92.6% agree that climate change is happening now.
83.5% are convinced that climate changes are anthropogenic
85.5 are convinced that climate change is a threat to humanity

In my calculations I have taken 4 as the dividing line between positive and negative responses.

This is indicates a consensus that AGW is happening and is something that needs to be dealt with. It is what one would expect given the scientific research results as I understand them.

I hope Dennis Bray (or Hans von Storch) reads this.

It’s difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff in blogs, in part because there’s a whole lot of chaff. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t wheat in there.

Dennis, you misunderstood Gavin Schmidt’s comment about a wiki for your survey. I hope you now understand that the wiki was to formulate the *questions*, not to get answers. I think that is actually a pretty good suggestion. Another possibility would be to simply send the survey to some people (who won’t be responding) for comments about the questions.

For example, right off the top of my head, just looking at the questions you’ve posted here, I could think of some suggestions for changes:

“How convinced are you that most of the recent or near future climate change is, or will be, a result of anthropogenic causes?”

First, to which aspect of “climate” are you referring? Global average temperatures? Regional temperatures? Precipitation? Frequency and intensity of hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones?

Second, there is no time given for “recent.” For example, there hasn’t been a year where the global average surface temperature has been significantly hotter than 1998 since that year. On the other hand, if one goes back to 1979, both global average surface temperatures and satellite-measured tropospheric temperatures have increased. So what is “recent”…since 1998 (the last 10 years) or since 1979 (the last 30 years)? Or some other period, such as even the past 100 years (which is very “recent” in geological time).

So a better question would have been something like, “How convinced are you that most of the global average temperature change of the past 30 years, or next 30 years, will be a result of anthropogenic causes?”

It would also be interesting to break that question into two questions: one for the past 30 years, and one for the next 30 years. And it would be interesting to ask a question about the expected global change in surface temperature by 2030, e.g.:

“Relative to a 5-year global average centered around 2005, what do you think the increase or decrease in global average temperature (in degrees Celsius) will be for a 5-year average centered around 2030?”

All of the new/revised questions I proposed could probably be improved upon. That’s what a wiki has the potential to do.

Best wishes,
Mark

It is absurd to suggest that any meaningful dialog can exist in an environment in which one party has the ability to censor all dissenting opinion, and makes liberal use of this ability.

Well, it’s nice to see that Tim Lambert over at Deltoid has finally jumped into the fray. A little late though. Too bad he provides somewhat of a useless comment on the survey of climate scientists drawing from his five year old posting of useless survey of climate scientists. I could say much more but I have neither the time nor the inclination.

My foray into blogworld has been what … amusing, I guess. But I must bid farewell to the Hatfields and the McCoys. Alas, I must return to more responsible duties – I am milk monitor of the week!

Before I go I would like to offer a little prayer, penned by Roberston Davies long before Digital Daze, but perhaps particularly apt for blogging. It goes ‘God give me oblivion from the small small voices of small small people.’

Amen to that

By the way, I note that there is a discussion of another recent survey of scientists regarding climate here: http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html. (h/t commenters Joel Shore and John Cross at Deltoid: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/10/bray_again.php).

1. Assuming arguendo that RC has the intent you specify, what’s the relevance of the 2500 number? Isn’t it rather clear that most climate scientists believe that human activities are exerting a significant influence on climate? Or are you trying to balance of these climate scientists with the larger numbers produced by extremely sloppy surveys like OISM of non-climate scientists?

2. How do you derive your second assertion, when Gavin specifically suggests ways that surveys such as that by Bray and Von Storch could be fine-tuned?

Without addressing the question of whether it was improper or discourteous of RealClimate to post the questionnaire, can I suggest that you post a copy at Prometheus and link to it? That way the reader doesn’t have to go searching for the survey over at RS (and you don’t by default leave RS as the authority of what the survey says).

Remember Dennis Bray’s useless survey of climate scientists? The URL and password were posted to the climatesceptics mail list, so the results were biased and included responses from people who were not climate scientists. Bray refused to concede that…