Friday
Aug062010
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Climate change change
Aug 6, 2010 Climate: other Australians' views on climate change have changed, according to a poll conducted by Gallup. As the poll says, Australians appear to be among the best informed populations on the subject so they can be seen as something of a leading indicator.
In the wake of Climategate, only 44% now believe recent changes in the climate are caused by humans, down from 52% a couple of years ago.
Reader Comments (13)
Interesting. Even though the question was "Asked of Australian adults who are aware of climate change " some, (2%) still answered that they "have not heard of climate change".
Still, that's an improvement on 2008 result of 3%. At that rate by 2014 all of the Australians who are aware of climate change will have also heard of climate change !!
Is it me ?
Judging from the information in the press release (plus 30 years designing surveys and interview questionnaires), this is a weak survey design with poorly worded questions and a problematic way of cutting the sample. The highlighted change (52% ==> 44%) is really of limited consequence even with a sample size of 1000, even though the chnage is in an encouraging direction if you are a skeptic about CAGW.
More specifically, the wording of the question is not precise - with "Both" not apparently an answer option but volunteered by the respondent. Also it is hard to understand how 2% of the people who self report knowing "something" or "a great deal" about climate change, "have not heard of climate change". (Perhaps this is simply a mislabelling of the table.) From a scaling point of view the gap between "a great deal" and "something" is too large and what on earth does "something" actually connote.
More telling, though far from definitive and subject to the same caveats about question wording and the sample, is the finding that the % of respondents who rate the "threat of global warming to you and your family" as "very serious" dropped from 31% to 22%.
I think Bernie makes some good points. However, the momentum is turning on the AGW crowd with both France and now the US putting Cap and Trade on "hold" plus this report.
Don Pablo:
I understand how such findings can be used and what they might signify in the overall picture. My feeling is that we need to be rigorous in the interpretation of such results regardless of the directions of the results - if we want to be able to criticize results of poorly designed surveys when the results appear to support greater action around CAGW. However, I do not want to appear pedantic.
By the way, I enjoy your spirited writing style.
ozzies can only HOPE that there is 3 degrees of warming by 2100 , as the implied higher H2O content in the atmosphere will be a boon to them, with all their droughts.
same goes for Bangladesh and the Asian big river valleys btw.
Allthough there is an increased risk of having 10 instead of 5 high risk flood days as a result- this risk can be thwarted with organisation-
the dividend of higher precipitation is much wished for , all over the world.
If Asia has wars around the big rivers it is because of not enough rain, not too much rain.
don't ask me : ask Professor Webster, Georgia tech.
Or his assistant Judith :)
Short Story "Trend Line Going Down"
"In the wake of Climategate, only 44% now believe recent changes in the climate are caused by humans, down from 52% a couple of years ago"
AGW Marketing Manager to Employee upon hearing this news:
"Wrong way, Feldman"
"That's Fardman, sir."
The End
Andrew
@Bad Andrew
Mann: "Trending downwards???" Ah. I see what you have done wrong - turn the dataset up the other way to err hide the decline"
Wherever they brainwash the population the most about 'climate change', there skepticism grows the most.
The sixth annual climate and business conference starts in a few days in Sydney
http://www.climateandbusiness.com/
Hi Andy, and thanks for the link.
I can't really get my head round the "carbon offsets" idea being pushed at the conference.
I know there's a lot of crazy thinking in the climate world - like the idea that you could power a blast furnace or a cement works with a windmill - but the "offsetting" idea takes the biscuit.
You do something "bad" - like flying to the conference. Then you pay for something "good" - like planting some trees in the jungle. Even if the scheme was 100% kosher it still doesn't make sense. Could everyone do this - party on out then plant the trees? Does the conference use a different kind of carbon? It's just toooo weird.
Jack Hughes
It's just toooo weird
You should meet the people going. Talk about weird. I wonder if Al Gore will attend. With his Learjet or what ever.
I agree that it's a badly worded survey.
"Do you think rising temperatures are..."
How do the responses people who don't think average global temperatures are rising get recorded? Are they classified as "haven't heard of climate change"?