For fun:
Skeptics survey at Die Klimazweibel.
H/T CO2Fan.
I think that climatologists are struggling to understand people who don’t go along with the IPCC conclusions. I think it’s an honest approach although the survey questions won’t support anyone’s views well.
the Air Vent 
Gordian Knot puzzle;
Climate, to be understood,
Takes more than man ken.
=============
I would strongly suspect that the survey is intended to determine what is “wrong/lacking” with the skeptics. I read it and was not impressed with the questions and particularly the specificity. I think that if someone were truly interested in what skeptics thought the questions would be essay in nature with a limited wording response.
Also it would have to attempt to differentiate the serious and knowing skeptics from those with wackier bents. Those wacky ones are much more likely to respond to a survey like this one.
#2, you may be right Kenneth. Answer them in the comments section. I don’t know if you even are a skeptic, other than of everything you read :D.
They don’t get it, which is really dumb when you think about it. We’re as scientific as they are but aren’t immersed in the cultural belief system. We haven’t been exposed to years of the same thoughts. But the main thing climate scientists are missing is the feedback of being absolutely wrong. Listening to/reading their conversations, they have no idea about why things are happening but they always revert to the same default position. Revkin’s recent blog post was very much telling that way. The climatologists comments almost deserved a translation post.
I don’t think the German to English translation does it any favours. Moreover I felt it was very biased. But hey it’s a free opportunity to twist a few tails and we need to get our fun where we can find it.
Kindest Regards
There was no option on the ‘how did you become a skeptic question’ which read something like — Skepticism of Chicken Little gloom and doom is a normal position for a rational person to take. Or — the null hypothesis is a good starting point. Or — skepticism is warranted until such time as people employing the scientific method produce enough evidence to remove it.
The questions were poorly worded and I wasn’t going to go through the trouble of answering the survey. This morning I thought Hans was going to pull the survey and have the questions rewritten. I haven’t gone back to see but it sounds like they are letting it ride.
Hans von Storch on the question who is : „….a legitimate participant in the discussion among scientific experts“.
http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2010/09/interview-with-roger-pielke-sr.html
Posted 05 Sept 2010
Posted by Hans von Storch
In my series of interviews with eminent atmospheric scientists in the Atmospheric Sciences Section of AGU Newsletter a new one has now been published – with Roger A Pielke Sr. He voices rather critical views, and likely not everybody will like his assertions. But being a Fellow of both the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2004, a former Chief Editor of the Monthly Weather Review and Co-Chief Editor of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences he is undoubtedly a legitimate participant in the discussion among scientific experts.
Well I did answer the survey.
Silly me!
The quetions did not encompass my thinking on climate.
I don’t even think of myself as a sceptic.
Just someone searching for the truth.
Silly, silly me!
The following two questions found me hung up on the horns of a dilemma.
1. measures (relating climate issues) should be based mainly on the recommendations of scientists
2. measures (relating climate issues) should be based mainly on open disputations in parliaments and the community, taking social and economic topics (e.g.) into account)
Now under “normal” circumstances, I would strongly agree with 1 since climate and any problems pertaining to it would primarily require that questions be answered by educated and learned persons to wit – scientists. However, since the science of climate has become so horribly corrupted by political and monetary related issues, it would seem that a better place to argue the issues would be in the public square. So, I would also tend to agree with point 2. However, we all know how horribly corrupt and money driven the political establishment has become so I find it difficult to agree with either points. Where to turn?
9-“Where to turn?”
Lose The “We” is a good start. Instead of regarding an “issue” as requiring “measures” (taken collectively, presumably by government mandate) that “we” must take, it is an issue of individual choice and action.
In other words, these decisions should not be “public square” “parliament” or “government lab” matters, but kitchen table decisions. Made in your own home, taken only by your own choice.
Jeff, I seem to have accidentally left the l out of hotmail, and I think that got my comment caught by the filter for some reason. Could you dig it out? Thanks for your consideration.
In reply to Mke H- Yes, a lot of questions on this survey drop into the “fallacy of the excluded middle”. I checked “not sure” or the equivalent on several questions mainly because my viewpoint wasn’t given in any of the options. May be a third chocie to your question would have read:
“There should be no measures made by government related to climate issues until climate and human influence on climate are better understood, and assuming we CAN affect climate, there is a consensus on just what climate we are aiming for.”
I don’t really agree with my choice either. Maybe this is an
Goedel example- all logical systems that are equivalent to arithmetic are either inconsistent or incomplete- I suppose that’s true of my own world view- I’ve spotted inconsistencies in my own position, and some questions are just unanswerable.
I think most of the thinking skeptics are skeptics because what the climate scientists have produced as evidence for either the level of warming or its detrimental effects have either large or unknown uncertainties attached. As a matter of fact if a true survey of POVs of people across the spectrum of consensus to skeptic we would probably see a continuum of uncertainty attached the warming and its effects proposed/predicted by climate science. It becomes a bit silly to attempt to categorize people into skeptical and consensus camps and is done , I think, mainly as a political maneuver.
The biggest chinks I have seen of late in the consensus camp is the admission that much uncertainty remains in the evidence for levels of warming and its consequences. You then get back to consensus versus skeptical stands that are driven by (the extremes are given here with a continuum in between I would suspect) whether, on one hand, the individual deems that government has a big role to play in regulation of GHG emissions and that role should be enforced with or without significant evidence for the detrimental effects and without seeing the unintended consequences of such actions that, on the other hand, drive some of the skeptics and drives them to believe strongly that the medicine will be much worse than any potential detrimental effects of warming.
The survey in question, I think, misses these points badly.
I think that you might be interested in knowing that the results have been tabulated.