Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Maybe This Helps Explain the Marcott Swiftboating

Another sign that attitudes are changing, from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication:
This report contains topline results of a national survey of 726 adults who recently identified as a Republican or a Republican-leaning Independent.
Highlights:
A majority of respondents (52%) believe climate change is happening, while 26 percent believe it is not, and 22 percent say they “don’t know.”
and
By a margin of 2 to 1, respondents say America should take action to reduce our fossil fuel use.

Only one third of respondents agree with the Republican Party’s position on climate change, while about half agree with the party’s position on how to meet America’s energy needs.
I'm sure contrarians, desparate to keep from losing even the Republicans, are busy planning the debunking of this poll as we speak, maybe on a conference call originating from Mr. FOIA's lair, because, you know, it looks like the poll didn't include enough people with red-haired Labradoodles.

2 comments:

Louis Hooffstetter said...

David, there's nothing nefarious going on. Marcott, et al. is just a bad paper. In multiple, high profile press releases, the authors made claims they knew their data couldn't support. Steve McIntyre simply pointed that out. It's not "swiftboating", it's just checking someone else's work to see if it adds up. Anyone who reads more into it sounds paranoid, (and there seems to be a lot of paranoia going around).

David Appell said...

The authors made claims that a combination of existing results support -- or are they supposed to pretend there is no other science but their own?

If A is true and B is true, then naturally people are going to combine A and B.