>>>>>What is scientific about the global warming studies? It is merely conjecture by a group of renegade quasi-scientists looking for funding for their research.
>>>>
>>>>Hardly. Virtual all Earth Scientists think the planet is warming and that human activity has something to do with it:
>>>>
>>>>
http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf>>>>
>>>>The gist of this study is that while only 52% of Americans think there's consensus about global warming among experts, in fact in this study of Earth scientists, 90% agreed that there is global warming and 82% say that
>>>>human activity is a controlling factor. Fewer than 10% said humans have no role in global warming (the rest choose "I'm not sure")
>>>>
>>>>Full disclosure: this was a self-selecting study. Invitations weresent to 10,000+ identified Earth scientists (essentially, all the Earth Scientists in the US); about 30% chose to participate. It was done in a way that kept participants anonymous, so no issues with facing embarrassment.
>>>>
>>>>The real issue is that providing both sides of an issue has been so beaten into the media that they've presented this topic as if there is real scientific disagreement, which is not the case.
>>>>
>>>>Tamar
>>>
>>>I find it amusing to imply scientific fact based upon a non-scientific survey.
>>
>>The point of the survey isn't scientific fact; it's whether there's controversy on this subject in the relevant scientific community. There is not.
>>
>>Tamar
>
>From a brief glance I could see that the "study" has an inherent bias in the respondents :
>"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)"
>
>Notice how all the invited participants are in the public sector with no private sector scientists invited.
How many Earth Scientists do you think there are in private industry? (Last time I looked, rather a lot of academic institutions were in the private sector.) I'm sure there are some, but I'd venture that it's a very small number compared to those working at universities and government research facilities.
>This says nothing of the leading nature of the questions, the polling method nor the availability and/or accuracy of the respondents.
The questions are shown in the article I cited. They don't look leading to me. The polling method is discussed (all those identified were invited to participate and participation was anonymous).
Tamar
