Climate Change Nonsensus: Only 52% of meteorologists think global warming is mostly man-made

The American Meteorological Society has released updated polling results of their membership [26.3% response rate] which shows only 52% agree with the so-called "consensus" that global warming is mostly man-made. The poll finds "members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic."

In a must-read post today by Dr. Judith Curry, she explains why the IPCC attribution claim with 95% confidence that climate change is mostly man-made fails the most basic principles of logic, is unsupportable, that the IPCC and the Gavin's of the world are the parties who are "making things up." Therefore, the meteorologists in this poll who likewise claim to know that most climate change is man-made also fail basic logical analysis and thus this opinion is more political than scientific. The AMS poll confirms that opinions on AGW are to a significant degree driven by political views rather than science: 

Full paper available at link

Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 95, 1029–1040.

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-13-00091.1

Meteorologists' Views About Global Warming: A Survey of American Meteorological Society Professional Members

Neil Stenhouse, Edward Maibach, Sara Cobb

George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia

Ray Ban

The Weather Channel, Atlanta, Georgia

Andrea Bleistein

NOAA/Office of the Assistant Secretary for Environmental Observation and Prediction, Washington, D.C.

Paul Croft

Department of Geology and Meteorology, Kean University, Union, New Jersey

Eugene Bierly

George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia

Keith Seitter, Gary Rasmussen

American Meteorological Society, Boston, Massachusetts

Anthony Leiserowitz

Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

Meteorologists and other atmospheric science experts are playing important roles in helping society respond to climate change. However, members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic. In response, AMS created the Committee to Improve Climate Change Communication to explore and, to the extent possible, resolve these tensions. To support this committee, in January 2012 we surveyed all AMS members with known e-mail addresses, achieving a 26.3% response rate (n = 1,854). In this paper we tested four hypotheses—1) perceived conflict about global warming will be negatively associated, and 2) climate expertise, 3) liberal political ideology, and 4) perceived scientific consensus will be positively associated—with 1) higher personal certainty that global warming is happening, 2) viewing the global warming observed over the past 150 years as mostly human caused, and 3) perception of global warming as harmful. All four hypotheses were confirmed. Expertise, ideology, perceived consensus, and perceived conflict were all independently related to respondents' views on climate, with perceived consensus and political ideology being most strongly related. We suggest that AMS should attempt to convey the widespread scientific agreement about climate change [non-sequitur from the poll results!]; acknowledge and explore the uncomfortable fact that political ideology influences the climate change views of meteorology professionals; refute the idea that those who do hold nonmajority views just need to be “educated” about climate change; and continue to deal with the conflict among members of the meteorology community.