Global-Warming Skepticism Hits 6-Year High

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Chris Mooney writes at Mother Jones that a new study, from the Yale and George Mason University research teams on climate change communication, shows a 7-percentage-point increase in the proportion of Americans who say they do not believe that global warming is happening. And that's just since the spring of 2013. The number of deniers is now 23 percent; back at the start of last year, it was 16 percent (PDF). The obvious question is, what happened over the last year to produce more climate denial? The answer may lie in the so-called global warming "pause"—the misleading idea that global warming has slowed down or stopped over the the past 15 years or so. This claim was used by climate skeptics, to great effect, in their quest to undermine the release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report in September 2013—precisely during the time period that is in question in the latest study. "The notion of a global warming "pause" is, at best, the result of statistical cherry-picking," writes Mooney. " It relies on starting with a very hot year (1998) and then examining a relatively short time period (say, 15 years), to suggest that global warming has slowed down or stopped during this particular stretch of time." Put these numbers back into a broader context and the overall warming trend remains clear. "If you shift just 2 years earlier, so use 1996-2010 instead of 1998-2012, the trend is 0.14 C per decade, so slightly greater than the long-term trend," explains Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at NASA who was heavily involved in producing the IPCC report. This is why climate scientists generally don't seize on 15 year periods and make a big thing about them. "Journalists take heed: Your coverage has consequences. All those media outlets who trumpeted the global warming "pause" may now be partly responsible for a documented decrease in Americans' scientific understanding.""

Comments

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[ganjadude]

actually what is happening is that most climate change skeptics do not dismiss that the climate is changing, We know you mean AWG change. We simply believe that either

A - there is not enough data or data has been cherry picked to push an agenda

B - there is change and it is natural, who do we think we are to believe we have as much power to actually change the climate or

C - The costs to "stop" if thats even possible climate change is far greater than we are willing to spend.

Re:Show me a climate model for the past 16 years

[operagost]

Unfortunately, scientists have to present explanations that people without advanced degrees have to understand. Telling people they're stupid deniers because they don't understand your data-- especially when you won't admit your mistakes, and wrap it up in rhetoric-- is not going to do the job. That chart actually helps to explain the earlier errors in analysis and explain how the current cooling trend doesn't contradict the long-term warming trend.

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[pepty]

Most Americans cant tell you how many states we have, and they will gladly sign a petition to ban the use of H2O, So please do not judge global IQ based on the land of morons I live in.

I think we're a good stand in for global ignorance. Where we stand out is willful ignorance/ideologically motivated cognition in otherwise educated and numerate people. If you want to see an educated conservative republican lie about the answer to or subconsciously misunderstand a simple math problem, just phrase it as a gun control question. Figure 7:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2319992