Anti-Green Philosophy

[Farsight001]

I think you’ve already agreed that there is a mindset “brotherhood” amongst that type. Please remember that I said I do my best!

That “type”? What do you mean by “type”? And I’m asking that in the same way one might ask “What do you mean ‘you people’”?

 

[Farsight001]

petitionproject.org/

Stupid and pointless petition. A scientist is a scientist. They are physicists, chemists, biologists, and often even just engineers who have absolutely no credibility or expertise when it comes to climate change. Simply asking any scientist you can what their opinion is is a pointless endeavor.

 

[TheWarriorMonk]

I’m a meteorologist of 33+ years. Know many climatologists and mets. Very few agree with AGW.

Interestingly enough, I know someone that has been taking weather readings for the U.S. Government since 1930; he’s going to be 101 this year. Based on his measurements, taken every day for the past 80+ years, he believes that global warming is occurring.

Also notable is that he’s a retired farmer. The reason that is important is that farmers can detect subtle changes in the crops over decades due to changes in weather.

 

[LittleSoldier]

Your “many climatologists” belong to a small a minority.

97% of active climatologists agree that human activity is causing global warming

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/wp-...f2d57067c1845ddfc23-DoranAndZimmerman2009.png

This graph is based on a survey of 3146 Earth Scientists conducted by Peter Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman.

From what little I was able to gather in the limited time I have, it appears that the number of active climatologists in the study was only 77. Does anyone know how the figure of 3,146
“earth scientists” was derived? Is the general public included in that? Can I be an “earth scientist” without a MA, MS, or PhD? Sounds good! Or does it? Is an “earth scientist” seen as identical to an “active climatologist” among the general public? Should the results of one study be included with the results of another study? What about different n’s? We have an n=77 of “active climatologists”. What are the other n’s?

What is an “active publisher - all topics”?

I could be wrong without further study but it appears that different n’s were not taken into consideration with this graph as it shows only percentages of different groups (were n’s controlled?) and three responses to one question. I have a big problem with an n=77 in any research study. Where did that 3,146 number come from?

I am also concerned that this graph may have come from a master’s level thesis and that very few of the alleged “active climatologists” were at the PhD level.

I am an avid environmentalist. I also have problems with conclusions based on poor research. The graph shown is confusing at best and needs to be picked apart and examined before being accepted as anything indicating evidence. At this point I question the sample size and other methodology. I’m not an active climatologist. My background is in psychology research methodology. I see some red flags here.

scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/20/97-of-active-climatologists-ag/

 

[LittleSoldier]

I am a bit familar with environmental extremists – you can also throw in ELF (Earth Liberation Front) that engages in crimes, like burning SUVs or homes being built in sensitive ecosystems. However, I have never met any of these types personally. I know over 100 environmentalists personally (and many more thru the internet and other sources), and none are at all like that. In fact the vast majority are moms concerned about a viable earth for their children.

I guess in every movement, there are extremists that make the whole movement seem bad or ridiculous, and then are used as excuses for others not to do the good things the mainstream movement promotes. (Just like I said about the Enlightenment – there were good things about it that helped overcome previous abuses, but it is also being used for evil).

I’m glad the whackos have not dissuaded you from doing the right things to ensure a viable and healthy environment for future generations. Bless you.

My sense is, however, that anti-green ideas and people, have demoralized some from doing more to help the environment – I know they have demoralized me. I lose hope thinking that my little efforts won’t amount to anything, if others refuse to lift their little fingers to do something. I’ve created The Little Way of Environmental Healing to help overcome this demoralization and do those little things, no matter what others are doing or failing to do. But still I get demoralized.

It didn’t help matters here in the Pacific Northwest when trees were being spiked - some of which were not marked to be cut down. All I know is based on hearsay and I admit that but I have heard of people being severely injured because of these spikes which are meant to maim and perhaps even kill. And spiking a healthy tree which is not even marked to be cut down does not make a whole lot of sense.

That being said, I think attitudes are changing in my little corner of the world. I’m no longer seeing the anti-environmentalist bumper stickers and I think I know why. It’s because it’s gotten bad. People are losing their houses because of erosion due to clear-cutting. People are fed up with grass farmers burning their fields after boasting of having received money to offset the loss they would incur for not burning their fields. I live in the most polluted county in Oregon; fortunately I don’t live in the metropolitan area of that county but right next to the good old Pacific.

The scarring on the mountains due to clear-cutting is bad for tourism. Who wants to see that? Many, many little towns in Oregon rely on tourism dollars. In my town the fishing industry is drying up - the fish have pretty much died off and farm-raised salmon, even with color added, do not look or taste like wild salmon. People want wild salmon and they want to see trees. I believe our largest industry is tourism. We’re losing tourists. If the second-highest is fishing, we’re losing that, too.

Not good.

 

[lynnvinc]

There’s a lot of pseudo-science on the green side. I am sorry but it is way down on my list of concerns behind 1) abortion, 2) the attack on marriage 3) helping the homeless… …93) anti-social behaviour on the bus …

Well, see I’ve never had an abortion & have been against abortion all my life, but I AM harming and killing people thru environmental harms. So it just wouldn’t be right for me to preach to others not to have abortions when I skip along harming and killing people. I have also been married for 43 years to my first and only husband, and am polite to people on the bus; so sins of divorce and being rude are not biggies for me.

We need to be sincerely pro-life (and all around good) in our own behavior, or people will think we are just a bunch of hypocrites who get pleasure out of pointing to other people’s sins, while doing nothing to take the plank out of our own eye.

As for the “pseudo-sci” issue, it is true environmentalists have usually been out in front of and beyond scientists on environmental issues – bec they care for their health and that of their children, so they would be erring on the side of precaution to avoid the FALSE NEAGTIVE of failing to address real harms, while scientists need to avoid the FALSE POSITIVE of making untrue claims, and are thus very reticent in their claims, requiring 95% confidence. They cannot be the “boy who cried wolf,” while we people concerned about ourselves and family members do not want to be “the villagers who get eaten by the wolf.”

However on climate change a strange thing is happening; science passed the 95% confidence on this problem back in 1995 and still people don’t seem to care.

I think it is bec CC, unlike many other environmental problems, is being caused by everyone, and as JPII admonished 23 years ago it is everyone’s responsibility to mitigate it.

It’s more fun if we can pin the blame on some company and go after then to stop polluting; not so fun when the fingers point back at us and we have to do something to stop. Like trying to get a smoker or alcoholic to stop harming themselves and others. Almost impossible. They will tell us by way of justification – not everyone gets health problems from these habits.

 

[lynnvinc]

There ya go! And yes they do have to do with environmentalism and animal rights. But apparently you didn’t read about what I take upon myself to do.

No, my friend, animal rights is something a bit different from environmentalism, tho it might be considered a strand of environmentalism in some schemes.

Some years back when the Environmental Awareness Club on campus joined with the Vegan Association (it’s members very much into animal rights) to use the same tent for an event, it was very hard for us in the EAC to convince them to get into environmental issues – which they did not see as animal rights issues at all. I finally told them if we harm the environment there may be a lot of animals going extinct. They sort of listened a bit, but they were still first and foremost concerned about ill-treatment of animals, not broader environmental issues.

Now there is nothing at all wrong with protecting God’s creation AND helping the poor AND helping one’s own family AND reducing sin in one’s own life AND leading a spiritual life of contemplation. Please see Pope Francis’s inaugural homily, which is very simple and beautiful – vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/homilies/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130319_omelia-inizio-pontificato_en.html

 

[GEddie]

No, my friend, animal rights is something a bit different from environmentalism, tho it might be considered a strand of environmentalism in some schemes.

Actually, they are completely distinct issues, and IMNAAHO each would benefit from being separated.

I might be more environmentalist, if nature weren’t committed to recycling ME. But there is no way that I am becoming vegan, or crying myself to sleep over the unhappiness of animals involved in agriculture. (They don’t have it easy in nature, either).

ICXC NIKA

 

[lynnvinc]

I’m a meteorologist of 33+ years. Know many climatologists and mets. Very few agree with AGW. Our common agreement however is that we cannot continue to destroy what we were made stewards. The cause is much greater than just AGW. But as long as you have people willing to jam it down our throats and people posting in support of that…you will not get much cooperation.

I also know a meteorologist (speciallizing in upper midwest hydrology) who was fired from the NWS bec he dared to suggest CC may cause more severe floods – fired right around the time those severe floods he had predicted were happening in MN and around, and a couple of years before he was eligible for his pension.

There has been terrible silencing and chilling effect of meteorologists and climatologists – and they know who butters their bread.

Neverthess we recently invited NWS meteorologist in S. Texas, a specialist on hurricanes and droughts, to give a talk about climate change. He started by stating that as a meteorologist he is not a climate scientists, but has made it his off-hours hobby to study it, so he was speaking only as an educated person who knew a lot about it, but not as a climate scientist.

He didn’t have any difficulty at all accepting climate science. (I think the chilling effect has been lifting a bit in recent years.)

 

[Pugsly]

Once upon a time…the Devil fashioned a worldly philosophy (see Romans chapter 1)…it would trick people into evil by making them think they were doing good…and the best part of all was that it would divide the children of God.

What is this poisonous philosophy? It is fear-based…on the idea that a world without god is “red in tooth and claw”…without an overarching moral restraint…and, therefore, since the world is divided between the Strong and the Weak…we need to develop 3 empathetic ethics… Health and Safety
Herding into defensive groups
Impose Natural equality and guidance

It is this 3rd aspect that I have been discussing VERY lightly here on CAF

I certainly did not want to upset anyone…I am a surfer from S Cal and a poet and I love God’s creation just as much as you.

 

[lynnvinc]

petitionproject.org/

skepticalscience.com/OISM-Petition-Project.htm

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Now please let’s get back to the OP & topic re Anti-Green Philosophy and what are its philosophical roots and other causes – psychological, social, cultural, ideological, political, economic issues.

I’m thinking that as environmental harms become more serious – there are at least 9 major environmental threats to our world system that threaten humanity, see stockholmresilience.org/planetary-boundaries – it becomes a greater challenge to people’s basic modern world view: that if they work hard and are entrepreneural they should be able to come up in life and even become rich. That there is an ever expanding pie and limitless resources, and whatever env problems there are, they are only minor side issues that can either be easily solved or overlooked without harms to anyone, except perhaps to a few expendable and hapless animals. It would seem eminently unfair to people that the rules have changed in the middle of the game. One’s world view is perhaps more sacred to a person than the Bible; an assault to it is worse than an assault to one’s life, or the lives of one’s children.

 

[lynnvinc]

Actually, they are completely distinct issues, and IMNAAHO each would benefit from being separated.

I might be more environmentalist, if nature weren’t committed to recycling ME. But there is no way that I am becoming vegan, or crying myself to sleep over the unhappiness of animals involved in agriculture. (They don’t have it easy in nature, either).

ICXC NIKA

They do, however, dovetail in several regards. Here’s some notes from a reading on animal rights I give my Env Crime & Justice students:

Enviro & Animal Rights Intersections:

• animals need habitats (save enviro for us, them)
• animals are part of the world ecosystem (we need them)
• vegetarianism:
• ---- save animals
• ---- reduce harm to environment
• politically: anti-statist, egalitarian values

This final point is the author’s; I think a strong environmentalist can be “status quo” with our current political system and not necessarily anti-statist or complete egalitarian in values. OTOH, anti-statist and egalitarians are not necessarily enviornmentalists; tea-partyers are anti-statist and they don’t seem to be environmentalists.

I’ve dabbled in vegan diets off and on – for environmental reasons of eating low on the food chain to reduce my impact on the environment. We did give up red meat for the most part some 25 years ago due to my husband’s health problems, but we do eat fish, and the way I cook salmon really tastes very very good, so at this point I’m not a vegan, but I strive to eat low on the food chain to some extent to reduce impact on the environment, and as a more sacrificial Carmelite life. My husband’s uncle, a parish priest, was a vegetarian as part of his sacrificial life.

 

[Pugsly]

Not true. I want to see who was polled. East Anglia and IPCC scientists?

Indeed…however…
Science does not yeild to “polling”…for example…Copernicus discovered that the Earth is not the center of the Universe…and the “polling” was far against him.

Any “scientific” argument that uses polling of the “scientific community” is unscientific on face.

 

[Pugsly]

What is the poisonous worldy philosophy that I refer to…

It is primarily a way of seeing a world that evolved randomly, with no apparent purpose or meaning, a world “red in tooth and claw”, and reacting in ways that keep one SAFE.

It is, therefore, a fear-based philosophy that “knows” there is no overarching creator or created order or moral code to restrain the manipulations of men. Thus…there is an exhilerating sense of liberty here, we are free to do whatever we want!

That’s also the problem…we are also free to harm each other without restraint. Thus, this philosophy tends to divide the world between the Dangerous (manipulators and the stupid people who empower them)…and…the Empathetic.

Thus it has 3 empathetic responses to such a dangerous, god-free world…

1. Survival ethic…there is no morality higher than my survival. There is certainly no cause worth dying for and few things worth suffering. Many sincerely want to rid the world of sharp edges. Hence, health and safety concerns explode as this philosophy takes over. Hence…we get rubberized playgrounds, no smoking (even outdoors) laws, food labeling worries and even mayors telling us how big a soda we can drink. One school actually threw a lil girls home-packed lunch in the trash as unhealthy.
2. Victim ethic…with no overarching moral basis to keep us from manipulating each other, the Strong rule the day unless the Weak can herd together and control them. Thus, Leftism encourages herding into groups to control the forces of manipulation. Victim groups explode under Leftism–we get defensive racial groupings, defensive women groups and organizations, people with disabilities band together, gay groups, teenage acne support groups…etc. Leftism sees a world that is out to manipulate and abuse UNLESS we band together to keep the Strong in check. Thus, there is a great fear of big business, big banks, people with big money…heck…these people fear WALMART.
3. Nature ethics…if all the world really did evolve randomly and without apparent order…then all of Nature is equal. There really is no difference between killing a dolphin and a baby boy…everything is of equal meaning and worth.

Thus, Nature ethics is composed of an absolutely flat view of reality and despises hierarchical views of reality for two reasons. One, all of our Natural world is either equally meaningless or sacred TOGETHER. Two, seeing a “created order” and a natural “hierarchy” is obviously a manipulative view of the Strong. For example, the Green movement today is often a fear-based reaction to “human domination” of the environment.

Now, Christians buy into this for a lot of reasons. I think the most compelling is that the Bible tells us to care for the “anawim” (a Hebrew word for the “poor, the widow, the orphan and the stranger in your land”. Caring for the anawim (the weak) is what this philosophy seems to be concerned. Caring for the environment is very good too!

Now, if you FEAR for the planet…FEAR for the manipulations of the powerful…FEAR for the Health and Safety of say lil children…then perhaps YOU have fallen into the Devil’s trap…?
What did Jesus say most often to His disciples…“Shalom” be at peace.

 

[lynnvinc]

Once upon a time…the Devil fashioned a worldly philosophy (see Romans chapter 1)…it would trick people into evil by making them think they were doing good…and the best part of all was that it would divide the children of God.

What is this poisonous philosophy? It is fear-based…on the idea that a world without god is “red in tooth and claw”…without an overarching moral restraint…and, therefore, since the world is divided between the Strong and the Weak…we need to develop 3 empathetic ethics… Health and Safety
Herding into defensive groups
Impose Natural equality and guidance

It is this 3rd aspect that I have been discussing VERY lightly here on CAF

I certainly did not want to upset anyone…I am a surfer from S Cal and a poet and I love God’s creation just as much as you.

Wow, you’ve really captured the anti-green philosophy very well. I keep telling anti-environmentalists they have nothing to fear in mitigating environmental problems (which can save them lots of $$), but there is nothing I can say or do to stop them shivering with fear that if they do anything environmental or accept what the scientists say the whole world will become neo-pagan-atheist-communist-totalitarian-economy-destroying-baby-killers.

It’s sort of like the man who feared Death and fled to another village to escape Death, only to find Death waiting for him there. In the same way anti-environmentalists’ fears lead them to do things that:

• harm the economy
• push sensitive Christians into neo-paganism (bec when Christians are so much against accepting env problems and reducing their harms, people begin to look at other religions for solutions, wrongly blaming Christianity for what Christians do/fail to do)
• bring about conflict over ever-diminishing life-sustaining resources, anarchy & chaos, with brutal totalitarianism and warlords as remedy; and
• put their own children’s lives in jeopardy.

We need to buck up and face up to environmental problems and work in an effective and orderly fashion to solve them. Burying heads in the sand will not make the problems go away. And, the most important thing, God is with us always. There is nothing to fear. God will help us. That is a total guarantee.

 

[Pugsly]

Wow, you’ve really captured the anti-green philosophy very well. I keep telling anti-environmentalists they have nothing to fear in mitigating environmental problems (which can save them lots of $$), but there is nothing I can say or do to stop them shivering with fear that if they do anything environmental or accept what the scientists say the whole world will become neo-pagan-atheist-communist-totalitarian-economy-destroying-baby-killers.

It’s sort of like the man who feared Death and fled to another village to escape Death, only to find Death waiting for him there. In the same way anti-environmentalists’ fears lead them to do things that:

• harm the economy
• push sensitive Christians into neo-paganism (bec when Christians are so much against accepting env problems and reducing their harms, people begin to look at other religions for solutions, wrongly blaming Christianity for what Christians do/fail to do)
• bring about conflict over ever-diminishing life-sustaining resources, anarchy & chaos, with brutal totalitarianism and warlords as remedy; and
• put their own children’s lives in jeopardy.

We need to buck up and face up to environmental problems and work in an effective and orderly fashion to solve them. Burying heads in the sand will not make the problems go away. And, the most important thing, God is with us always. There is nothing to fear. God will help us. That is a total guarantee.

Today’s environmentalism…Trillions wasted on false fears…while the hungry of the world could have fresh drinking water and energy and food in each and every village on Earth…Sorry Lord…we were too busy with fighting shadows…to help You.

 

[Love4All]

A hypothetical emergency is a contradiction in terms.

If you want to convince others to your position so as to make them sacrifice for it, you need facts, not hypotheticals.

ICXC NIKA

Your first sentence brought to my mind the title of a book that I haven’t read, but nonetheless understand the gist enough to recommend it here. It is called, “The Long Emergency.” It is largely about Peak Worldwide Oil Production, and when that might be, i.e. in the near future or the recent past, and what will happen to our petroleum-dependent lifestyles after that.

 

[Love4All]

I’m a meteorologist of 33+ years. Know many climatologists and mets. Very few agree with AGW. Our common agreement however is that we cannot continue to destroy what we were made stewards. The cause is much greater than just AGW. But as long as you have people willing to jam it down our throats and people posting in support of that…you will not get much cooperation.

Is it not simple common sense that it is impossible to continue to burn fuels without adding cumulatively to the total heat content of the environment? I don’t see how it is possible to outright deny AGW. To what degree, is another question.

 

[bellasbane]

From what little I was able to gather in the limited time I have, it appears that the number of active climatologists in the study was only 77. Does anyone know how the figure of 3,146
“earth scientists” was derived? Is the general public included in that? Can I be an “earth scientist” without a MA, MS, or PhD? Sounds good! Or does it? Is an “earth scientist” seen as identical to an “active climatologist” among the general public? Should the results of one study be included with the results of another study? What about different n’s? We have an n=77 of “active climatologists”. What are the other n’s?

What is an “active publisher - all topics”?

I could be wrong without further study but it appears that different n’s were not taken into consideration with this graph as it shows only percentages of different groups (were n’s controlled?) and three responses to one question. I have a big problem with an n=77 in any research study. Where did that 3,146 number come from?

I am also concerned that this graph may have come from a master’s level thesis and that very few of the alleged “active climatologists” were at the PhD level.

I am an avid environmentalist. I also have problems with conclusions based on poor research. The graph shown is confusing at best and needs to be picked apart and examined before being accepted as anything indicating evidence. At this point I question the sample size and other methodology. I’m not an active climatologist. My background is in psychology research methodology. I see some red flags here.

scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/20/97-of-active-climatologists-ag/

If you click on the link in the story, it takes you to the report where they describe the methodology: tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

Target Population:

An invitation to participate in the survey was sent to 10,257 Earth scientists. The database was built from Keane and Martinez [2007], which lists all geosciences faculty at reporting academic institutions, along with researchers at state geologic surveys associated with local universities, and researchers at U.S. federal research facilities (e.g., U.S. Geological Survey, NASA, and NOAA (U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) facilities; U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories; and so forth). To maximize the response rate, the survey was designed to take less than 2 minutes to complete, and it was administered by a professional online survey site (questionpro.com) that allowed one-time participation by those who received the invitation.

Response Rate:

With 3146 individuals completing the survey, the participant response rate for the survey was 30.7%. This is a typical response rate for Web-based surveys [Cook et al., 2000; Kaplowitz et al., 2004]. Of our survey participants, 90% were from U.S. institutions and 6% were from Canadian institutions; the remaining 4% were from institutions in 21 other nations. More than 90% of participants had Ph.D.s, and 7% had master’s degrees. With survey participants asked to select a single category, the most common areas of expertise reported were geochemistry (15.5%), geophysics (12%), and oceanography (10.5%). General geology, hydrology/hydrogeology, and paleontology each accounted for 5–7% of the total respondents. Approximately 5% of the respondents were climate scientists, and 8.5% of the respondents indicated that more than 50% of their peer-reviewed publications in the past 5 years have been on the subject of climate change. While respondents’ names are kept private, the authors noted that the survey included participants with well-documented dissenting opinions on global warming theory.

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There are two weaknesses in the survey:

This is a population survey, meaning that the “universe” of people they were targeting is defined by the database of professions they used to get the names. Therefore, the authors should, but do not provide statistics of the population proportions for each group in the database. So we can’t tell if 5% is greater, lesser, or about the same proportion of climate scientists that exists in the population. If it is about the same, then 5% (N=77) is fine.

The overall response rate is not high (30.7%), which means the possibility exists that some bias may be skewing the results (i.e., some unknown factor that motivates one person to respond while another to ignore the survey). The question then becomes whether climate change skeptics are less likely than climate change believers to respond to the survey. My guess is that they are not.

On the plus side, the effect size is huge. Very seldom do you get such a lop-sided result. Even if response bias accounts for 20% of the responses, you still have more than three quarters of climatologists (77%) agree that human activity is causing global warming.

It may not be the best piece of survey research, but it is certainly better than the totally unscientific claims offered by the climate change deniers.

 

[Pugsly]

If you click on the link in the story, it takes you to the report where they describe the methodology: tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

Target Population:

An invitation to participate in the survey was sent to 10,257 Earth scientists. The database was built from Keane and Martinez [2007], which lists all geosciences faculty at reporting academic institutions, along with researchers at state geologic surveys associated with local universities, and researchers at U.S. federal research facilities (e.g., U.S. Geological Survey, NASA, and NOAA (U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) facilities; U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories; and so forth). To maximize the response rate, the survey was designed to take less than 2 minutes to complete, and it was administered by a professional online survey site (questionpro.com) that allowed one-time participation by those who received the invitation.

Response Rate:

With 3146 individuals completing the survey, the participant response rate for the survey was 30.7%. This is a typical response rate for Web-based surveys [Cook et al., 2000; Kaplowitz et al., 2004]. Of our survey participants, 90% were from U.S. institutions and 6% were from Canadian institutions; the remaining 4% were from institutions in 21 other nations. More than 90% of participants had Ph.D.s, and 7% had master’s degrees. With survey participants asked to select a single category, the most common areas of expertise reported were geochemistry (15.5%), geophysics (12%), and oceanography (10.5%). General geology, hydrology/hydrogeology, and paleontology each accounted for 5–7% of the total respondents. Approximately 5% of the respondents were climate scientists, and 8.5% of the respondents indicated that more than 50% of their peer-reviewed publications in the past 5 years have been on the subject of climate change. While respondents’ names are kept private, the authors noted that the survey included participants with well-documented dissenting opinions on global warming theory.

---

There are two weaknesses in the survey:

This is a population survey, meaning that the “universe” of people they were targeting is defined by the database of professions they used to get the names. Therefore, the authors should, but do not provide statistics of the population proportions for each group in the database. So we can’t tell if 5% is greater, lesser, or about the same proportion of climate scientists that exists in the population. If it is about the same, then 5% (N=77) is fine.

The overall response rate is not high (30.7%), which means the possibility exists that some bias may be skewing the results (i.e., some unknown factor that motivates one person to respond while another to ignore the survey). The question then becomes whether climate change skeptics are less likely than climate change believers to respond to the survey. My guess is that they are not.

On the plus side, the effect size is huge. Very seldom do you get such a lop-sided result. Even if response bias accounts for 20% of the responses, you still have more than three quarters of climatologists (77%) agree that human activity is causing global warming.

It may not be the best piece of survey research, but it is certainly better than the totally unscientific claims offered by the climate change deniers.

Even I agree that human activity cause SOME global warming. We breath out CO2…and give out heat with our bodies and burn fires and have factories and drive cars and do a whole host of things that God knew before hand.
But, in order to ignore the world’s poor (who need fresh drinking water at a cost of a few trillion dollars) we are going to conclude that…1) some global warming is bad (more people live longer and more food is produced in warming earth cycles)

                           2) that it will lead to catastrophic death and destruction (rising ocean levels of 20 inches over 100 years is NOT catastrophic)
                           3) that MASSIVE and EXPENSIVE worldwide effort (while ignoring the poor) can effectively change the outcome......The best models show massive human effort leading to maybe 1 degree less over 75 years.

               But hey....it's Holy Thursday.....and I'm going to leave these posts to your good graces....I hope and pray that all of you have a blessed Easter celebration in our Lord Jesus Christ!