Hitting rock bottom at WUWT: OMG it's insects - Ronald D Voisin is ba-a-a-a-ck!

WUWT this week has surely hit rock bottom. It's slithered from the dopey to the absurd.

What is wrong with Anthony Watts? Have his half-coherent fake sceptics deserted him? Has he taken Wondering Willis Eschenbach's words to heart? Has the reality of global warming become so apparent that he's decided to give up on the ideological deniers and target his blog at the wingnuts?

It probably started with the Rocket Scientist from Luna Park, David Evans, and his Force X and the notch. If you thought that was weird enough, since then WUWT's been on a slippery slope to utter nuttery, including Tim Ball and his paranoid fantasies, Wondering Willis Eschenbach and his dismal skirmishes with Economics 101, Willis again and his scathing attack on Anthony Watts and WUWT, Roy Spencer PhD admitting he knows virtually nothing at all about climate science, then Anthony Watts failing junior high school chemistry.

Now Anthony's resurrected Ronald D. Voisin, of OMG it's insects fame (archived here, latest update here). You may recall he suggested we kill off mammals to help reduce CO2. You might also recall his central core nuclear reactor "theory" of climate.

This time Ronald decides, quite arbitrarily, that the oceans are a net emitter of CO2. By implication he's rejecting the notion that burning fossil fuels produces CO2 (although he does list it in a table), that the pH of oceans is dropping. He reckons he's done his sums, but he's neglected to factor in the pluses and minuses. If not for human activities like burning fossil fuels and deforestation, the amount of CO2 absorbed by natural sources (CO2 sinks) would be balanced by the amount of CO2 emitted from CO2 sources.

ENSO update - El Niño remains likely but probably won't be strong

BoM has issued a new ENSO wrap-up, which I've added to the side-bar. There's also the pdf as a permanent record.

Warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean over the past several months primed the climate system for an El Niño in 2014. However, a general lack of atmospheric response over the last month has resulted in some cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean.

While the majority of climate models suggest El Niño remains likely for the spring of 2014, most have eased their predicted strength. If an El Niño were to occur, it is increasingly unlikely to be a strong event.

Changes are also occurring in the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) index has been below −0.4 °C (the negative IOD threshold) since mid-June, but it would need to remain negative into August to be considered as an event. Negative values are rare when the central Pacific is warmer than average. Model outlooks suggest the IOD is likely to return to neutral by spring. Conditions in the Indian Ocean may have contributed to the above-average rainfall experienced in southeast Australia during June.

El Niño is often associated with below-average rainfall over southern and eastern inland areas of Australia and above-average daytime temperatures over southern Australia. Conversely, a negative IOD pattern typically brings wetter winter and spring conditions to inland and southern Australia.

The ENSO Tracker is updated at the end of each month. It is currently at El Niño ALERT stage.

Next update expected on 29 July 2014 | 

Denier weirdness: Does Anthony Watts know anything at all about hydrocarbons or water?

Has Anthony Watts ever heard about the water cycle? Does he know that water lasts in the atmosphere somewhere between hours and days at the most?

Does Anthony know the chemical reaction that occurs when you burn fossil fuels?

Today he wrote about some new catalyst (using carbon nanotubes) that could be used to produce hydrogen as fuel (archived here). That's semi interesting - these things take time to see if they are worth developing further and then commercialising. What got me was first of all was the WUWT headline:

The law of unintended consequences in action: Imagine replacing all CO2 emissions with H2O emissions

And then a couple of comments he made:

Imagine in a hyrdogen powered economy, millions of vehicles emitting water vapor from tailpipes instead of CO2. The panic over temperature from water vapor emissions, which can be double to triple the heat trapping capacity of Carbon Dioxide, would be quite something to watch.

Perhaps he should have tried to do a bit of research first. Even the unreliable Yahoo has some answers.

Does Anthony realise that burning hydrocarbon produces more water per hydrocarbon molecule than "burning" hydrogen produces per hydrogen molecule?

What does he think the mist is coming from cars in cold weather? (Recall denier gripes about photos of power stations.)

That's not CO2, it's steam!

For example, with methane:

CH₄ + 2O₂ → 2H₂O + CO₂ + energy

With hydrogen:

2H₂ + O₂ → 2H₂O + energy

.
The hydrogen would be produced, using a catalyst, from water. I found a fairly simple description of catalysis of the reverse of the above for producing hydrogen for fuel cells.

From the WUWT comments

I'll add some when they appear. Okay, there are a few already.  Here's one where Anthony makes another comment, pointing out why deserts get cold at night! You can't fool Anthony Watts. No way :D Barium says:

July 14, 2014 at 2:38 pm
This article is hilarious. Water vapor does not have nearly the same lifespan in the atmosphere as CO2 or methane; it’s on the order of days vs. 10s or 100s of years. The contribution of water vapor, emitted from vehicles, would be miniscule (do you have any idea how much water evaporates from the oceans every day?) I’m not saying H2 is the fuel of the future, but let’s get the science right (or at least tell the whole story).

REPLY: No disputing water vapor has a shorter lifetime than CO2, but if it is actively being cycled into the air locally and continuously, the effects will be an increased local humidity. I think you missed the premise at the beginning from the complaint by Freedman – imagine all that extra water vapor in a city like New York. It will have an effect.

It is well known that the heat capacity of air is dramatically higher when it is more humid. Overnight temperatures are significantly affected, which is why deserts have such wide diurnal range in temperature, due to such low water vaopr capacity.

DESERTS ARE COLD AT NIGHT: Because of the lack of water in the ground, and little water vapor in the air, most deserts can get quite cool at night. This is because (1) dry ground does not retain as much heat as moist ground, and (2) water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, so dry air allows the surface to cool rapidly at night through loss of infrared radiation to outer space.

In fact, it has been calculated that the Sahara Desert actually loses more infrared radiation than it gains solar radiation from the sun. This net loss of radiant energy is balanced by the sinking air over the desert, which warms as it is compressed.

Source: http://www.weatherquestions.com/Why_are_deserts_so_hot.htm

So, increased humidity will mean warmer nights…especially in cities where the concentration of H2O producing vehicles would be high.
-Anthony

TedL raises the issue of how leaked hydrogen may affect the stratosphere and says:

July 14, 2014 at 2:47 pm
If we start using hydrogen gas in quantity we will see leakage at all the transfer points – production, transportation, delivery – just like natural gas. Unlike natural gas hydrogen is a much smaller molecule and leaks much more easily. It is lighter than air, which means it will rise through the atmosphere until it reaches the stratosphere where it will find the ozone layer. Ozone is highly reactive – the hydrogen will react with the ozone forming water vapor – simultaneously depleting the ozone and creating a stratospheric clouds of ice crystals, which I believe has the potential to change the Earth’s albedo, with a whole bunch of unintended consequences. 

I looked and found something on this topic. It looks as if replacing hydrocarbons with hydrogen would have a beneficial effect all round (my bold italics).

With respect to the second topic, converting the world’s fossil-fuel onroad vehicles (FFOV) to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCV), where the hydrogen is produced by wind-powered electrolysis, should reverse observed trends in tropospheric global warming and stratospheric cooling and reduce anthropogenic aerosol particle emissions reaching the stratosphere. The resulting stratospheric aerosol and ice cloud reductions should decrease heterogeneous chemical loss of ozone, speeding recovery of the stratospheric ozone layer. These results differ from those of a previous analysis that considered the effects on stratospheric ozone of adding leaked hydrogen without reducing gas or particle emissions from FFOV. Wind-powered HFCV should also reduce tropospheric methane by reducing its emissions, reduce tropospheric ozone, and displace essentially equivalent emissions of water vapor and hydrogen currently emitted by FFOV. The climate and ozone-layer benefits of battery-electric vehicles, where the electricity is derived from noncombusting renewable energy, should be similar to those of wind-powered HFCV. 

It took a little while before someone pointed out that burning any hydrocarbon produces water. John M says, referring to Anthony's original version of the equation:

July 14, 2014 at 2:51 pm
Correct reaction is
H2 + 1/2 O2 = H2O
or
2H2 + O2 = 2 H2O

Also, fossil fuels make plenty of H2O when they burn. Have to do the math on a per-kJ basis though.

Alan Robertson was close behind and says:

July 14, 2014 at 2:52 pm
Burning any hydrocarbon fuel releases H2O.

Ralph Dave Westfall also corrects Anthony's original equation and says:

July 14, 2014 at 3:00 pm
Author needs to fix the equation. It should be 2H2 + O2 –> 2H2O + heat. 

Roy Spencer admits he knows nothing about climate science

Usually there's something new to comment on from denierland. Anthony may still be in recovery or catch up mode after his big three days at the denier festival in Las Vegas last week. Or maybe he's licking his wounds after Wondering Willis Eschenbach made his scathing attack on WUWT.

About all that's been posted at WUWT is a barking mad rave in a guest article (archived here) - but I don't recommend it, not even for laughs. Plus an interminably long video of some boring speeches by deniers at Las Vegas. Here's the archive but I don't think it shows the video - if anyone would bother watching it.

The only thing worth remarking on was something I saw in the comments. John Whitman says:

July 14, 2014 at 8:29 am
Concluding question by Roy Spencer in his ICCC9 talk, “So, given all this evidence … why aren’t scientists advocating producing MORE carbon dioxide?”

Roy Spencer’s answer to that question and the final statement of his talk, “The driving force behind the global warming debate isn’t science”.
- – - – - – -
Thank you Roy Spencer for contributing to critical analysis of the climate science issues.
I agree that the driving force behind the global warming debate isn’t valid science, but it is what Feynman characterized as the ritual mimicking of science; it is, in his words, a “cargo cult ‘science’. ”
Also, I suggest that it is an attempt to make science subservient to pre-science ideology; an attempt to make science subservient to mere myth.
John

After reading that I decided to flick through the video myself. I came across these gems.

Roy Spencer says he knows "almost nothing" about global warming

The first one is where Roy Spencer claims that he doesn't have a clue about global warming. Why he was asked to speak about it in that case is anyone's guess. He was introduced as "an extremely credible source"! Remember, this is someone who supposedly has a Bachelor of Science in atmospheric sciences and a PhD in meteorology and who is a professor at a university, monitoring global atmospheric temperatures. Yet he says he knows almost nothing about global warming. He's been blogging about it for umpteen years and he's written books about it and he still knows practically nothing. He should do another course, don't you think? A primary school student would know more about it than he does.

Source: WUWT

How strong is it? Someone tell Roy - it's caused a 0.9°C rise in temperature in Australia so far - that's how strong it is. It's caused all of these changes around the world - that's how strong it is:

Data sources: NODC/NOAA, PIOMAS, NASA (GISTemp), CU Sea Level Research Group University of Colorado

What's it caused by? It's primarily caused by rising CO2, Roy. You should know that.

Whether it makes severe weather worse. Yes, it has made downpours more intense, it's made heat waves worse and it's made some droughts worse, not to mention fires and floods. And we ain't seen nothing yet. Just wait - there's lots more "worse" to come.

When it started. It started when humans started multiplying in numbers large enough to make a difference - way back when. It accelerated in the industrial revolution and really took off in the mid-twentieth century when we started pouring much larger amounts of waste CO2 into our air.

When it will end. It won't end any time before we stop using our air as a rubbish dump. Some time after that, there will be an equilibrium point reached where the energy coming into earth from the sun is balanced by the energy going out to space. That will be a long way off.

Whether it's "good" or "bad". On balance it's bad, Roy. It's not good to meddle with nature the way we have. To alter the balance so dramatically.

Why aren't scientists advocating we produce more CO2 emissions?

There's more. Roy put up a number of shonky charts, including his own faked up chart that I've written about before - here and here. But I bet you're wondering if the question in John Whitman's comment was posed by Roy himself or a clueless member of the audience. Well here's your answer:

Alleged cause of warming? Alleged? Roy - what rock have you been living under? Nature gobbles up half of what we produce, so it's alright to keep adding more and more to the air? Has he even heard of ocean acidification? Does he not realise that the bit left in the air is causing global warming? More rapid than probably any time in the past umpteen millions of years.

And look at his question at the bottom. Can you believe it? I wouldn't have if I didn't see it with my own eyes.

At least he got the next slide right. There is no "debate" about the fact that we are causing dangerous global warming. Any notion that there is a 'debate' is pure fakery put about for political purposes by disinformers like Roy Spencer and his mates at the Cornwall Alliance and the Heartland Institute.

Source: WUWT

Sheesh they are a bunch of deluded old men. (There were almost no women at the denier festival, except in a servile capacity).

Source: WUWT

To the disappointment of WUWT, climate science is solid science ...

You may have noticed (or not) that deniers have been championing the scamming of a journal as PROOF that climate science is a hoax.  Some of them at any rate. And probably wishing more than championing. (Archived here).

The alleged scam was led by a scientist in Taiwan (sadly for deniers, he didn't reside in the USA, he didn't work for the EPA or NASA or the University of Virginia or Penn State or even the University of Winnipeg in Canada). The person named was Peter Chen, formerly of National Pingtung University of Education, Taiwan (NPUE).

This researcher (or researchers) allegedly faked a whole bunch of email addresses and also faked reviews of their own papers. How such a scam could have worked is anyone's guess. I'd have thought most journal editors would select at least one or two reviewers known to the editor. Anyway, work it did, for a while. Until one editor of the journal became a mite suspicious. He launched an investigation that lasted for more than a year. As a result of his detective work, the journal retracted 60 papers, stretching back to 2010.

Deniers have been lapping it up. This is the final nail in the coffin. They looked to see how many climate science papers were published.

It's official: It's not Anthony's job...

WUWT is fairly quiet at the moment so I thought readers may enjoy this explanation of what Anthony Watts' job is not, by Wondering Willis Eschenbach (archived here).  It helps explain why Anthony Watts happily posts so much complete and utter rubbish. He's just not capable of sorting the wheat from the chaff.

I don't think Anthony's worst enemy could write such a damning indictment of WUWT.

Are you ready? Let's hear it.  The quotes are from Anthony Watts' good friend and staunch ally, Wondering Willis Eschenbach at WUWT. (My bold underline.)

Update: I see that Anthony has put a copyright notice on his blog, which is sensible, and I'm not taking it as aimed here because I'm careful about fair use of intellectual property. Just the same, I've deleted a lot of the text from Wondering Willis' article and just left sufficient to comment on the portions that I found most striking, as fits the "fair use" definition.

Sou 23 November 2014

---

On the strength of WUWT

From here:

...The strength of WUWT is not that it is always right or that it publishes only the best stuff that’s guaranteed to be valid....

Willis argues that it is a strength to publish a myriad of crap, regardless of whether or not it is "guaranteed to be valid".

On educating scientists

From here:

...When Anthony publishes scientific claims from the edges of the field, generally they are quickly either confirmed or falsified. This is hugely educational for scientists of all kinds, to know how to counter some of the incorrect arguments, as well as giving room for those unusual ideas which tomorrow may be mainstream ideas....

For some very odd reason, Willis thinks that proper scientists are not only aware of, but are educated by the sort of nonsense splashed about at WUWT.

On what is not Anthony's job

From here:

...So it is not Anthony’s job to determine whether or not the work of the guest authors will stand the harsh light of public exposure. That’s the job of the peer reviewers, who are you and I and everyone making defensible supported scientific comments. Even if Anthony had a year to analyze and dissect each piece, he couldn’t do that job. ...

My emphasis. That has to be the most scathing comment on Anthony Watts by one of his supposed allied that I've ever read. There is more, this time on the value of publishing complete and utter rubbish, again with my emphasis:

It is not Anthony’s job to decide if mine or any other ideas and expositions and claims will withstand that test of time … and indeed, it is often of value for him to publish things that will not stand the test of time, so that we can understand exactly where they are lacking.

On the beauty and value of "public peer review"

From here:

...The beauty and value of WUWT that it is the world’s premier location for public peer review of climate science. On a personal level, the public peer review afforded by WUWT is of immense use to me, because my work either gets falsified or not very quickly … or else, as in this case, there’s an interesting ongoing debate. ...

---

Footnote

The quotes shown in the above damning indictment on Anthony Watts and WUWT are all verbatim from Anthony's supposed ally, Wondering Willis Eschenbach (with my headings and bold underline for emphasis). With friends like Willis, who needs enemies?

Denier weirdness: An economic interlude with Wondering Willis Eschenbach

This article has little if anything to do with climate. It's about economics. It's about ignorance of basic economics.

At WUWT, Willis Eschenbach has written an inordinately long follow-up article to his silly criticism of the Kaya Identity (archived here, further update here, latest update here). Now the Kaya Identity can be criticised for its limitations, but Willis' criticisms are so wide of the mark they fall into the ludicrous category. Here it is again:

CO2 emissions = Population x (GDP/Population) x (Energy/GDP) x (CO2/Energy)

As you'll recall, his first shot at it was because he reckoned that anything could be substituted for GDP, including the production of beer. That's dumb because beer production only accounts for a miniscule component of GDP and only a miniscule amount of CO2 emissions. Total CO2 emissions are related to more than the production from breweries.

Now Willis is claiming it's wrong because when he drives his car on the Lincoln Highway he reckons CO2 is emitted (it is) but he thinks that the fact of him driving doesn't contribute to GDP (it does). Fuel purchase is counted as part of GDP. The purchase of his car was counted as part of GDP when he bought it.

After numerous people have pointed out that he's wrong, Willis shows that he doesn't know what the "D" in GDP stands for, and reemphasises the fact that he hasn't got the first clue about GDP or its components. Willis Eschenbach says, quoting UnfrozenCavemanMD:

July 12, 2014 at 10:57 am
UnfrozenCavemanMD says: July 12, 2014 at 9:09 am
I think you need to come up with a better objection than
“I’m burning energy, and I’m emitting CO2, but I’m not part of the GDP. “
If you filled up at a gas station and paid money for your fuel, your CO2 producing activity most certainly is part of the GDP. If you stop and by a sandwich, that activity is also part of the GDP, and if the ingredients of that sandwich were farmed and transported using fossil fuel, then it contains an implicit CO2 production as well.

Thanks, Caveman, but nope. I’m buying fuel inter alia from Saudi Arabia, where it is counted correctly as part of their GDP, and thus it can’t be part of ours.
w.

Does he not know that "D" is for domestic or does Willis think that Saudi Arabia is part of the USA?

Urban heating and what drives it

I was surprised that Anthony Watts hasn't copied and pasted a press release about a new paper on urban heat island effect. It's one of his very favourite subjects. I guess he missed it.

The paper has been published in Nature and I spotted the press release about it a couple of days ago when scanning ScienceDaily.com. The article describes research from scientists Lei Zhao, Xuhui Lee, Ronald B. Smith and Keith Oleson. It's an international collaboration. The scientists hail from Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Yale University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

What they did was look in some detail at the various contributions to warming associated with the growth of towns and cities. In particular, they analysed data for 65 cities across North America.

Urban heating has implications not just from a comfort perspective but from a health perspective. Research on the subject can help cities mitigate against this human-caused warming.

After dark, the main contributor to urban heating is the buildings and roads etc releasing heat stored during the day. That confirmed what was already thought.

During the daytime, however, it's related to the efficiency of convection and humidity. As described in the abstract:  "If urban areas are aerodynamically smoother than surrounding rural areas, urban heat dissipation is relatively less efficient and urban warming occurs (and vice versa)."

There's more. Here is an extract from ScienceDaily.com

Their results reaffirmed the consensus view that, regardless of the local climate, the release of heat stored in human-built structures is the dominant contributor to UHI during the nighttime.

But during the daytime, researchers found, convection is the dominant factor -- particularly in "wetter" cities of the southeastern United States. In those places, the smooth surfaces of buildings and other human-made features are far less conducive to heat diffusion than the densely vegetated areas that surround them. Overall, in wetter climates urbanization reduces convection efficiency by 58 percent.

"The 'rougher' surfaces of the vegetation triggers turbulence, and turbulence removes heat from the surface to the atmosphere," said Lei Zhao, a doctoral student at F&ES and lead author of the study. "But where there is a smoother surface, there is less convection and the heat will be trapped in the surface."

Convection plays a key role in drier cities, too -- albeit with far different consequences. In those settings -- including in urban areas of the U.S. Southwest where surrounding vegetation is typically shorter and scrubbier -- the rural areas are less effective at dissipating heat. As a result, the urban landscapes are actually 20 percent more efficient in removing heat than their rural surroundings, triggering a 1.5-degree C cooling within the cities.

That's interesting. I wonder if Anthony Watts has compared temperature trends in drier cities and surrounding rural areas with those in wetter cities and surrounding rural areas?

---

Lei Zhao, Xuhui Lee, Ronald B. Smith, Keith Oleson. "Strong contributions of local background climate to urban heat islands". Nature, 2014; 511 (7508): 216 DOI: 10.1038/nature13462

Denier weirdness: Christopher Monckton and his 100% consensus

There was a good display of inconsistency of science deniers today when Christopher Monckton wrote an article for Anthony Watts' anti-science blog WUWT (archived here). What he was trying to show, I think, is that the clear scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming isn't clear. He's wrong, as anyone who has read the literature would know very well.

The article demonstrates something else that all "denier watchers" would know. Deniers are deluded when it comes to their understanding of what their fellow deniers think. Many of them assume that all fake sceptics think the same way as they do. They are wrong. The two characteristic of deniers en masse are:

1. They reject mainstream science
2. They embody a myriad of conflicting and contradictory opinions about climate and rarely agree with each other, except on point 1.

The Christopher Monckton deception

This is what he did.

Christopher showed that 64 abstracts from scientific papers from the Cook13 study "Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming" with quantification.

This is what he left out.

Christopher didn't mention the number of abstracts that "Explicitly states humans are causing global warming or refers to anthropogenic global warming/climate change as a known fact" without quantification or that "Implies humans are causing global warming. E.g., research assumes greenhouse gas emissions cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause".

Nor did Christopher mention how few abstracts either implicitly or explicitly disputed the fact that humans cause global warming  (fewer than 2% over twenty years). That would have spoiled his story completely.

If you're not familiar with the paper, I've written about it a few times, for example here and here and here. For a more in-depth discussion there is a very good article at And Then There's Physics which explores the importance and implications of the 97% consensus paper of John Cook and his colleagues.

97% agree, humans are causing global warming

If he had included all the information instead of cherry picking to suit his deception, Christopher would have come up with a total of 4014 papers that attribute a cause to current global warming as follows: 3896 papers or 97.1% explicitly or implicitly endorsed human-caused global warming, 78 or 1.9% disputed it and 40 or 1.0% indicated the cause was 'uncertain'.

Guess what disinformer Anthony Watts isn't telling his readers

Talking about spin. A short while ago I wrote about how a blog article on WUWT by Rachel DeJong misquoted Gina McCarthy of the EPA. Anthony Watts is doing the same thing (archived here).

He's gloating over some US poll, by Rassmussen Reports, which is regarded by some people as being somewhat to the right politically. But that is not the point. Earlier this week Rasmussen Reports asked several questions of 1,000 likely voters:

1. * How closely have you followed recent news reports about global warming?
2. * How serious a problem is global warming?
3. * An increasing number of news organizations are now banning articles or TV appearances by those who think global warming is not a serious, man-made problem. Do you favor or oppose the decision by some news organizations to ban global warming skeptics?
4. * Is the scientific debate about global warming over?
5. * Does the media make global warming appear to be worse than it really is, better than it really is or do they present an accurate picture?

NOTE: Margin of Sampling Error, +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence

Only 14% believe global warming to be "not at all serious"

Anthony Watts was very selective in what he told his readers. This is some of what he didn't tell his readers. The stereotype of a climate science denier is supported by the poll.

• Based on the results reported by Rassmussen, deniers are more likely to be older, male and vote Republican.
• Although only 60% of respondents agreed global warming is a serious problem, 35% thought it very serious.  Another 35% thought it wasn't all that serious. 
• What deniers won't like is that only 14% of respondents believed global warming to be not at all serious.

You can read the write up of the survey results here. It includes some results from previous surveys as well, such as the results of a May poll, which found that  "just 30% of voters think the president should take action alone if necessary to deal with global warming.  Twice as many (59%) say the federal government should only do what the president and Congress jointly agree on."

Looking back at past Rasmussen poll results, it appears that there could be an upward trend in the number of people in the USA who think global warming is a serious problem.

What Anthony Watts did tell his readers

This is how Anthony Watts reported the results, quoting directly from Rasmussen Reports:

From Rasmussen Reports:

Voters strongly believe the debate about global warming is not over yet and reject the decision by some news organizations to ban comments from those who deny that global warming is a problem.

Only 20% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the scientific debate about global warming is over, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Sixty-three percent (63%) disagree and say the debate about global warming is not over. Seventeen percent (17%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Forty-eight percent (48%) of voters think there is still significant disagreement within the scientific community over global warming, while 35% believe scientists generally agree on the subject.

The BBC has announced a new policy banning comments from those who deny global warming, a policy already practiced by the Los Angeles Times and several other media organizations.  But 60% of voters oppose the decision by some news organizations to ban global warming skeptics. Only 19% favor such a ban, while slightly more (21%) are undecided.
But then 42% believe the media already makes global warming appear to be worse than it really is. Twenty percent (20%) say the media makes global warming appear better than it really is, while 22% say they present an accurate picture. Sixteen percent (16%) are not sure.
Still, this is an improvement from February 2009 when 54% thought the media makes global warming appear worse than it is. Unchanged, however, are the 21% who say the media presents an accurate picture.

That's where he stopped. He didn't let on about findings that might be disturbing to the fragile egos of his audience. Such as that only 14% of respondents believe global warming is not at all serious.

The US public is ignorant of the science

The finding that almost half of those surveyed mistakenly think that there is significant disagreement in the scientific community about global warming shows the importance of studies of scientific consensus. More importantly, it highlights the importance of communicating the findings of those studies.