Did I say things were changing? The latest Rassmussen poll shows that the knowledge of falsified data is spreading fast and the polls are collapsing. Nearly 60% of Americans are now suspicious that there has been some falsification of the data.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans say it’s at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming. Thirty-five percent (35%) say it’s Very Likely. Just 26% say it’s not very or not at all likely that some scientists falsified data.
Only a quarter of US citizens think that scientists agree on the climate. (Possibly just the White House and it’s employees? Only a few days ago a spokesman for the Obama Government was still insisting that he didn’t think the science was “under dispute”.)
How fast that news spreads… or possibly not. (After all, before Climategate, how many polling companies thought to ask a question about scientists falsifying data?)
This skepticism does not appear to be the result of the recent disclosure of e-mails confirming such data falsification as part of the so-called “Climategate” scandal. Just 20% of Americans say they’ve followed news reports about those e-mails Very Closely, while another 29% have followed them Somewhat Closely.
Just 20%? So only 60 million people have been following the “ClimateGate” scandal very closely? And another 87 million (or so) have been following it “Somewhat closely”. The problem is you don’t even have to follow this “Somewhat closely” to get the idea that people are breaking rules, and behaving dishonestly. All you need to hear is “climatologists, hide the decline” from the guy beside you on the bus.
The media may not be pushing this story (or even disclosing it in some cases), but they don’t have to for the rest of the world to hear it. Paltry efforts like Google keeping “ClimateGate” off it’s autosuggestion list might slow this train wreck by a day or two. But since Al Gore is on the advisory board of Google, that dubious action may just help fuel the fires and work to spread the news.
The BBC even has to admit that the emails might just have an effect on Copenhagen. But Richard Black makes sure he puts in the obligatory caveat quote from the Imaginary Global Spokesman for Science.
Scientists say the e-mails from the University of East Anglia do not alter the picture of man-made warming.
No. The emails don’t alter the picture at all, they just remove the thick frosted glass that was obscuring it. Now the “picture” of man-made warming can be brought into a sharper focus, but the details are damning.
Black refers to climate sceptics in quotation marks. It’s as if there is no such thing as a real climate skeptic. Given that the search to understand our planetary atmosphere is kind of complicated, a real skeptic would only seem like an impossible contradiction if you religiously believed there was only one truth in the forest of theories.
Meanwhile Gore has cancelled his big “rock star” extravaganza for 3000 people in Copenhagen. The people booing and hissing from the sidelines in recent days could be making it harder to be convincing in the role of the Prophet of Doom.
Which brings us back to the UN. Is ClimateGate rubbing off the shine from the UN? It’s impossible to know from this report. But in the Rassmussen poll, 15% of the respondants described the UN, not as ineffective, or inept or even corrupt, but as an enemy.