By Andrew Bolt ~
It’s the new consensus.
A new peer-reviewed study of more than 1000 engineers and geoscientists in Alberta, Canada, shows most are sceptical of claims that man is heating the world dangerously.
A third think man-made global warming is simply a scam:
Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
Note: the paper is written by women from the University of Alberta and Vienna University of Economics and Business who are clearly warmists, referring several times to “deniers”.
Their paper is in part financed by soft-left outfits such as the Canadian Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Science and Humanities Research Council.
They suggest sceptics may just have ulterior motives for their beliefs, such as “identity threats” and vested interests.
They leave unexamined the ulterior motives of the believers, despite highly suggestive lines of inquiry buried in lines like this: “Adherents of [the standard warmist view] in our study [are] significantly more likely to be lower in the organizational hierarchy, younger, female, and working in government.” Of course.
So this study of members of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta is in no way a sceptic’s set-up. The very reverse, which makes its peer-reviewed findings so much more powerful.
The authors do concede they are working with just 1077 responses from the 40,000 professionals they asked – professional experts in petroleum and related industries – but say those who replied are in many ways representative, “similar to the general APEGA membership when compared on professional designation, age, and gender”.
And they divide as follows:
Frame 1: Comply with Kyoto
The largest group of APEGA respondents (36%) … express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause. Supporters of the Kyoto Protocol consider climate change to be a significant public risk…
Frame 2: Nature is overwhelming
The second largest group (24%) … believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth… They are most likely to speak against climate science as being science fiction, ‘manipulated and fraudulent’. They are least likely to believe that the scientific debate is settled… Significantly, they are more likely to criticize others as unknowledgeable and to describe climate scientists and environmentalists as hysterical…
Frame 3: Economic responsibility
Ten percent of respondents … diagnose climate change as being natural or human caused. More than any other group, they underscore that the ‘real’ cause of climate change is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable. Similar to the ‘nature is overwhelming’ adherents, they disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk;;. They are also less likely to believe that the scientific debate is settled and that the IPCC modeling is accurate… They express much stronger and more negative emotions than any other group, especially that climate science is a fraud and hoax and that regulation is futile, useless, and impossible.
Frame 4: Fatalists
‘Fatalists’, a surprisingly large group (17%), diagnose climate change as both human- and naturally caused. ‘Fatalists’ consider climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on their personal life. They are sceptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC modeling.
Frame 5: Regulation activists
The last group (5%) …diagnose climate change as being both human- and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life…. They are also sceptical with regard to the scientific debate being settled and are the most indecisive whether IPCC modeling is accurate… Despite their seemingly ambivalent stance, they are most likely to believe that nature is our responsibility…
Let me add up some of those figures:
- 36 per cent of engineers and earth scientists – disproportionately young, junior women in the public service – think man-made warming is dangerous and we should try to stop it.
- 34 per cent of engineers and earth scientists think man-made global warming is a hoax.
- 56 per cent say the science is not settled. The debate is not over.
- 51 per cent, a majority, think man-made warming will have little or no impact on their lives.
- 56 per cent say man-made global warming is between a zero danger and merely moderate one.
The researchers are forced to conclude:
We find that climate science scepticism is not limited to the scientifically illiterate (per Hoffman, 2011a), but well ensconced within this group of professional experts with scientific training – who work as leaders or advisors to management in governmental, non-governmental, and corporate organizations.
Indeed, the more senior and experienced you are, the less likely you are to fall for global warming hysteria, although the researchers put it more negatively:
… adherents of those frames that are more defensive and oppose regulation (‘nature is overwhelming’, ‘economic responsibility’)significantly more likely to be more senior in their organizations, male, older, geoscientists, and work in the oil and gas industry. Adherents of these two frames comprise 33.7% of our respondents overall, but 63.3% of top managers in the oil and gas industry as opposed to 19.1% supporting regulation.
But the bottom line: warmists tend to be young, inexperienced and in the minority among engineers and earth scientists. The consensus is with the sceptics, older and wiser.
UPDATE
Previous challenges to claims that warmists represent the consensus include this survey:
Only one in four American Meteorological Society broadcast meteorologists agrees with United Nations’ claims that humans are primarily responsible for recent global warming, a survey published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society reports…
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) survey was limited to television weather forecasters who are also meteorologists…
The survey was conducted by the congressionally funded National Environmental Education Foundation and vetted by an advisory board of climate experts from groups such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, and Pew Center for Global Climate Change.
The AMS study found:
Only 24 percent of the survey respondents agree with United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assertion, “Most of the warming since 1950 is very likely human-induced.”Only 19 percent agree with the claim, “Global climate models are reliable in their projection for a warming of the planet.”
Only 19 percent agree with the assertion, “Global climate models are reliable in their projections for precipitation and drought.”
Only 45 percent disagree with Weather Channel cofounder John Coleman’s strongly worded statement, “Global warming is a scam.”
Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.
Andrew Bolt’s columns appear in Melbourne’s Herald Sun, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Adelaide’s Advertiser. He runs the most-read political blog in Australia and hosts Channel 10’s The Bolt Report each Sunday at 10am. He is also heard from Monday to Friday at 8am on the breakfast show of radio station MTR 1377, and his book Still Not Sorry remains very widely read.
Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog . http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
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Sun 02/17/2013
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