regression lines are quite different for 15 years but very similar since 1979.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:12/offset/from:1979/offset:0.1/plot/rss/from:1999/trend/plot/uah/from:1999/trend/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/rss/from:1979/mean:12/plot/rss/from:1979/trend
But the real problem is not apparent from just looking at the regression lines. They do not show how the error margins blow out for short data sets.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
For both the RSS and UAH data from 1979, there is a statistically significant warming trend.
UAH Trend: 0.138 ±0.070 °C/decade (2σ)
RSS Trend: 0.125 ±0.069 °C/decade (2σ)
For data since 1999, the error margins are so large that it cannot be said with any confidence that the data shows warming, cooling or a pause.
UAH Trend: 0.146 ±0.212 °C/decade (2σ)
RSS Trend: 0.027 ±0.211 °C/decade (2σ)
Although the linear regression line values are quite different, the error margins mean that there is considerable overlap between the 95% confidence limits so the two data sets are in fact in statistical agreement.
Returning to the matter of end points. If moving an end point by a single year makes a large difference to the trend line, it is a sure sign that your data set is too short and the results not statistically meaningful.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/mean:12/offset/from:1979/offset:0.1/plot/uah/from:1999/trend/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend
From 1999 UAH Trend: 0.146 ±0.212 °C/decade (2σ)
From 1998 UAH Trend: 0.060 ±0.223 °C/decade (2σ)
Note again that the large error margins means the trends are statistically in agreement, but cannot tell whether the data shows a warming or cooling trend.
You are correct that the use of linear regression for temperature data is something of a blunt instrument. There is no reason to expect that temperature trends are linear and indeed looking at the temperature trends since CO2 emissions began to rise with the burning of fossil fuel, a better fit is obtained with a non linear function.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png
The temperature record is “noisy” due to year by year variations resulting from the multifactorial nature of forcings influencing temperature. Thus over short periods of a few decades, it is not possible to fit a trend any more complicated than a linear regression, so that gets used by default.
Graeme: With regard to the reliability of temperature data, I can only say that over the time period since satellite data began being collected, there is good agreement between all the data sets. I have used UAH satellite data in my examples above. That is the data base associated with skeptics John Christy and Roy Spencer. Again if there is a problem with the data, that does not help those who wish to use it to claim a pause in the temperatures.
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PS Sheri, I emailed Graeme concerning our discussion on peer review including a cut and paste of my remarks to you about the paper and ended with “Consider yourself suitably admonished.”
Have not heard back from him yet. Not sure if that is out of shame or if he is still on holidays.
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I presume that I am the Graeme you mention but I am still waiting for your e-mail. I am not on holidays, but as there was no answer made to my entry I missed being “admonished”.
My point was that the claim of man-made warming is based on the observation that
A. temperatures have gone up since 1979,
B. the CO2 level has risen too,
and the postulate arising that rising CO2 causes rising temperatures.
Anybody who looks at history, temperatures etc. from before 1950 would be doubtful of this. Warming has certainly been going on in Europe and Nth. America since 1710 in cycles, with cooling cycles as well. Nor is there any shortage of examples of times warmer than now with CO2 at lower levels.
But the believers have ruled out any other possible explanation for warming to have occurred. From there it is a short step to say CO2 is rising, therefore the temperature must go up as well, so when the rate of warming slows climatologists start frantically searching for “the missing heat”. Should the warming ever stop or reverse then the postulate will be discarded. In that case, faced with loss of prestige and perhaps employment, and the belief that they’re “saving the world”, the tendency, even if only subconsciously, is to bias any adjustments the way you think they should be.
And I would point out that the e-mails made public in “Climategate” make it obvious that the inner circle of climatologists are not burdened by a strong sense of ethics.
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Graeme, No.3 Not referring to you. That was a bit of a private joke between me and Sheri. We were discussing peer review a few days previously. Sheri’s comments prompted me to look for an example of a paper of which I was a co-author, and I found that another one had just been published but my then boss Graeme had failed to let me know. As I told Sheri:
I think the first draft was submitted in 2006 or 2007. Published December last year. I point to this six or seven year process (a record breaker in my personal experience) to those who think that peer review is rubber stamp.
I will be emailing Graeme to tell him off for not letting me know.
As for your comment about climatologists not considering any other mechanism that CO2 I refer you to my comment at 2.1.3.3.1 below and this link:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5960/1646/F8.expansion.html
As far as climategate goes, the closest thing to a smoking gun they could find among thousands of emails was a reference to “hiding the decline” which was not about temperature data at all, though it has been misrepresented as such, but about omitting tree ring proxy data for the last 30 years which has been known not to match the actual temperature for reasons that are not yet clear.
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Thank you for the reference which seems to be a good summary of things in 2009, i.e before “Climategate”, but the graph illustrates my comment anyway. The basic assumption is that recent warming has to be due to CO2 and all climatologists have to do is find the reasons why the data doesn’t fit that assumption e.g. aerosol cooling to explain why it isn’t warming as much as originally predicted. Although in some cases the response to this was to try and change the data to fit the theory.
Enormous efforts are going into getting the model output resemble the recent past, but the “recent” warming has been happening (in cycles) since 1710, possibly sooner. None of the models would have any chance of replicating that because they all have built a factor referring to the CO2 level.
Neither the Medieval Warm period nor the Holocene Optimum would be deemed possible if CO2 was controlling the temperature. Yet the finds at Tassili show that at that latter time
the Sahara was warm and wet and supported giraffes, elephants, assorted bovines and hippopotami (indicating permanent warmish water holes).
Back in the Eemian interglacial there were lions, giraffes, elephants and hippos in the Thames Valley when it is claimed that the CO2 level couldn’t possibly have exceeded 280 ppm. Indeed the previous 3 interglacials all got to higher temperatures than at present with lower CO2 levels. Going further back in time you find many examples of the temperature being at odds with the current theory.
I don’t believe that CO2 can possibly the dominant effect of the recent temperature rise, and that some other fundamental cause (or causes) is involved. Proof of warming is not proof that it is man-made.
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Thank you for your response. Much of what you are explaining makes sense. Yes, you need a sample large enough for your result to be meaningful. I was surprised by the SkS graph, since generally all I have seen is regression. Isn’t the trend also the basis of the claim that the warming will continue as well as that there is a pause?
I found this article today, which seems to indicate there really is a pause:
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.14525!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/505276a.pdf
so now I am really confused.
I agree that if the data has been altered, then the data needs to be rejected by both sides.
I am still working through a lot of the claims from both sides, so your input is helpful in my understanding of this. Even if people do keep giving you thumbs down.
Hopefully Graeme is shamed, not on holiday. 😉
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Sheri, There is no need for confusion. There is however reason for uncertainty about what is actually happening. That may be annoying but that is how it is with noisy temperature data. There may or may not be a hiatus. The explanations for the hiatus (if it is real) may or may not be correct.
The point I am trying to get across is to be wary of reading too much into short term data.
I don’t find the search for an explanation necessary while a statistical analysis of recent data does not support a hiatus. Nor does it support continued warming. Nor does it support cooling.
The data does not support any statement about the real trend other than where it may be within the upper and lower bounds of the 95% confidence limits which define statistical significance.
And note the point I made about the headline difference in trend when you look at the data starting 16 years ago (1998) with that starting 15 years ago (1999). Or for that matter 18 years ago (1996) before the spike of the 1997/1998 el nino southern summer.
Use the trend calculator
http://www.skepticalscience.com/trend.php
to look at the trend and error margins for the following hadcrut4 data.
http://tinyurl.com/lb56pqe
Play around with various data bases and time periods and you will get a feel for how the trend and error varies.
I agree with the following statement in the article, except that the data seems to suggest that reasonable trends and error margins can be obtained for for data covering about 3 decades, and I don’t think comparison with models is necessary at this stage given that the model predictions are within the error margins. For example, the UAH data for the last 16 years:
From 1998 UAH Trend: 0.060 ±0.223 °C/decade (2σ)
means that the trend is between cooling of 0.163 and warming of 0.283 °C/decade.
And many researchers caution against evaluating models
on the basis of a relatively short-term blip in the climate. “If you are
interested in global climate change, your main focus ought to be on
timescales of 50 to 100 years,”
The regression lines for the last 15,16 1nd 18 years on the above graph should be compared those of earlier periods there were not only pauses, but actual large (but non statistically significant) falls within(statistically significant) multidecadal rises in temperatures.
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Actually, what is frustrating is the pretense of certainty. I am fully on board with uncertainty.
I have been experimenting with time periods and graphs, etc. What I have learned is trend lines really can be very deceptive, even over the long term. I am familiar with Woodfortrees and the graphing data and temperature data.
The trend calculator on SkS is interesting and illustrates fully why even using a 100 years, you get very different trends depending on which 100. Plus, every data set gives a different answer. So yeah, I am very concerned about the error margins, the statistics and the uncertainty. It just does not seem to be a fully developed theory and data set at this point. It’s more like an hypothesis that is still being worked through. It’s difficult to get behind something that has this level of uncertainty.
Thank you for your answer and links.
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Sheri, I think I got the impression you were in the US. Is that correct. Just been emailing a friend who I met when I was working in Syracuse who is now in Utah. She says they have missed the worst of the extreme cold weather there, and does not miss the Syracuse climate (I enjoyed the novelty for a year), while I was explaining the heatwaves we have been having here in SE Australia. So yes global weather/climate is complicated.
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Although I come from a scientific background, I don’t think I am qualified to have an opinion on this specific topic.
However I have done a fair amount of work over the years as a researcher and “advisor” in the political arena. Based on that experience, I am not just a skeptic, I am a cynical skeptic, which is far worse.
On one occasion, I was present at a meeting between a Minister of the Crown, his Permanent Under-Secretary, various other functionaries, and some Research Scientists. The meeting was concerned with a subject that the Government of the day felt that it might need to address urgently.
To better understand the policy options available, the Minister asked the scientists, “What does a statistical analysis of the research tell us, and what do the trends imply?”, to which the senior scientist present answered, “What would you like them to imply? The data we have gathered, can be interpreted in multiple ways”.
The Minister thought for a moment, and then said, “I am looking for advice that can be used to inform Government policy”. To which the scientist responded, “But we would need to understand the political policy, before we could formulate our advice”.
At this point, the Permanent Under-Secretary stepped in, thanked us all for attending, and cleared the room.
Outside in the corridor, the Scientists were bristling, and confirming to each other that, “It was ridiculous to expect advise on such a complex subject, without knowing how it is intended to be used”.
This would have been in the early to mid 1970’s, and I have a suspicion that one to the other people present in that room that day, went on to write comedy scripts for television.
But the comedy aspects aside, the real intent of this comment, is to point out that much of the discussion on this sub-thread appears to be about selecting the “correct” start and end dates, in order to influence the error margins, in order to produce a reasonable trend, where “reasonable” is presumably what is expected (or desired).
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Philip: Yes, I am in the US. We are having the usual cold and the usual 35 to 50 mph winds, followed by more cold and light snow. It’s actually interesting to see how many semi-tractor trailers blow over on the roads (the road people often close the roads now due to so many accidents). Yesterday, there were 50 to55 mph sustained winds with 84 mph gusts on the interstate and 71 mph gust on one road that loops around town! I love wind–though it banging all day can be distracting. Climate is indeed a fascinating thing–complex, and yet it is somewhat predictable. Not short term, but even after 12 years of drought, I never once thought that the snow and winter would not return.
Rereke: Agreed. Much of climate science has been so inbreed with politics that it’s virtually impossible to find pure science. It’s sad, because right now in the US, there’s a monster cold system that has virtually paralyzed much of the country. People honestly thought that warming was never going to end and that snow and cold would be a thing of the past. So we’re running out of propane, schools are closed and auto insurance is due to make a huge jump in the premiums. Had there been actual rational planning, we could have planned for colder and warmer times. We really should follow what we have always seen–a widely varying climate, and learn to adapt instead of wringing our hands over the idea that a catastrophe looms. The only catastrophe thus far is believing that planning for cold was not necessary.
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Rereke. Your story is very interesting.
Regarding the point of my comments: I am not talking about a problem with particular end points as such but about the length of the interval between the end points.
If changing an end point by a year or two gives you a very different trend result, your interval is almost certainly too short and the error margins will be large renderring the result pretty meaningless.
The error margins must be considered with any linear regression trend line.
For instance a plot of UAH data from 1979 will give a warming trend line of 0.138 °C/decade. A plot of data from 1999 will give a “warming” trend line of 0.146 °C/decade.
So the plots will look like this:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1979/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/uah/from:1999/trend
But this is far from the whole story. For the line from 1979 the error margin is ±0.070 °C/decade. Including the error margins still leaves the line with a warming trend, even when you subtract the error from the trend line so the warming is statistically significant.
But the error for the 1999 data is ±0.212 °C/decade. So the real trend statistically speaking could be a very large cooling trend or a very large warming trend or somewhere in between (A pause even). On the plot the trend lines look the same, but the short one is actually very unreliable.
And yes moving the end point of short data set by one year makes a very large difference to the trend line, but not when moving the end point of the longer set by one year.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1979/mean:12/plot/uah/from:1979/trend/plot/uah/from:1999/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend/plot/uah/from:1980/trend
Sheri, which part of the US are you in?
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Philip: I live in Wyoming.
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So, what you are effectively saying, is that it is bad Karma to use any data that is sensitive to end point selection. I can understand that.
So talking in terms of years is meaningless. Talking in terms of decades is better than talking in terms of years, but still pointless, talking in centuries is preferable to talking in terms of years or decades, and therefore, talking in terms of millennia, will give you the best indication of climate variability. That makes sense to a mediocre scientist with some political “nous”.
Unfortunately, such timescales tend to mask any causal influences or events. On such time-scales, political and social change is faster than climate change. Long timescales also present the political problem of the existence of Medieval Warming Period, which was presumably a natural variation, since the human population was small, and industrialisation non-existent.
The MWP, in political terms, provides a precedent for modern claims that the current warming is not necessarily anthropogenic, since any apparent modern correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature is not apparent with the MWP, and are therefore more likely to be independent events.
Interesting.
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I think that I have had this argument elsewhere. You should do your own calculations of sigma.
I plotted linear regression results going back for either the previous 10 years or 15 years with the final date as the independent variable, so that you get a result for all possible combinations of start and end point (HadCRUT4 I think). Yes it varies a lot but this plot shows if the pause has become significant, in your own opinion.
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Vic,
Some time ago I did a check of trend and sigma for a data set on my HP calculator and found it matched with the result of Kevin C’s trend calculator. Something of a tedious process but I did it in response to such a challenge. Not surprising as the algorithm used for such statistical calculations is bog standard.
Your plot is interesting and informative and looks right, with the negative trends matching the short term cooling trends and the high positive values matching the short term steep upward sections of the temperature graph. I have added it to my collection of relevant data graphs. It also confirms that the 15 year trends show less variation than the 10 year trends as the noise is averaged out for longer periods.
However, does not display the error margins for the regression fits and therefore does not contradict my essential point, that the error margins for short periods makes any definitive statement about warming or cooling trends almost impossible within the requirements of statistical significance, and so they cannot be held to be representative of what is happening with longer statistically significant time frames.
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Like I said, this argument sounds familiar. I did calculate the SD properly for different decades. I think the last ten years came out -0.05 K/decade with an error of (2xSD) of 0.06 K/decade, not 0.2. For other decades it varied between 0.06-0.08 K/decade.
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“heatwaves we have been having here in SE Australia”
BS !!!
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I posted an analysis in the Weekend Unthreaded of maximum temperatures for Adelaide and Melbourne. You might not agree with my method of checking if SE Aus is experiencing more extreme days more often, but the Adelaide data does show it is occurring more often for Adelaide than in the mid 20th century, just not worse than 100 years ago.
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PS Sheri, I may have gotten the impression you were from the US from your posting times. (I tend to sit up late.) I was about to sign off when I checked my email and found one had just arrived from Lorie in Utah.
She said she is going for an interview as Editor in Chief of her professions lead journal (Lorie is a neuroscientist).
I will have to ask her how peer review works at that journal and if she has any plans for changes if she is offered and takes the job.
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Philip:
what guarantee can you offer that the “official” temperatures are correct?
It would seem, at the least, that there are problems with siting of many recording sites, failure to allow sufficiently for UHI, “adjusting” of data, and the lack of uniform coverage of the surface of the Earth. Are you satisfied that the results given are re-producable?
30
Phil you and the rest of the CAGW alarmists need to look around and realise just how many of “team warming” are jumping ship.
One of the biggest “jumpers” in recent times being Prof. Curry.
Actually she had a leg over the rail as far back as 2007.
This is just a little of her evidence at a senate hearing a couple of weeks ago.
And yeh Phil, you did high jack the thread just to get near the top.
Prof. Curry.
“My written testimony documented the following evidence:
For the past 16 years, there has been no significant increase in surface temperature. There is a growing discrepancy between observations and climate model projections. Observations since 2011 have fallen below the 90% envelope of climate model projections The IPCC does not have a convincing or confident explanation for this hiatus in warming. There is growing evidence of decreased climate sensitivity to atmospheric carbon dioxideconcentrations Based on expert judgment in light of this evidence, the IPCC 5 assessment report lowered its surface temperature projection relative to the model projections for the period 2016-2036.
The growing evidence that climate models are too sensitive to CO has implications for the attribution of late 20th. century warming and
projections of 21 century climate change. Sensitivity of the climate to carbon dioxide, and the level of uncertainty in its value, is a key input into the economic models that drive cost-benefit analyses, including estimates of the social cost of carbon.”
10
Okay, I am not shocked that the uneducated are most likely to fall for this scam or anything, that is really a given. But I have to say, honestly I am shocked that that many people in the UK, where this nonsense has been force fed to them for years as nothing short of Gospel Truth, question the “settled science”
I mean, all that constant propaganda for all those years and they managed to dupe only about 1 in 3 people?
That is a straight pitiful showing, alarmists.
490
You’re forgetting, the UK has had the benefit of over a decade of Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, relentlessly chipping away at the lies.
Just the last few years he’s really starting to get some traction. I like to think I helped – a few years ago I spent 20 minutes over a glass of champaign describing in detail everything I had been taught as a political campaign director, running a campaign to successfully win a marginal seat for a British MP.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFpzaQPKC54
261
A glass of Champaign? Great mushrooms from tiny little spores do grow. 🙂
Not only Nigel, but Lord Monkton .Lord Blaby, Bishop Hill, Tallbloke, the redoubtable Dellers, Mr. Rose of the Daily Mail and a few others I can’t call to mind before 1st coffee have also been educating the public. When you consider the number of the Great and Good who take the Guardian, the figures for the AB’s are even more remarkable.
310
I think a certain James Delingpole can claim quite a bit of the credit as well.
360
Absolutely – Britain has had a lot of luck with prominent people who are passionate about overturning the lies of climate alarmists.
250
In early 2008 I remember thinking the UK was a basket case, and marvelling that there was hardly a skeptic I could name, apart from Christopher Monckton and Richard Courtney in the entire British Isles. I don’t think I knew much about Peiser and Lawson then. Though they were certainly busy — Peiser has had an email list for ages. Bishop Hill (Montford) started way back in late 2006, though not for climate issues til sometime later.
After climategate the UK skeptics seemed to flourish. Oh look… “The Global Warming Policy Foundation was launched by Lord Lawson and Dr Benny Peiser on 23 November 2009 in the House of Lords”. What timing. Delingpole started in the debate then too – nov 2009, and brought in Barry Woods and many others. Tallbloke started in Nov 2009 too.
Thanks to FOIA (and partly to Copenhagen too) the Brits got their act together from then.
400
Christopher Booker was expressing scepticism in the msm (the telegraph) long before 2006 when he published (with Richard North) “Scared to Death” including a chapter on the history of CAGW, noting its Ideological and political roots. Scepticism started to take off then in reaction to the hysteria and sheer irrationality of much environmental journalism. The implications and absurdity of the climate change act 2008 provoked the response “they cannot be serious” – and the answer “they are!”. The economic and social consequences are now being felt by the great unwashed who are now beginning to wake up to what is happening – but oh! the effort it has taken to kick the bastards out of bed!
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30
Paul Homewood has a blog called “Not A Lot of People Know That” and he frequently posts on historic weather events of the UK. A January 17th post was about “Flooding In The Somerset Levels – A Case Study.” Here is a newspaper quote from Paul’s post:
“ People have been flooded lately who never were before. It’s because the rivers haven’t been dredged over the last 20 years. They have silted up.” [Maxine Grice, a resident of Muchelney] This post is already off the roll of ‘recent posts’ and has to be found by going back in the archives.
It looks like Paul started posting on Sept. 14, 2011.
50
I remember when the whole nonsense was at its height in 2008 I suggested a off-peak storage water heater was still a good idea, I was set on by the tame warmist attack dogs that seem to haunt the F*****x Press forums at the time…I was utterly savaged. I couldnt believe the animal-like ferocity of it. Opened my eyes to the moral-free vacuum of the left.
I think the sceptics were finally sick of being told what to think, and sick of being yelled at and sick of hearing the complete lies – by the brain-dead Left, and came out swinging.
Once a few stuck a spear int he gorund and said “no further” and started really digging in and lobbing scietific truth at them, they sort of faultered and started to lose thier nerve a fair bit.
Bullies down take too well to be snotted in the nose, but it was done reletlessly. It had to be.
I think when you know full well what others are peddalling is a massive lie, honour and integrity to truth and future generations demands it be exposed for the massive lie it is, given what was at stake.
100
I became a skeptic in the late 90s. It wasn’t the science, it was the proposed solutions which rang my BS alarm bell.
If CO2 was really a serious issue, the appropriate response would be a commitment to more nuclear power. Suggesting that we should defeat climate change by recycling aluminium cans, walking more, and accepting a more regulated economy, without even considering the nuclear option, was a red flag which convinced me to dig a little deeper.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/22/prescient-fallen-angels-a1991-satire-of-climate-alarmism/
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Eric, I came to accept the evidence in favour of AGW some time after 2000. Can’t be more specific than that as it was not a sudden road to Damascus converion. Ironically it was looking into scientific evidence for and against AGW as a result of Andrew Bolt’s blog that firmed my acceptance. (I was on Mr Bolt’s blog from the early days when he answered each post personally.)
I also believe that nuclear power must be considered seriously, but questions like that, as well as economic analysis of whether the costs of mitigation outweigh the costs of AGW or other considerations about the desirability of regulation etc are independent of whether or not the science of climate change has it right.
01
Philip, the science of climate should indeed be separate from the politics and what action needs to be taken. If it were possible to separate the two, I doubt there would be the blogs and the media coverage and so on. The politics have been there from the beginning, however, and I don’t see much hope for separating the science from the politics, as should be obvious from reading blogs. It’s like trying to separate the speaker from the facts/theory presented. People catagorically reject studies done by certain individuals. It’s bad for science and bad for people all the way around. There are some blogs that do a pretty good job of keeping the science separate, but most address the science/political views. To be honest, the latter type are bit more lively, as you have previously noted.
00
Yea, but that pesky Null hypothesis just did not seem to make your trip to Damascus.
10
The headline at the top and intepreation of the poll is incorrect.
This survey is not about the public’s acceptance or otherwise of AGW. It is specifically about how the recent storms relate to AGW.
My response to the survey questions would be:
1. Don’t know. (Not a hard pick as I am not a resident of the UK, but I am wary of any subjective anecdotal opinion among people (including myself) comparing the present to the past.
2. Don’t know. An extreme year or two cannot be used to confirm or refute climate change. It is the multidecadal trends that are significant.
3. Don’t know. As above.
I do however note that those who regularly condemn the relevance of a consensus view among scientists are eager to embrace an opinion poll among the general public.
114
Is this a response to Eric? Or are you just hijacking his comment to get your comment closer to the top?
Why don’t you get your own blog Brian, then you can have whatever headline you like.
Jo makes it clear in the first paragraph of the article. “Overall about 60% of UK citizens are not convinced that humans are changing the weather.”
…and why do you think anyone here cares what your responses would be? Do you see anyone else here answering the questions?
As a concerned advocate of science, I am sure you jump on the SMH and ABC sites condemning them every time they link a hot day to climate change, right? You do, don’t you?
100
Hello Philip, long time no chat. Hope you’re doing well.
You say..
Let me clarify for you.
What we (sceptics) are on about, is to stop our politicians pi$$ing our hard earned down the toilet trying to do something about a problem that probably doesn’t exist, with supposed solutions that won’t fix the pseudo problem anyway.
Politicians, being what they are, will bend like a willow in the direction of the majority of their electorate.
Therefore; if a majority (call it a consensus) say don’t believe in climate change crap, then there is a good chance these politicians will stop pi$$ing our money down the climate change well, they then can pi$$ that money down a different well that they think will get them votes.
So you see, the consensus we are looking for in these types of polls has nothing to do with consensus in science, which we know is no science at all, don’t we?
Hope I was crystal clear.
100
Heywood and Eric.
You have not really come to grips with my main point. That there is a very big distinction between the answers one may give to a poll asking about what recent weather events in a given geographic location indicate about global warming and the question of whether AGW is real.
My own aswers point to that distinction. My answers to the poll questions notwithstanding I would answer yes to the latter question if put.
And given Heywood seems to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of my writings, I am surprised that he has missed the many times that I have affirmed (usually on Mr Bolt’s site)that it is incorrect to attribute occasional extreme hot days to global warming. Again, its the (statistically significant) trend that counts.
The reason I don’t start my own blog, nor do I contribute to SBS or ABC blogs, is that I so much enjoy the friendly battle of ideas that one finds on “skeptic” blogs.
I am not afraid of having my ideas challenged and have no interest in a blog where everyone congratulates each other on their insights while condemning groupthink.
05
Sorry, that last comment should have been to Heywood and Baa Humbug.
I should add in reply to Baa Humbug that consensus in science is not science in the narrow sense, but to pretend that the weight of opinion held by those who most understand the question which is based on their understanding of the weight of scientific evidence does not exactly count for nothing.
Practically, the current consensus of opinion is the starting point for further research, is what is found in up to date text books, what is taught in science classes, forms the basis of “evidence based medicine” and of technological innovation, among other things.
The consensus is not holy writ but changes with new evidence as science progresses.
My own Ph D examiners congratulated me for overturning the consensus of opinion appearing in the literature.
Contrary to what people seem to think here, that is how you make a name for yourself in science – showing (by convincing evidence, not simply because you don’t like the current consensus) that what the majority think is wrong.
18
Sure, I’d agree with that. But I would also add that climate science is only at the hypothesis level at best. Even if there was a 100% consensus at this level, it should not lead to policy changes.
As recently as yesterday, I watched the likes of Profs Myles Allen, Brian Hoskins and Peter Stott tell a British Parliamentary hearing that they believe AGW due to CO2 is real, because their computer models don’t work without CO2 forcing.
IT IS A FACT that would be acknowledged by all -if the proponents of AGW were honest- that there is no credible evidence that CO2 has caused any warming at all in the 20th century.
If you’ve come across such a fact, please share.
In the meantime, policy makers have made profound decisions based on this consensus hypothesis, instead of leaving it to the scientists “who most understand the question” to keep toiling away in relative obscurity.
That is why sceptics such as me enjoy seeing polls that show people are cooling to the AGW scare campaign. It means there is a chance that our policy makers will reduce/stop wasting our hard earned on a mere hypothesis.
Sure, I’d also agree with that IN GENERAL but I ROFLMFAO when it comes to climate science.
A lonely researcher toiling away in his garage lab doesn’t apply here Phil. It takes vast sums of money to research the climate. Deniers have no access to such grants.
Currently, we just wait and point to nature which will inevitably prove the alarmists wrong. But that takes time, and all the while governments the world over are flushing our taxes down the toilet and holding back the development of the poorest of nations.
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BH
When the climatologists say that their computer models don’t work without CO2 forcing, what they mean is that looking at the past temperature data cannot be accounted for in terms of their understanding of climate forcings without including the contribution they understand to be from CO2.
Figure 7 of this article shows how an understanding of four forcings combine to give a very good fit between model (theory)and observation.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5960/1646
Leave out any one of the forcings and the fit between model (theory) and observation becomes worse.
Model is another term for theory. As in the Bhor model of the atom.
These days it is taken to mean computer models which can incorporate many more variables than could be managed in the past. Theories for complex systems such as climate, molecular interactions, the motions of galaxies in the observable universe which could not have been achieved in the past can now be formulated and checked against observations. Watson and Crick built an actual 3 dimensional model of DNA out of metal. These days they would use a computer.
Challenging a consensus does not require working in a garage. Journals and the scientific community are not hostile to minority opinion if it is backed by solid science.
When I mention consensus, people often say “Ah but what about Warren and Marshall who overturned the consensus of opinion that ulcers are caused by stress and an excess of stomach acid.”
Precisely. The old consensus was based on what was understood about ulcers at the time, including the fact that some ulcers were successfully treated by antacids.
Warren and Marshall showed that contrary to what had previously been thought certain bacteria could live happy in the battery acid environment of the stomach, and that treating these with antibiotics cured the ulcers. New undertanding a new consensus.
Contrary to myth, they were not met with hostility and derision by the medical establishment. The were met with interst and skepticism, as is shown by the exponentially rising citation rate of their paper in the literature as soon as it was published.
02
Translation – I am a troll (albeit a polite and seemingly intelligent one) who loves to $hit stir on blogs that oppose my point of view.
41
Rastuz, You are clearly one who is uncomfortable with having your ideas challenged. Disagreeing with the majority on a blog does not make one a troll (See remark on groupthink above.)
16
How big a bow was drawn? I’m surprised that all UK’s bridges are not in private ownership!
60
Not really shocking. Perhaps the commenters here are a bit biased but by definition sixteen percent of the population has an IQ<85. The investigators wrote 'ComRes interviewed 2,047 GB adults online between 3rd and 5th January 2014. Data were weighted to be representative of all GB adults aged 18+'. Let's hope they did it correctly.
50
85% of people think their IQ is above the median
10
Glass Half Full: 15% have an honest assessment of their abilities.
00
It rather surprises me. Why? Aren’t they bearing the brunt of the policies that result in power impoverishment? Are they the 30% of Glasgow who apparently may not be able to pay their power bills in the next year?
The same poll results ask whether the personal financial situation is better/not changed/worse. The poll shows that all groups report highest with no change to worse, with the lowest demographic (DE) showing the highest proportion of ‘worse’ at 49%.
What gives?
10
Can’t say elsewhere, but that’s very common in the USA. The people in dire straits may be there because of politics, they may not like Congress, but they are really, really bad at understanding the connections between things. If someone says it’s the President’s fault and they like the president, they refuse to listen. It must be the other party. If their elected official made their life miserable, they will automatically blame it on someone else and keep re-electing the cause of their problems. This makes the selling of AGW much easier to those individuals. They don’t see cause and effect and they are used to listening to “authorities”. It is very surprising how many contradictory, mutually exclusive ideas humans can hold in their head. I would never have thought that “double-think” could be so pervasive. It has worked in favor of the AGW, though at the moment telling people in subzero temperatures that warming caused this does not seem to work, so there may be hope. Humans are not really very logical or scientific. They emote.
90
It’s interesting. Cognitive dissonance rules. Press the buttons….
The subgrouping of armchair intellectuals and academics who subscribe to the belief of CAGW/AGW that spread out through the B, C1, C2, D spanning technical and research positions are, in my unpleasant experience, so often those that swallow the save the planet meme.
Mention that ‘this household doesn’t believe…’ and the palpable silence is broken by their pen scratching the erasure of your details from their address book. They suspend their excellent critical faculties when it comes to this nebulous, uncertain, politicized topic, happy to auto-trust the IPCC 95% consensus. There is no reflex sense of disquiet. There is only the silence of their internal referenting system that lies belly up in the cotton wool narcosis administered by the Ministry of We Know Best for Your Own Good.
30
Well, I am very skeptical about this survey.
I am suspicious that the “Upper Class Establishment”, has been omitted entirely. Their views, especially in regard to investments, and their over-representation in corporate governance, give them significant influence over the way that the “Upper Middle Class” think and act.
I am also skeptical about combining Grades A & B, and grades D & E, since although they may be similar in some metrics, they will almost certainly be different in others. Combining grades like this makes it invalid (in my view) to draw any conclusions that involves juxtaposing multiple survey answers.
40
Its the upper class running the whole scam…..
41
It would have been interesting to break the results down according to which newspaper people read – something which in the UK is strongly linked to education and class.
150
I’m not sure that that would be very helpful in this instance. I don’t disagree that people who read the Daily Telegraph rarely overlap with people who read the Mirror, for instance, but I don’t know of a national newspaper in the UK which is consistently sceptical (Daily Express, perhaps?). While Christopher Booker writes for the Telegraph every weekend and James Delingpole blogs for the Telegraph, on-line, by definition, neither is writing all the time about environmental matters.
On the other hand, the journalists who hammer out articles in the main paper about climate stories are invariably alarmist. Louise Gray long ago acquired the reputation for never doing anything but base her “reports” on climate scientists’ press releases. When she actually seemed to do some genuine journalism, a while back, and even included some balance, I nearly fell off my chair. Oddly enough, she ceased to be environmental correspondent for the paper not long afterwards, but I have no idea what the circumstances were. (She’s on twitter as loubgray and she can’t spell “rhododendrons”.) Geoffrey Lean continues to blog and to write for the pulped pine form of the newspaper, which tends to suggest the editorial line at the Telegraph still veers warmist. Having said that, I think the Telegraph lost its editor, as well, just a few days ago.
00
What is surprising is that 1/3 of the educated classes still believe what they are told. It is a common experience, hard working professionals who only have the time to scan headlines and just accept what the newspapers tell them. The overwhelming view is that there is no reason to tell lies. Last year, there were $300Bn+ of them. As an industry AGW has passed Big Tobacco in its heyday when some doctors recommended smoking.
150
TdeF
A large number of the ‘educated classes’ work in government or NGOs. For many of them, there are employment consequences for not supporting CAGW theory.
260
A not too insignificant percentage of scientists believe in the global warming crap despite the fact they are educated. Education means nothing when it comes to proper thinking, common sense and logic.
200
It would seem self-evident that older citizens are more likely to think that contemporary weather is little different to that in earlier decades of recent centuries. The ‘getting of wisdom” through life experiences does instil in people a tendency to be more skeptical of new fads or mantras.
Snake oil leaves behind a long lingering distaste in memories.
If this poll was conducted after the story broke globally of the Spirit of Mawson “Ship of Fools” fiasco, it indicates that this own-goal by the CAGW creed will embarrass it for a long time.
200
I think those in the plus 40 age bracket are the greatest threat to the scam. With memory, and even some recorded history, they have experienced weather cycles. They have experienced variability and extremes and so some of the claims just don’t wash.
Urban versus rural or more particularly primary industry versus secondary/tertiary industry is another determinant. Having lived the majority of my life in a rural setting, and having been raised on a farm and now working in a primary industry, I am more aware of weather cycles than my city dwelling siblings. Urban drift seems to have erased their memory – and possibly their skepticism.
I would like to see how the respondents relate to primary industry.
80
I hope that everyone realises what classing the generations in 20 year periods is all about.
00
I can’t guess. Please help me understand.
00
Its about incremental change in history. Few people will trust their memory and correct the next generation and they are easily dealt with.
00
The latest generation btw. will soon not have lived through any global warming and already have no personal memory of any. Yet they are still expected to lap it up, because the adults say it is so.
00
Just goes to show that propaganda doesn’t work, unless of course it is at the point of a gun.
173
Then its not propganda – its gun boat dioplomacy at that point.
10
So, the smarter you are, the less likely you are to believe in CAGW.
I suppose that is obvious and self-evident, but I must admit I had never thought about it before.
The same applies for those who believe in big government, or rely on government; they are more likely to believe in CAGW.
I am sure the message will be lost on ‘greener than thou’ UK prime minister David Cameron, unless he had an epiphany with his recent (rumour value only) comment about “needing to get rid of this green crap”.
The British Labour Party, when it was last in power, had a deliberate policy of dumbing down education to get better exam results; part of the spin off from that was a widespread belief amongst the young and impressionable in CAGW.
I suppose the next thing is the greenies and alarmists will accuse sceptics of being elitist! In other words, sceptics will be deemed to be guilty because of their ability to think clearly and not be duped by bad science.
241
No. The survey showed that the richer you are the less likely you are to believe that certain recent events were caused by humans.
Its not the same.
525
There are a lot of dumb rich people then?
100
John, you must be totally destitute.
200
A fool and his money …
20
Which means, John, that there is no correlation between education and income.
170
It doesn’t show that either. The “social classifications” are occupation based, not income or population quartiles. The response numbers of the groups were not weighted to actual population numbers, as far as anyone can tell. As an on-line poll the respondents would be self selected unless, as is likely, the pollsters used a dedicated panel (otherwise they would have had to ask occupations and then determine the classifications – a long job. The number of questions posed means that they are multiple choice and designed for instant response (agree – disagree – don’t know). Multiple choice is a crude instrument to determine opinion but within the intellectual capacity of a computer algorithm. Like an “average” it loses all information on distribution.
70
The ability to afford quality education encourages independent thought comes at a price, but a higher price is poor education that encourages worship of consensus propaganda.
180
Very good post.
60
I think its also worth looking at wealthy dumb people – by this I mean wealthy popular movie stars etc who happily endorse something they truly dont understand. In that case there appears to zero correlation between wealth and intelligence.
That said, I have met conreting and building tradesmen who have ( by comparison ) “low” education, but could ( from experince ) reason a PhD student into the ground had they been given the correct info.
I think there are a lot of “champagne charlies” out there who could also be called “foggy” – thick and wet. I think in Australia you’d call them champagne socialists or trendy inner city latte sippers.
50
steve:
I’ve spent a lot of time in factories but I have only ever met 2 people whom I can say that if you asked them they would not know what day of the week it was.
One turned up in Port Adelaide after 10 years of state schooling unable to write his name**. He was put on the filling line using kraft paper sacks with serrated top edges. Despite being told to wear the supplied gloves he kept taking them off and slashing his hand. Each occasion required stitches, and the third time 3-4 stitches. He was then left to sweep the floor.
The other one was doing a PhD in Nuclear Physics.
Extreme cases of lack of common sense, which has little correlation with intelligence.
**Neither could his mate, but he was quite quick witted as the Accountant found out. In those old days we paid in cash, and he was told what his pay was (written on the packet for most) and the notes and coins spread in front of him. Within a second he challenged it as 2 cents short. I have always wondered what his teachers were doing. Both by the way were born in Australia.
30
Education, Intelligence, Knowledge, Common Sense, Street Wise and having “half a brain” are not synonyms.
Occasionally there may be correlations, but not causations when applied to socio-economic classes. In marketing, creating perceptions is the key strategy to exploit the vulnerable in order to convince them to “buy” either the product or story. It doesn’t mean the message is supported by anything factual. The axiom applied in contemporary journalism (MSM anyone?) is never let the incovenience of facts get in the way of a “good” story. Don’t confuse honesty and objectivity.
Morphing AGW propaganda into “climate change” was a deliberate move to obfuscate and confuse those in societies with “less than average” education, intelligence, etc, in order to “maintain the rage”; in effect to deny the reality of empirical observations destroying any credibility in computer models, breaking the alleged nexus of CO2 and temperature.
The only matter of importance (to alarmists and their fellow travellers) is to maintain the gravy train as long as possible. Being sceptical is simply a healthy applicaton of truth seeking. Labelling anyone sceptical of alarmist propaganda as “deniers” is a bad case of black kettles calling stainless pots “black” in the face of the shining reality.
110
If the crap fits ….. , as they say.
00
if there’s one thing i fault CAGW sceptics for, it is their/our inability to make the MSM call CAGW CAGW, and not “climate change”. or, for that matter, to call carbon dioxide carbon dioxide, and not carbon. surely there are scientific bodies, scientists or media regulation/oversight bodies, who should have been able to insist on accurate terminology!
anyway, what if MSM reported all the CAGW scandals? how would that affect such polls?
23 Jan: Deutsche Welle: dpa/Reuters: Prokon insolvency triggers debate about tougher regulation
An insolvency filing by a German wind energy financing company has prompted the government to think about barring private investors from certain high-risk instruments. Prokon attracted 75,000 mainly private investors…
All money lost?
Prokon filed for insolvency on Wednesday following the massive withdrawal of capital by worried investors…
Prokon operates 50 wind parks in Germany and Poland and was set up in the 1990s. Its advertising campaign focused on retail investors.
It said more than 75,000 investors had put a total of nearly 1.4 billion euros ($1.9 billion) into Prokon.
http://www.dw.de/prokon-insolvency-triggers-debate-about-tougher-regulation/a-17383373
23 Jan: The Local, Germany: Green energy giant runs out of cash
German wind energy giant Prokon filed for insolvency on Wednesday, leaving tens of thousands of investors worried about their money. The company advertised itself as a safe bet offering eight percent returns…
Prokon, which builds and manages wind parks, has been a leading player in Germany’s ambitious plan to switch to renewable energy…
http://www.thelocal.de/20140123/german-green-energy-giant-prokon-insolvent
don’t bother looking for this story at ABC, Fairfax or even Murdoch media. for the record, it is in WSJ (providing warning for the big boys), and an AFP report on it is in the West Australian.
the Deutsche Welle article is from dpa and REUTERS, so the information is available to all MSM. Bloomberg carried a headline “Prokon Pleads With Investors as Insolvency Looms for Developer” on 14 Jan, but hasn’t bothered so far to report the company’s collapse!
so, once again, what we have to contend with is a dishonest MSM.
210
Thank you Jo, for a very helpful article. The idiot box convinced the viewers that the US was losing the Vietnam War, starting with the TET Offensive in 1968, despite the fact that the Viet Cong were completely beaten in their big push. The TV commentators reported the opposite to the actual facts. The same is happening on Free TV, which is why the taxpayer funded propaganda outlets of the ABC and SBS must be defunded, now. We can not allow this treacherous dishonesty to continue.
242
But the idiot box convinced people of the need for conscription in the 60s for Vietnam. In Australia it was the first time conscripts were used outside Australian controlled territory. PNG was our territory in WW2.
Also only a very few selected 19 year olds were chose. As well, Robert McNamara, USA secretary of state admitted and wrote later that the war was a bad decision based on a lie that S Vietnam required help. Australian cabinet papers show this to be true also.
Thus the doubters and protesters against the war were correct. 550 Australian young men died. Far far more than Afghanistan.
72
The idiot box convinced enough people to vote for Rudd and Gillard to become PMs.
220
The idiot box is well named.
110
The advantage of TV and radio as electronic media is that the target of the propaganda don’t even have to be able to read in order to be gulled.
And the propagandists don’t have to deal with the traditionally odiferous consequences of confronting a sentient audience.
30
Let’s not get too hung up on social class or demographics as I’ve found AGW believers to come from many different backgrounds, I do agree that at a certain level of lower educated people you will get more of a groupthink mentality occurring as a lot of them have never had the opportunity to manage or lead others and mostly don’t want to, perhaps it’s more of a comfortable compromise their willing to make.
On the other hand how do you explain someone’s political choice of left or right leanings in all classes?, like people it’s just not that simple and while this is an interesting survey it’s just that, a survey.
FWIW I come under the C2 class and have been a skeptic of AGW from the “Greenhouse Effect” idea in the 1980’s, go figure.
100
I heartily agree. Education isn’t everything.
Every class contains wise people and nitwits, loners and group-thinkers, leaders and led. A person might not have had an academic education but they can still have an excellent bullshit detector and a lot of commonsense.
140
My avatar is bizarre but I like it.
40
Glad you like it JLC.
There seems to be a bit of angst there, which might not quite suit you.
Does anyone know how to chose an alternative?
00
The angst is the reason why I like it. I’m basically an even-tempered contented person so that agonised expression amuses me.
00
mine just appeared like this at random
00
These Avatars are like your relations . You may like them but you don’t get to choose them although you can always create your own.
00
LOL!
00
I will indulge in some internal dialogue and add to Ian H’s insight above, people have to understand the intensity and effectiveness of electronic media today compared to anything experienced in the past, true we’ve had some form of written mass produced information for centuries and combined with social scuttlebutt it’s effective enough to even help change the course of history.
Advancing from television we have a genuine global network of communication that is increasingly accessible to the population that’s virtually there in an instant, considering the social classes outlined have we thought what effect this technology could have on each one?
When people suddenly had the ability to not only read/watch the news but became part of it immediately we got a whole new can o worms opened up in the integrity of the information, who cares about what a celebrity tweeted about something that didn’t involve them?, this type of interference only degrades real stories to the entertainment section, including serious issues that effect peoples lives, or perhaps it’s just another good dumbing down mechanism.
70
The unskilled is not the good word I think but oke we know they mean people whit lower education. That’s a nice find because there is some to say for it. The hole climate thing is difficult even for the best off scientist. And then there is the point that well it is put to getter good.
The story’s are clear and if you don’t now were to look for you cane easily believe them.
Humans put CO2 in the atmosphere so the earth is warming. For someone whit a lower education it is more then reasonable to think its wright
It is getting warmer so the poles will meld is easy to understand. Is is true? Maybe but it is understandable.
Saying that a warmer climate means more cold and ice is harder to poke true if you have a lower education level special if it is brought in the right way.
So ye the scare tactics work best for those who are not up to par whit the necessary levels of education. And there are a lot of them in the world.
10
So ye the scare tactics work best for those who are not up to par whit the necessary levels of education.
70
The best cons are those with a kernel of truth, or are plausible.
The Apoplectic Global Warming started out as plausible, and with some Michael Mannimatics gained a kernel of truth. But it’s always been a con.
50
There’s another layer to this too. The most educated are also the group that would normally act as the vanguard on action. The warmists need them to start the ball rolling, by making electric cars popular or littering their roofs with solar panels (yes, WE know that wouldn’t make a difference). The whole propaganda exercise in the UK has been aimed at the lowest common denominator. They’ve dumbed the science down to a level that only appeals to dummies. The rest have begun to see the holes in the arguments. Since it’s now time to pay for all the grandiose promises made on cutting CO2 the public are beginning to ask ‘what is it exactly that I’ve agreed to?’ The authorities are remarkably cagey about the small print so the public have started to look online for answers… and here we are 🙂
171
The Class Sketch with John Cleese & the Two Ronnies
00
Could it be that some people have to think for themselves and some rely on the thoughts of others? There are many at all levels of society who work for themselves and are reliant on their own knowledge and skill for their livelihood. These folk look for facts upon which to base decisions because wrong decisions lead to failure. Others are content to rely on the decisions of others preferring others to take the financial risks while they receive a known wage. This latter group would naturally include pensioners and government employees who will be paid regardless of input. Simply put; leaders will tend toward skepticism and followers toward faith in authority.
70
@ Lawrie
January 27, 2014 at 8:38 pm
You are quite correct in your thoughts on the decision makers, Lawrie.
This aspect of decision making in our society has been well studied.
Right throughout society are a group of people who come from every walk of life, are of every profession, of every community status from the highest to the lowest and who are richer or poorer but who are the real decision makers in our society.
Few of them are well known publicly but most are quite well known in the circles they live and work in.
The mark of the decision maker is the way his/ her opinion /s on various subjects, perhaps an opinion expressed in the pub or at a party or a gathering are repeated by others.
As in “Joe reckons this or that down at the pub the other night and he reckons it might ————-etc.
Interestingly you will see quite a number of decision makers posting on a common man’s blog such as Jo runs here but not so much on Judith Curry’s as Climate Etc is dominated by the academic brigade who pay scant attention to somebody they regard as being from an inferior class and who frankly indulge themselves in a lot of academic backbiting and bitching.
Still there is often a huge amount of information on Judith’s blog, a lot of it peripheral if you can get your mind around it.
Definitely no reflection on Judith Curry and her Climate etc as I always find it good stuff to think about and chew on mentally but there is a strong element of academic elitism at Climate etc partly created by the academic trending articles she posts on.
It is not a good idea to pick anybody out in a blog like Jo’s [ leaving Jo out of it as she is somewhat in a very exclusive class of a very few in number who have gained an inordinate influence in climate matters and governmental policy questioning roles ] but if you really want to see the common man decision maker in action then Tony from Oz [ sorry Tony! Not sure if you appreciate the “common man” catergorisation but it is meant as a compliment ] with his wide ranging knowledge of energy generation and his ability to put that knowledge together in easily understood language and thereby have a huge influence on people’s attitudes re renewable energy and power generation, an attitude which is repeated and handed down across the community by those that read his posts.
A classic case of the “common man” decision makers.
Tony is a relatively high profile example but other common man decision makers are nowhere near as prominent as Tony, they may even be quite innocuous individuals that few would credit with having any influence at all but they generally have the unrealised and inbuilt gift of thinking through a complex subject and distilling it down to it’s essence and putting their opinions into the common man’s language which is then picked up by others usually from casual conversations or writings such as on this blog and that meme they have expressed / opinionated on spreads through the local and perhaps wider community.
And that is why they are the “decision makers” of our society.
To be able to do that despite all the muck and propaganda around some subjects is quite a gift in itself.
If those decision makers collectively start to come to a position on a subject, then that is the most likely path the community or what ever section of it is affected, will go down.
It is those decision makers, particularly the older ones who have seen it all before throughout society who thinking through and watching what is happening to climate science and are now starting to express their doubts and outright opposition to the depths that science, particularly climate science has sunk to in terms of corruption and false and misleading propaganda.
On the educated high income class being more skeptical, yes I can believe that.
A lot, perhaps most of that class of citizens have made their own way through life and have both equipped themselves with a wider education and a wide depth of knowledge and through mental and analytical skills, overcome many obstacles to make a place for themselves in both status and wealth in society.
So when they come across the climate warming science claims, they are quite likely not to swallow those claims wholesale without, based on their life’s previous lessons for them and being older and more sceptical of so much that is passed as truth but is anything but, to giving them a good hard going over from both the more cynical side which has served them well in past business situations and from a much wider knowledge and experience base gained through their life experiences.
For myself having seen science and scientists close up but from laymans’ perspective, the academics and scientists are no better and no worse than any other section of society .
They are no smarter, just more practiced at trying to appear smarter than any other section of society backed by a high percentage of them having a high degree of arrogance because they are “scientists” and expect to be treated with deference and shoe licking by their “inferiors” in the public.
An unfortunate trait of many so called scientists today that has really only appeared enmasse over the last three decades.
As a poorly educated layman who left school at 15 I rarely ever had a problem in taking them on particularly if I had a reasonable level of knowledge myself on the subject under discussion.
And yes i am still invited to their internal forums and seminars for as one of them told my son; He sure makes us think.
30
This is old news, previous surveys have also found this correlation. I believe it works like this, starting with the people most educated in mathematics, one by one (especially where HRH government wants to stick its greedy hand in your back pocket) those with sufficient competence in math decide to check for themselves. A little bit of research unearths WUWT or Jo or any number of other blogs, where the simple refuting math ( such as I frequently post ) quickly proves that IPCC science is doubtful. Once this happens there is a one way conversion to scepticism, the reverse transformation rarely happens because there is no empirical evidence to be found that refutes sceptics mostly empirically based science.
Models that are clearly not representive of empirical evidence is not going to be able to convince a sceptic once they do the math, only a refutation of that math will do .
Consequently one by one people with the mathematical skill to do so, gradually convert to scepticism, it’s one way, so belief will probably never be greater than today, save some killer empirical evidence the models are right… You can see from this that deprogramming occurs from the most mathematically competent down. When you understand that only about say 60% of educated people are mathematically competent ( how mathematically competent are lawyers, psychologists, literary professors and HR people ) you begin to understand why 30% still are sipping the koolaid.
At least that’s how it happened for me, a key thought experiment, “how much hotter would it be if the atmosphere was 100% CO2”, showed me that IPCC science was implausible.
Also, at the other end of society, it’s not a science question, for Lewandowski is not about science, it’s about morals, look at his stuff, it’s all about how non conforming and immoral/disfunctional we sceptics are. The fact that we are right is irrelevant to him. This is why I am adamant that we need to also tackle the immorality of CAGW action and that why my warmist morality questions are so important. At the little end of town CAGW is a moral question, a political football.
110
I don’t know about mathematical ability, but if you’ve ever created anything with computer program’s you’ll begin to realise how wrong they can be, and how it can only take 1 bit in the wrong place to create errors large enough to matter but subtle enough to go unnoticed.
If you don’t validate & cross check your program’s output against various real world situations you cannt rely on it.
It is only through Jo’s work & from David’s experience that I think a lot of us came to realise that these projections are all based on computer models.
Non programmers OTOH tend to be easier to brow beat into accepting the output of computers.
IMHO.
10
This survey is heartening because it is evidence that people who are sceptical about the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis are not in some tiny fringe of lunatics.
And yet, people who are sceptical about AGW must now be careful not to fall into the very trap that so many alarmists have fallen into in the past. The trap is that we might all now start arguing the scientific case on the basis of consensus – the consensus of our well educated and well read class. This would be a danger. We would come to see ourselves as the rise of the new Mandarin class – just in the same way as those who are warmists often seem to reveal themselves as having a Mandarin mentality.
In the end we have to remind ourselves that it doesn’t matter what well educated and well read people think, or what uneducated and un-read people think.
It is not about consensus or class warfare. It is still about the scientific process. I hope that we do not get to the point of arguing that our scientific view is right because most educated people think it is right.
We have to keep our arguments based on the rational interplay of hypothesis and scepticism.
110
I was aware of the growing skepticism in the US, but did not realize it was also affecting the UK. It appears that many have heard of the little boy-Mann who cried wolf one too many times.
100
There is one thing interesting about this survey. A missing thing. What is the opinion of the upper class? They weren’t asked.
119
They are much reduced (death duties in the ’60s & ’70s involving loss of houses/assets through the Government to the National Trust plus natural wastage in an increasingly meritocratic society) The true top of the UK pile are the “monied” ones who (pace Russian or ME billionaires) have wonderful jobs in the City, &c. (or even “Quangoes”!)
The (small) remaining rump try desperately to blend in, categorising themselves as “middle class” (N.B. not even “upper”).
80
Oh, and don’t mention the Royals. The (remaining) true Upper Class consider them very, very middle class.
30
It’s generally thought by pollsters that there aren’t enough of the upper class to constitute a sector. In this particular case, they are too busy hawking their land for solar farms and wind farms to answer. Anyway, would you use one of your investments to do a survey on yourself? Britain’s upper class are doing what they have done for centuries, which is to trim sails according to the prevailing political wind and survive.
140
I commented on this at 2.5.
Genes still have a huge influence in the UK, regarding on who gets to talk to whom.
The old-boy (and old-girl) networks are still alive and kicking, even if somewhat impoverished. Things get done by owing and repaying favours.
50
Why weren’t they asked? What an outrage.
I used to think I was upper class!
00
The question blaming flooding on human activity may have caused some confusion as I, for one, would interpret that to include things like building more houses on flood plains.
190
I agree – not cleaning out the storm drains and not dredging are also down to ‘human activity’ and they arguably have contributed more to recent flooding in the UK than the weather!
150
How true. When looking for somewhere to live in e Kent 10 years ago, the geological map showing flood plains was a primary guide. At that time, it was never going to rain again and the building of the Channel Tunnel had depleted the aquifers to almost nothing. Now, as a parish councillor my main concern is making sure the local authority repairs the damage done to roads by seasonal streams in good time- and boy are the costs of repair rocketing due entirely to water damage! Gaia giveth and Gaia taketh away.
70
Please remember, when it comes to the climate debate, you should never ever come up with any rational explanation, for anything, that is not related to climate change. Geddit?
00
Observation:
In the UK C1 is normally taken as skilled working class (Thatcher’s people).
C2 INTA unskilled working class.
This improves the D/E resolution at the expense of A/B resolution.
Of course, this is all very subjective. See here.
10
Unfortunately, it is not possible to separate AGW from its politics. The lower economic class believes they will gain a great deal from redistribution of wealth or at least the “evil” rich will lose their money. What if the solution to climate change was to allow rich people to keep more of their money and work on projects that allow humans to adapt? What if the solution was to give massive tax credits to the rich so they could fund research and come up with ways to protect against cold and heat and floods and hail? No redistribution of wealth whatsoever. Then would the lowest economic group believe AGW was true?
30
In fact, it’s the middle class which benefits. They, (we?) have the capital to take advantage of the patent bribes offered by government to install “renewable” energy on a preferential basis. The poor pick up the tab. If you’re interested, google, “debt socialisation” and see how the whole corrupt mess works. I hasten to add that I’ve refused all blandishments from the brigands who offer such deals.
50
“What was also really interesting but unreported about this study is that the wealthiest and most educated are more skeptical…”
unless they’re in that wealthy educated group that’s making a shed-load of money out of believing in CAGW…
50
One thing bothers me. What does it mean when someone says they “don’t know”? What is a don’t know vote? Don’t know what I think or I don’t think I want to say or I don’t think or what?
Do the “don’t knows” think the “knows” really know anything? None of them “know” anything in this case otherwise there would be no contention, no argument about what is true, because they would know what was true.
Perhaps “don’t knowers” are a reactionary movement (in secret) who want to show all the “know alls” that they have power in their hands to withold their opinions. With NSA trying to dig out whatever they can, perhaps this represents a rising tide of “won’t say”. It could be the beginning of a new trend!
Could the Eurovison method of counting opinions about songs be better applied to opinion polls about AGW? If you live near a wind turbine, or look out to sea from your beautiful once expensive house onto an off-shore windfarm, perhaps staring at a slag heap through your lounge window, or sitting at home without a job because your industry has gone. How about those who are flooded, or who like Camerons baby face, or those who can be found not discussing work, religion or politics in the local pub but complaining about the weather and blaming the loonies in Parliament.
10
Could mean they live under a rock. Or maybe they don’t care about how things work so long as they are not directly affected by them. I know a lot of people who know virtually nothing outside of that which affects them personally. Any ideas that are outside that range get in by accidental exposure to media and are quickly discarded. Then there’s the “I’m not very smart so I can’t answer any of these questions” group and the “I might be wrong, so I’ll just say I don’t know” persons. It would be interesting if it was a movement–pretense of lack of knowledge. More reassuring than actual lack of knowledge, don’t you think?
20
Yes, we can dream.
00
And it could be they are the most honest. The ones that do not bother to learn about things they do not think affect their lives, so they honestly say “I do not know”. No one wants to appear ignorant, so many give opinions on matters they have no clue on (just check out the petitions on DHMO). The honest ones are the ones who say “I do not know”.
10
Only if they don’t know.
00
This question targets the perniciousness of multiple-choice surveys
If the proffered choices do not include a reasonable description of what one actually thinks, then the only choice available is “Don’t Know”
This is a very common political marketing ploy … and the reason I refuse multiple-choice surveys
00
It matters greatly how the questions were phrased.
You could easily get different percentages with different phraseology.
So without the questions, the answers aren’t particularly useful, but rather deceptive.
20
It is the implication of the results that count. From a warmist standpoint, the wealthier, more educated are protecting their privilege more by denying reality. From the skeptical, the more people know (which is how they became part of the professional class/wealthier), the more they can discount what authority figures say,from personal experience and understanding.
The egalitarian/socialist thinking is that all people are equally able to determine right from wrong, truth from falsehood. Those with no dogs in the fight, i.e. no wealth or position to protect, will judge fairly; the ones with dogs will tend to protect their dogs, at least their right to have them fight. Negative, comrade.
CAGW as practiced is driven to wealth redistribution. It would be easy for a capitalist to say that the working class, less educated, are biased towards any program that takes from the professional and managerial classes and gives to them.
Until there is a solid majority on either side, interpretation of these results is difficult. The only group you MIGHT think neutral is the middle … but that won’t work either, because an anti-CAGW interpretation could mean a larger part of the group wants to move up and gain advantage than the part that remembers their downtrodden history.
Personal beliefs are non-scientific and impossible to interpret vis-a-vis anything more than about which way the herd is heading. Which is why politicians rely on them, as the direction the herd is heading is what determines who gets elected.
10
You could almost split the camps into two separate demographics – hypothetically speaking:
1) The Camp that critiques the information provided and critically assesses it (skeptics)
2) The Camp that will only consider a result if it is inline with their ideology (Team catastrafaria)
It would be no surprise that ideologically driven wingnuts don’t do as well in the real world as the skeptics. Anyone who ties so much of what they do within the perspective of their ideology is constantly limiting their potential for little more reason than it’s easier for them to handle the complexities of life this way.
30
So around 70% of working class think the weather is getting worse, maybe because they are more likely to be outside working in the weather. The wetter summers and colder winters since 2007 in the UK have not gone unnoticed.
10
Haven’t they? I was brought up in the north-west of England, where summer is “wet” by definition, pretty much. The current English winter has not, so far, been cold (see Donna Laframboise for confirmation). When a child, I was always intrigued by a painting entitled “Stuck Fast”, which was on the stairs of a hotel we visited in the Lake District. It showed a classic Little Ice Age scene: a stagecoach trapped in an English snowdrift. What struck me, even as a child, was that I’d never seen anything like it. We got snow, occasionally, and there was just about enough time to build a snowman, before it melted. I remember only once getting actually stuck in snow, but, even then, we still weren’t in a yard of the stuff. My general experience from back then is still the way, almost always (although I have actually given up building snowmen).
Back in February, 2009, I was about to fly back to the UK from Mexico and I heard that Heathrow was closed by snow. People were speculating that we wouldn’t be able to fly into London. Surprise, surprise… there was no problem. In Britain, I suspect that that brief flurry of snowflakes was what prompted the invention of “climate weirding”, by “scientists” who had spent the previous decade predicting the end of snow as we know it.
Of course, as Jo pointed out in her article, “worse” is ambiguous. Lazily and mischievously, the poll failed to specify what was meant by “worse”, which rendered the whole exercise quite pointless. For instance, I hated the 2003 heatwave in England. Lots of other people loved it. For me, more heatwaves would equate to “worse” weather, but a wet summer amounts to “business as usual”. Ulric Lyons prefers to think of the wet weather as what is unusual. It may be that he is right, but Jo’s point is substantiated, either way.
10
In 2004 (if this BBC poll is to be believed) “90% of respondents think that the UK climate will be affected by global warming….with a large majority thinking it will bring more extreme weather events.
and
“Just over two-thirds of Britons (64%) think that man-made causes will contribute most to global warming…”
Unfortunately there is no break down into social classes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28_07_04_climatepoll.pdf
00
the new meme continues to build:
27 Jan: Bloomberg: Barry Ritholtz: Global Warming Battle Is Over Market Share, Not Science
Last week, the New York Times reported that venerable Dow Jones Industrial Average component Coca-Cola Co. was awakening to the impact of climate change on its business…
Global warming, according to the article, is being seen “as a force that contributes to lower gross domestic products, higher food and commodity costs, broken supply chains and increased financial risk.”
This debate is no longer about whether global warming is real (it is) or whether humans are the most likely cause (you are), but rather, some very interesting and different questions that might be more professionally relevant to finance: How is this going to affect business? What are the investing consequences? Who will be the financial winners and losers of climate change?…
Investors should be considering this as a fight over market share, not a scientific debate. That is the approach taken by McKenzie Funk in a new book, “Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming.” The impact is across many industries. It’s time to throw out your preconceptions of climate change as a fight between green hippies and Big Oil….
The culturally constructed ignorance known as “agnotology” has been driven primarily by the oil and coal industries. Funk argues that we are about to move beyond that faux debate to a more important battle between even larger interests. Consider:
Insurers stand to make larger payouts because of more severe weather and more frequent natural disasters. However, this will inevitably lead to appreciable higher insurance premiums and potentially rising profits.
The travel and hotel industry is facing specific challenges. Ski resorts that were in prime snow making areas may find themselves no longer ideally located; warm weather destinations boasting access to reefs for snorkeling and scuba diving have troubles as reefs die out…
My perspective on global warming is different than some. As a car and boat enthusiast, the various gasoline-powered vehicles I own crank out a few thousand horsepower and generate a not-insignificant amount of pollution. However, I don’t pretend climate change is a hoax or that it won’t matter in the future. So long as creating pollution is cheap and legal, we won’t see many people changing personal behavior. The most likely fix for this is some form of a carbon tax.
But the bigger issue is the financial consequences. Investors are going to see companies increasingly affected by climate change. For those of you who still are fighting the science — sorry to tell you, the debate has moved on…
Too many people have had their heads in the sand. It is time to start making some decisions based on possible investing outcomes, not pseudo-science. To those who figure this out, a green fortune awaits — in both senses of the word.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-27/global-warming-battle-is-over-market-share-not-science.html
22
Age (& SMH) show how quickly the new meme is adopted:
28 Jan: Age: Bloomberg: Barry Ritholtz: Climate change debate shifting to what it means for business
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-change-debate-shifting-to-what-it-means-for-business-20140128-31jf0.html
00
yes it like the cholesterol lie – the “definition” keeps changing to suit the lie as its exposed, so it morphs into something else to avoid the harsh light of truth…..
40
There has been mention of the performance of Britain’s Environment Agency in previous comments, because several commentators and people affected by flooding have suggested that the EA is largely to blame for much of the current flooding. The Australian experience recently showed how misguided meddling could disastrously exacerbate the effects of floods. I’m not so sure that the EA is deliberately manipulating the situation, to support alarmist theory, although they are plainly happy to fall back on alarmism, to explain their numerous failures.
The thing is that the EA has been mismanaging flooding in Britain since long before anyone came up with these notions of “wild climate” (a beebyanka favourite expression, by the way). The recent accusations revolve around a failure to dredge rivers in Somerset, leading to the flooding of the Somerset Levels. This is drained land, crossed in prehistoric times by wooden walkways over the waters, and the site of the 1685 Battle of Sedgemoor. I suppose that name pretty well sums up the nature of the terrain before its drainage (it was also the marshland where Alfred was able to muster an army out of sight of the Danes). It’s low-lying land, therefore, and, as such, potentially vulnerable to flooding, but the recent floods do seem to be due to human action, or rather inaction – and it’s nothing to do with carbon dioxide.
The recent rainfall has been heavy, but decidedly not without precedent, so the flooding shouldn’t be without precedent, either. The EA hasn’t admitted that the lack of dredging is to blame, but has not denied that dredging itself has been suspended, supposedly for a lack of money.
More than fifteen years ago, southern England suffered very heavy rain. Rivers such as the Thames, the Nene and the Ouse flooded. My sister’s house was one of those inundated. The indications at the time were very strong that the EA was responsible for holding back the water, to prevent, or delay, the flooding of property built on flood plains further downstream. The practice of building new houses on flood plains has not abated since then and, as far as I am aware, the EA has never had anything to say on the issue.
One way or another, the EA is actually playing God, either by damming the water, or by failing to dredge the channels, while supinely accepting successive governments’ housing targets.
20
Surveys like this are important in that they chip away at the notion of a consensus which isn’t restricted to scientists but has been applied to the general population as well.
The question remains however, as to what motivates reasonably intelligent people like the Karolys, Steffens, and the various IPCC scientists not to mention the leading lights at the BOM and the CSIRO.
These are not stupid people but I think their intelligence is subservient to their emotions and egos. They have hitched their reputations to AGW which is now revealed to be an ideology and like religious fanatics will not let go and pervert their intelligence by using it to justify the unjustifiable.
It’s a pity Lewandowsky is such a dud, as a psychologist he could do a paper on the mindset of the well qualified and otherwise intelligent alarmist.
70
something ironic about a Gulf-State media house publishing this rubbish!
26 Jan: Aljazeera America: Prominent scientist suing climate change deniers for libel
Speaking to Al Jazeera America just days after a court ruled that his defamation lawsuit against the libertarian think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and conservative news magazine National Review could proceed, Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, accused his detractors of resorting to old allegations that had been disproved time and time again…
But Mann told Al Jazeera that accusations made by his detractors had already been roundly rejected by the scientific community, stemmed largely from groups with a vested interest with the fossil-fuel industry and were part of a larger, ongoing effort to discredit climate-change research.
“The tactics climate-change deniers employ is based on the idea that if they can discredit one prominent scientist, they can discredit the entire environmental movement. They’re also trying to serve notice to other scientists who think about speaking out,” he said.
Mann’s lawyer John B. Williams added that the invidious nature of some comments from climate-change deniers was “sidetracking the real debate, which is science-based.”…
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/1/26/judge-allows-climatescientisttomoveforwardwithdefamationcase.html
00
top Point Carbon story today. full piece here:
28 Jan: BusinessRecorder: Reuters: EU nations agree to fast-track carbon supply cut
European Union governments will approve a fast-track plan to prop up carbon prices by delaying supply after only one member state objection was raised before a Friday deadline, an EU official said Monday. The objection was not enough to prevent the required majority so the proposal will proceed through the European Council without further discussion, said the official, who asked not to be named, citing offical policy…
The effective endorsement by member states means the pace of the approval for the so-called backloading proposal now lies with the EU Parliament, where objections by some lawmakers threaten to hamper the process…
On Thursday the environment committee, the Parliament’s lead body on the issue, will hold a ballot on the measure and whether to shorten the scrutiny period following objections by some MEPs.
Analysts expect the committee to support the quicker process but that the extra time needed to hold the vote could mean the Commission is less likely to withhold the maximum number of permits this year. A Reuters poll of 11 analysts earlier this month showed prices are expected gradually rise due to backloading, averaging 5.35 euros in 2014 and 6.70 euros in 2015.
http://www.brecorder.com/general-news/172/1147859/
00
Bloomberg didn’t cover the collapse of German wind giant, Prokon, this week (tho i noticed they relegated it to Businessweek), but here we are spruiking for more investment in renewables:
28 Jan: Bloomberg: Sally Bakewell: Renewable Spending to Turn Corner as Bonds Hit Record, BNEF Says
Renewable energy investment is set for a turnaround this year with sales of green bonds rising to a record, according to the head of Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Onshore wind’s resurgence and spending on solar power may also drive investment to about $300 billion, after a two-year slide, said Chief Executive Officer Michael Liebreich. Green bonds for environment and clean-energy ventures may reach about $20 billion, after last year’s record of $14 billion, he said.
“For over a hundred years the orthodox view of the energy system prevailed,” the CEO of the research firm said. “Power generation was big, dirty and central. Grids were centralized and dumb. For some years now we have been saying that this orthodoxy is not going to hold. I predict 2014 is going to be the year when this becomes starkly obvious to most people.” …
Solar and wind costs are closing in on conventional sources even without subsidies, garnering the attention of debt investors seeking long-term returns from electricity contracts. It’s also shifting from European and North American markets to nations such as South Africa, Brazil and Mexico, Liebreich said…
Green bonds will continue funding ventures, adding downward pressure on lending costs, he said. His comments echo those of Michael Eckhart, Citigroup Inc.’s head of environmental finance, who said sales of the securities are set to expand after bank lending fell…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-27/renewable-spending-to-turn-corner-as-bonds-hit-record-bnef-says.html
Reuters, who did cover the Prokon collapse, tho their MSM subscribers ingored it, are with the “renewables on the rise” meme, as predicted by PwC!
28 Jan: West Australian: Reuters: Nina Chestney: Global value of power and renewables deals to rise this year: PwC
Merger and acquisition activity in the global power and renewables sectors should pick up this year, after the value of deals fell by 10 percent in 2013 as policy uncertainty crushed investor confidence, a report by PwC showed on Tuesday…
In particular, a return of very large mergers in the U.S. power sector could help drive the value of the global deals in power and renewables, the report added…
“The upturn in deals for renewable power targets comes with the sector seeing a steady flow of deals as power utility companies seek to capitalise on renewable economics,” the report said.
“The sector is also attractive to financial buyers because of the predictable returns that flow from completed projects with long-term contracts or regulated returns.”…
“Africa is a growing focal point for power deals as well as capital project investment … The region needs 250 gigawatts of new generation by 2030, much of which will need to come through commitments from and partnerships with other continents,” PwC said.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/world/a/21108920/global-value-of-power-and-renewables-deals-to-rise-this-year-pwc/
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pat mentions this in his comment here:
Oh dear!
Africa needs a further 250GW of Nameplate Capacity. How f[self snip] patronising of PwC, an Australian Company no less.
Currently Africa has 150GW of installed Nameplate Capacity for every power plant in the 54 Countries that make up Africa.
Look at this. Labelled below as Country – Population – Nameplate Capacity)
Australia – 23 Million – 65GW
U.S.A. – 314 Million – 1060GW
ALL of Africa – 1,100 Million – 140GW
And here we have someone saying that they need ONLY another 250GW ….. by 2030.
The whole of Africa has 2.2 times the total Capacity Australia has and the population ratio is 48 times that of Australia.
250GW extra is quite literally just a tad more than nothing.
See how a bland statement like this indicating the need for a huge investment over the next 16 years amounts to nothing more than a cruel joke.
Sometimes I get so angry.
Tony.
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But Tony, that IS all they will need….. because the developed world and the UN have NO INTENTION of allowing African countries to develop, anyway !
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The really big question is.. what should the world be aiming at as an absolute minimum electricity supply…. in GW/million/year.
Between 2 and 3 GW/M/year seems to be about what the developed countries use.. (do you have these values for say UK, Germany, EU)
How about Brazil, China, India.. the developing countries.
What is acceptable for a developed country ?
Is 1 GW/M/yr enough?
Maybe 1.5 ?
Is this a reasonable metric to use ?
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Griss. Targets like your mooted idea are a socialist’s wet dream. Think Stalin’s 5 year plans. Next thing you know, the UN will install an African Energy Tsar with the power to dictate who gets what. Rationing will automatically follow as most favoured nations – those with Left-leaning governments prepared to jump through UN hoops – go to the head of the queue irrespective of need. In the next 20 years, the mineral wealth of Africa will be exploited both by the West and the emerging nations. A more realistic effort to raise the quality of life of the billions on less than a dollar-a-day would be a commitment to building energy infrastructure by the extractive industries as part of the price of access to the minerals, agreed with the nation holding the resource. There will be enormous problems with corruption at the local level, but international corruption under the UN would be a far greater problem.
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Kevin, In no way was I suggesting a target of any sort.
Targets always lead to corruption.. as it has with so-called green energy etc. One big mess of corruption. !
Just trying to get an idea of where different countries stand wrt electricity availability per person.
And how much it might be a reasonable indicator of a country’s development.
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Griss. I take your point, but ideas like. (….aiming at as an absolute minimum electricity supply…) practically pre-suppose a target-driven programme. Tony has made a much better fist of critiquing your idea below, so I’ll bow before the expert.
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Interesting exercise, really.
The metric you’ve made up here would be pretty much meaningless really, sorry.
As I have so often mentioned, Nameplate Capacity cannot be used when talking about power, although sometimes I’ll use it myself.
By far the most important one to use is actual power being generated, and in the case of Countries, that is expressed in TeraWattHours. (TWH)
Again, comparisons are also pretty much meaningless, between Developed Countries, and also between Still Developing Countries, both between themselves and then comparisons with Developed Countries.
Now, why between already developed countries. Industry and Commerce are much bigger consumers than the residential sector and any comparisons are astounding really.
To compare between just developed Countries Let’s compare the UK with just Texas in the U.S.
The UK has a population of 64 Million, and Texas has less than half that, with a population of only 26 Million. The whole of the UK generates 360TWH of power, and Texas generates 396TWH of power.
See the point there?
So then, let’s do the task for just the Countries you mentioned.
DEVELOPED (Country, population, power generated)
U.S.A. – 314 Million – 4050TWH
UK – 64 million – 360TWH
Germany – 83 Million – 630TWH
EU – 740 Million – 3800TWH
Australia – 23 Million – 230TWH
NOT DEVELOPED
Africa – 1,100 Million – 650TWH
China – 1,360 Million – 4800TWH
India – 1,240 Million – 1100TWH
Brazil – 200 Million – 550TWH
Now, as you can see, any comparison becomes pretty much totally different sets of numbers.
It depends on Industry and Commerce, both big consumers of electricity. In the U.S. that residential sector consumes 38% of all generated power, while Commerce (37%) and Industry (24%) consume 61%.
While the residential sector has (marginally) the greatest consumption in most already developed Countries, the same cannot be said for still Developing Countries, where that residential sector is the last to get power connected, and in Africa that percentage can be as low as 2% of the population having any electricity in most of those 54 Countries in Africa, while in most already developed Countries, virtually every person has access to a constant and reliable source of electricity, and as much as they could ever use.
In China, the considerable ramping up of electrical power still sees virtually only 10% of power being directed to the residential sector, and the only reason they are being connected is that they are close to large industry and commerce, which will always be first to be connected.
In the Developed World, the same applied at the dawning of electrical power connection, and we are now at a stage where every house is connected to a source of electricity.
We take for granted something they just do not have, and it seems, really, that not only do warmists not know this, they really do not care, and in fact their lack of thought on this matter means that perhaps the unwitting end result of what they call for is that we go back and join them, and simple logic will tell you that that will never happen. Politicians would not EVER allow something like this to happen. It would be absolute political suicide. So, they will rabbit on about how something needs to be done, but they will never close off ready access to large amounts of electrical power like that.
Tony.
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Sorry here, I left out the source, and you can then work out that chasing all that up was not an easy task, so I’ll just indicate the Source.
International Energy Statistics
Tony.
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USA 12.90 TpM
UK 5.63 TpM
Germany 7.59 TpM
EU 5.14 TpM
Australia 10.00 TpM
Africa 0.59 TpM
China 3.53 TpM
India 0.89 TpM
Brazil 2.75 TpM
*TpM = TWH/Million
Interesting ! our ratio is above Germany.. maybe something to do with size, distances etc?
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Again let me mention that any correlation like this has the end result of being misconstrued.
And again, the segues neatly to that all time crock of a correlation, CO2 emissions per capita head. There are so many variables it is the grossest of misinterpreted oversimplifications.
Tony.
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Would it helped if I called it a chaotic very rough correlation?
As these things always are.
Big numbers, say > 5 – developed
Middle numbers – developing or not so developed
small numbers, say < 1 – undeveloped.
Ranking anything on this, is of course pointless
As you say.. there are many many many variables at work.
I do still find it interesting that our ratio is quite a bit larger than Germany
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You all know how often I’ve mentioned that it’s not residential air conditioning which is the big consumer of power here in Australia, and I stress that the big consumers are all those high rise buildings. It’s an easy thing for me to just say that, but hey, can I really show it.
This is an interactive map of electrical power consumption in New York, and you can scroll in and look at individual buildings even.
Interactive Power Consumption Map
Now scroll in just on Manhattan Island.
See Central Park there, the green bit in the middle of the Island.Using that as the top edge look to the right at Sutton place. Now go down to Gramercy, then across to the letter ‘E’ in Chelsea, and then back up to Central Park.
All that area is classified as Midtown Manhattan, let’s say around a couple of square miles.
Just that area alone consumes more Power per year than the whole of the Country of Kenya, around 10TWH, or around 4.35% of the power for the whole of Australia, in what is basically 2 square miles.
You can scroll all the way in and see the power consumption intensity for each building.
Tony.
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And that shows what CAGW is all about- preventing the developing nations from developing while pretending to “facilitate their transition to renewable energy”. Code for – force them to adopt unworkable and expensive energy generation to keep them firmly entrenched below the poverty line, where they are ripe for exploitation.
Those who are advocating this approach should hang their heads in shame, from Obama down. It is utterly inhumane and despicable.
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WELL SAID !!!!
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27 Jan: BBC: Scottish Renewables warns over offshore wind spend fall
Major developers more than halved their spending on Scottish offshore wind projects last year, according to Scottish Renewables…
It warned the sector could be threatened by an “investment hiatus”…
“Uncertainty throughout the industry is growing as none of the major projects planned for Scottish waters have had their planning applications determined yet, and the details around accessing market incentives are still unclear.”…
“We’ll be working hard over the coming weeks with governments north and south of the border to ensure the developers gain the certainty they need to unlock further investment.”…
Responding to the report, Scottish ministers said they were disappointed the UK government had not included Scottish offshore projects in an early subsidy programme called the Final Investment Decision (FID) Enabling for Renewables…
A spokeswoman for the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change said: “This government is committed to a thriving offshore wind sector.
“Our Electricity Market Reforms will encourage investment in cleaner electricity generation and represent an excellent deal for the industry.
“We expect to more than double our existing offshore wind capacity by 2020.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-25915801
27 Jan: EurActiv: Germany to cut energy rebates for industry, renewable subsidies
The German government last week agreed on far-reaching cuts to industry energy rebates and wind power generation. The plan, details of which must still be negotiated, reforms the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) and was introduced by Sigmar Gabriel, the economic minister who is also in charge of energy, EurActiv Germany reports…
The EEG legislation was originally meant to support green energy by means of a subsidy making up the difference between the price of renewables and the regular market price. But after rising energy prices in Germany there have been widespread calls to revamp the EEG’s effectiveness and have it comply with EU competition law…
Certain cuts for renewables are also on the horizon, as the cabinet decided to cap power generation in the wind energy sector. To keep wind power generation under a maximum of 2,600 megawatts per year, subsidies for new wind turbines are set to be cut by 1.59% annually.
If power generation increases by more than 2,600 megawatts, cuts would increase by 0.1% for each additional 200 megawatts…
Referring to the high energy costs in Germany, Gabriel said he could not think of any other economy that would be able to shoulder such a burden. The limit of trust in the market economy has been reached, he said…
http://www.euractiv.com/energy/german-government-cut-industry-e-news-533002
given PwC & Bloomberg New Energy Finance are looking to exploit Africa plus Central and Latin America now, no need to worry that not even Germany could support the cost of renewables.
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If 62% of people are skeptics, how can 100% of scientists agree with Al Gore?
Surely the Scientific community would show the same skepticism
10
Easy 100% of the scientists who agree with Al Gore were the only stats used.
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Yes, you have to account for poor sampling methods, and dumb people. No point in asking dumb people questions of science, you’ll only get stupid results.
So you have to sieve out and analyse only “good” data.
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Nor does that belief necessarily mean that the weather is really getting worse.
Consider the most recent bad weather event that you personally experienced. How well do you remember, by comparison, previous events of the same severity?
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I remember the extremes from the past were worse and rarely reported
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Albert you have made a good point.
Where I live, Europeans were scarce 150 years ago and those that were here spent more time putting up food than they did taking temperatures or logging “worse” weather. I know that this winter (2014) is unusually bad and a similar winter would have been extremely hard on native peoples but they didn’t write things down. Anything before 200 years ago in almost any area west of the 13 Colonies (USA) would have never been reported to anyone.
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I can say with certainty that the weather where I live is NOT more extreme. 30 years ago, it was much colder and we had more snow. I have weather records and photos to show this. No one here calls off schools for below zero temperatures. Right now, it’s 1F (up from -1F before sunrise) and a -17F wind chill and the school busses are running. Not in Chicago, land of the “oh-noo, we can all die” people. It’s not the weather, it’s the people.
I agree that in the past rarely did anyone report “extreme” weather. They reported the temperature and the wind chill. None of this “you can get frostbite in “x” amount of time–“x” is smaller if you want emphasis”. I saw once on a TV program where they claimed it was 30 seconds to frostbite. So not true. People knew they could get frostbite, either from personal experience or someone else telling them, they knew if it was -30F the insides of their nostrils would freeze, beards would free and water would freeze if thrown up in the air (no one scalded themselves throwing hot water, or if they did, they probably lied to avoid looking stupid). It’s not extreme weather, it’s extreme stupidity and desire for sunshine and rainbows, without the rain, everyday now by people who have no understanding of reality.
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veni vidi sileo
00
Swearing is generally not allowed on this blog …
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I think it allowed, if you do it in Latin, and very quietly.
00
We still have much to do,just last night one of our news channels said that Victoria’s mini heat wave was a record,they didn’t bother to mention what record was supposed to have been passed by three days of NORMAL hot summer weather,but in their wild imaginations it could have been anything.
No enemy so great as the one you imagine.
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if the Commonwealth Bank is partly funding The Conversation, i think they need to receive a few calls from customers, drawing their attention to the insane nonsense published on the website, & carried by the likes of SBS; btw, why is SBS (which receives taxpayer-funding) publishing virtually the entire contents of The Conversation?
28 Jan: SBS: Source: The Conversation: Comment: Climate and vaccine deniers are the same
PM Abbott has appointed climate denier Maurice Newman to be chair of his Business Advisory Council. In 2010, Newman told journalists they should present both sides of the debate. Back then he felt the need to restrain himself. Now unleashed, Newman is in full flight mimicking the anti-vaccinators, writes Clive Hamilton…
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/01/28/comment-climate-and-vaccine-deniers-are-same
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Jo your headline does not match the poll data.
The last chart is for the question “The recent storms are probably a result of climate change mainly caused by human activity.” Even I’d be a “dont know” there.
Your headline somehow claims: “62% don’t believe in man-made climate.”
You also claim there is some sort of trend that the toffs are leading and the commoners will follow, however the survey gives no insight in to trends. Wishful thinking perchance?
115
unreal! ***the “1.” line really is the sub-heading, i kid u not:
27 Jan: UK Independent: What the Pope’s green manifesto should say…
***1. Introduce an international carbon tax
by Memphis Barker
To stop the planet overheating will require all kinds of power, so it is a boon that ‘higher’ is joining the fray. Pope Francis is drafting an encyclical – the Vatican’s version of an open letter – on the environment. In person soft-spoken and stirringly humane, in this case The Voice of God will hit a thunderous note. Two weeks ago, Francis gave warning: “God always forgives, we sometimes forgive, but when nature – creation – is mistreated, she never forgives.”…
Here is one suggestion, both practical and presumptuous. Call for an international carbon tax…
Right now, twenty per cent of global emissions are subject to some form of carbon tax (though in Europe the price is too low to make much difference). If the encyclical is still in draft, Francis should call for the other eighty per cent to join in, and a higher price per tonne. Climate change is one problem – as the Pope no doubt recognises – that prayer alone will not solve.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/what-the-popes-green-manifesto-should-say-1-introduce-an-international-carbon-tax-9088975.html
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Lets see what the Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists and all the other religions have to say about that idea, shall we !!
I would suspect that the Pope represents a pretty small percentage of the world’s population (and getting smaller)..
anyone any ideas what percentage ?
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Hi Griss,
These figures are a bit old, but the proportions probably haven’t changed much. I would estimate that 54% of Christians would be Catholic, based on population density figures.
Agnosticm and Atheism: 1.1 billion
Buddhism (all philosophies): 360 million
Christian (all philosophies including Greek Orthodox): 2 billion
Falun Gong: 10 million
Hinduism: 900 million
Judaism: 14 million
Mormonism: 12.2 million
Muslim (all sects): 1.3 billion
Taoism: 20 million
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So.. maybe a billion out of 20 billion..
That’s an even smaller percentage than the Greens in Australian politics.
No wonder they think they can rule the world !!
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Rereke – close! Here is a census http://cara.georgetown.edu/CARAServices/requestedchurchstats.html
But remember, born a Catholic, always a Catholic. So even your number I think will be high as far as “professed” Catholics.
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Yes, it was not bad, as an estimate, considering that the base data was a bit old [gives self pat on back].
I am more concerned with understanding the dominant belief system(s) in various geographical areas, rather than the number of adherents. The belief system influences policy decisions, so is a factor I always try to consider.
Numbers of cult worshipers are only important it you happen to be Indiana Jones, and are concerned with the bullet/cultist ratio (did you notice how he never had to reload his revolver?).
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My son could match you trivia for trivia on any movie you name! Alas, my powers of observation are not good, so no I never did notice that. Of course now that you have mentioned it, I will be counting his shots in every movie! LOL
00
And, yes, I know that the total world population is more than the total on this list. That is because this list has a 10 million lower limit. There are lots of philosophies and belief systems out there to choose from.
00
Less than 20% are labeled Catholic (1.2 billion out of 7 billion). And the Church says if you are born a Catholic, you will always be one, so that is probably a high number.
But you have to remember that he leads the “spiritual” side of the lives of Catholics, not the secular.
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Channel 4 in the UK showed “The Great Warming Swindle” on 8 March 2007 and I would expect that, like me, many people in Britain had their first inkling that there was any major questioning of CAGW on that day.
Sadly, Channel 4 hasn’t done much in the way of questioning since – indeed it’s evening news is probably more hysterically alarmist than the BBC’s.
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O/T but there’s a lovely piece on sustainability at The Oz:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/bitten-by-the-dispiriting-dogma-of-sustainability/story-fnhulhjj-1226811523871#
Captures my thinking on the topic almost exactly. It’s why I cringe every time I hear the word. (Paywalled, just use Google).
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It’s easy to get caught out if you’re batting with the leading edge. Hard to score any runs with even that edge if it’s all squishy.
Maybe England’s problem was too many sustainable batsmen.
20
There is a good story about this BS AGENDA21 word “sustainability” on Bolt.
The unsustainable sustainability fad:-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_unsustainable_sustainability_fad/
As soon as anybody starts using THAT WORD they lose all credibility and are immediately disguarded as traitors to humanity by our family and friends ……
01
I hear you on the word “sustainable”. It’s nothing but marketing and I avoid buying from those who use it. Unfortunately, a friend started with the nonsense. We don’t discuss business anymore. I will tell you–if you are selling to a certain segment of the population, this will increase your sales. I just refuse to sell my soul to make money. Some people don’t mind.
00
I have’t done the research but a casual observation would suggest that those many in Australia would describe as uneducated and unskilled saw straight through this crap long before the educated elites.
30
Yep !.
Its called common sense……….
10
At least 12% of that 62% that “don’t believe in man-made climate” agreed to the statement that “The recent storms and flooding in the UK show that climate change is really happening”.
I suspect you’ve made a mistake in your analysis. Perhaps being uncertain about the attribution of a particular weather event isn’t the same thing as the rejection of climate change that your headline suggests it is?
00
[…] a UK ComRes/ITV poll, 62 per cent of people registered disagreement or no opinion that UK weather anomalies were […]
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UPDATE: Australian results on a similarish study were reported two weeks later.
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