53 thoughts on “Do Richard Tols survey!”

  4. I would have been more worried about climate policy but I have faith in the inability of government to actually inact a policy.

  6. @John
    Your faith may be misplaced. In Europe, there are a host of climate policies that do little to reduce emissions but do hurt the economy. The US is poised to follow that example.

  7. @Richard Tol,

    It is certainly true that European governments are wasting significant quantities of money of various kinds of green washing. But in the grand scheme of government waste, are these sums really all that significant? Governments waste money all the time on the obsession de jour, and I’m not sure that green washing is really that much worse than many other fashions we have all lived through.

  8. @Jonathan,
    Most of the European climate policies (feed in tarifs and green certificates) are paid for by the consumer as a kind of extra tax on energy. It not like its taken from wasteful bureaucracy or justice system or healthcare (if you consider the latter Waste). So yes, the greenwash hurts, especially in Germany where you pay the most or Italy and Spain that can ill afford it.

  9. @Richard Tol

    The American public seems to be unwilling to pay more than the equivalent of $.05 – $.10 per gallon for climate policies.
    http://woods.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/files/Krosnick-FLMAME-SurveyReport-Aug2010.pdf

    Given that we have been funding the HUTF from general fund transfers, much of that is likely to be redirected to fund transportation improvements would might actually be beneficial. Otherwise I doubt the Democrats can get anything through the GOP controlled House.

  13. we need to beat the bushes for more AGW believers..Its lonely being at the extreme ends of this poll

  14. I was fairly close to the crowd’s view on most of the subjects. The one that puzzles me is Dellingpole. Dellers, friendly? WUWT? It looks like the crowd is all over the place on him too.

  15. I think I would have preferred a range from naughty to nice. Then Santa would have something to work with at the end of the year.

  16. I’m also curious as to how opinions differ based on cultural familiarity. Here in the US I don’t read Monbiot or Dellingpole except when linked by the sources I do read.

    I like the coverage this poll is getting. Numbers jumping by around 100 per hour it seems. Plus I suspect that the poll is being hit heavily by DellersMum and LukwarmersMum. 🙂

    Edit: Oh, I see Anthony Watts has linked it. Hope Google servers can handle the load.

  17. Earl–
    I don’t rarely read Monbiot couldn’t remember much about his position on the ‘nice/nasty’ scale, so I put an intermediate answer. I’ve read Delingpole, and see lots of his tweets. While I sometimes agree with him, I put him on the nasty side. ‘Cuz he is. And I suspect it’s even on purpose to some extent.

  18. Ya, I rated Dellingpole a Nasty as well, as that seems to be his shtick. Could be that is seen as friendly by many.

  21. Lucia,

    Don’t wait too long to do the UAH post. I have a very good feeling about it! 🙂

  26. Well, up to 140 responses the answers looked somewhat consistent.. now? appears as though somebody bombed it with garbage votes

  27. Steven Mosher,
    It would be easy to write a script to bomb it. But suggesting someone might do so would reveal ‘conspiracy ideation’. 🙂

  29. I just took the survey and then viewed the summary of responses… and I nearly fell off my chair. It appears that Richard Tol has created his own 97% consensus… 97% of people rate themselves as “Very worried about the impacts of climate policy”.

  30. AGW could exist if Human beings produced enough energy or CO2
    to increase the thermal load in the earths atmosphere. Alternative methods could also work e.g. painting/coating the earth’s surface black to absorb heat [or white if one wanted AG Cooling.]. The amount of heat coming in [and leaving the earth each day is on orders of magnitude so vastly different that human heat output is negligible and always will be.
    Steve Mosher believes that CO2 increase of itself must scientifically lead to warming [AGW]. and technically he is right except…
    one, there is no step by step link to show this is happening. The CO2 goes up but the temperature goes up down and sideways and never in kilter with the CO2 rise.Obviously there are “natural variations” but there is no link and he knows this.
    secondly there may be confounding reasons that lead to greater outgoing radiation when the CO2 levels go up. The extra heat retention may cause more cloud, thinner atmosphere. more reflectiveness of the atmosphere whatever that counter balances the pure physics of CO2 alone.
    If such forces exist [a little more likely than the deep heat in the oceans rubbish] He should be prepared to be more skeptical than he currently allows himself to be.
    PS better to drag the oceans than beat the bushes to find AGW believer’s at the moment Steve

  32. I clicked on the link but didn’t take the poll. I sort of get the point, but I’m not comfortable rating these folks – most of them – on the scale provided. I don’t imagine anyone cares, but feel free to rebut.

  33. Joe Romm rates a 3 on a nasty (1) to nice (5) scale? Obviously most people taking the poll have not actually read what Joe Romm writes about his political adversaries. I was thinking that Joe needed a special nasty to nice range of -5 to 1; any value above 1 is similar to saying Dick Nixon was completely honest.

  34. Could Romm be like Delingpole (at least in US)? Few people have savored his astonishing attacks on perfectly reasonable doubters.

  35. @SteveF
    Poll was polluted by bots. I’ll separate the bots from the humans, and show stats for both. As it stands, bots like Romm much better than humans do.

  36. @SteveF
    Poll was polluted by bots. I’ll separate the bots from the humans, and show stats for both. As it stands, bots like Romm much better than humans do.

    #############
    where to separate will be an interesting decision Dr. Tol. I’m sure however you do it, Brandon will be along to make disparaging remarks.

  38. Richard Tol,
    “Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and Brandon’s disparagement.”
    I have heard from Brandon himself that he is actually a model of civility, generosity, and kindness in all his blog comments. Of course, I rather doubt that is a POV which exists anywhere outside Brandon’s head.

  41. Richard Tol,
    Ahhh!! Well, those can be programmed more quickly. I’ve never programmed a bot to do that, but I wrote a Firefox add on to help people change User agents and IPs while spamming an SkS survey.

    That said: If anyone accused me of doing this or suggestd that people would actually do it that suggestion would be “conspiracy ideation”. We know this because Recursive Fury tells us so. And it’s “conspiracy ideation” whether or not people conspired to spam the survey. Recursive Fury also taught us that. It was a truly inspiring paper. And inspired me to write the add on!

  42. I hope that what I am seeing on display here is Richard Tol’s sense of humor in showing us the silliness of (most) polls.

    I have seen on some cable TV shows the waste of time it is to engage in tit for tat discussions with those where you will not get a reasoned response or a logical discussion. In those cases the participants who make the best points are usually those that ignore the unreasoned statements and responses and simply make their points as though the other person had not spoken. That, in my mind, is the proper response to a Cook and a Lewandowsky.

  43. Lucia: “Dang!! I’m not famous enough.”

    Do not ask for whom the Tol polls.
    He polls not for thee.

  45. HaroldW, that was a chuckler, but in context should not it be:

    Perchance he for whom this Tol polls may be so ill as that he knows not it
    polls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as
    that they who are about me and see my state, may have caused it to poll for me,
    and I know not that.

  46. Lucia writes “I don’t think you want to see some of the candidates in swimsuits”

    That’s nasty! 😉

  47. HarroldW writes “Do not ask for whom the Tol polls….”

    And is brilliant 🙂

  49. I hadn’t intended to say a word about this topic, but since you guys went out of your way to talk about me, I’ll say this:

    Stay classy folks.

  50. HarroldW writes “Do not ask for whom the Tol polls….”

    And is brilliant 🙂

    Richard Tol tweeted and linked it!

    That’s nasty! 😉

    Yeah. But do you want to see Gavin in a swimsuit? (Not that I’m any great shakes. I’ve let myself really chub out. Need to go do my ‘trudge’ now…)

  51. Brandon Shollenberger (Comment #118149)
    August 4th, 2013 at 8:49 am

    “I hadn’t intended to say a word about this topic, but since you guys went out of your way to talk about me, I’ll say this”

    Brandon, better reaction. Just so that no one thinks I hide anything, I judge that Brandon had it right in his criticism of Tol and his analysis of the Cook survey.

  52. if there were more than one Tol poll, would they collectively be the Tol polloi.

  53. Perhaps this exercise is intended to demonstrate that conclusions based on a self-selected Internet survey are worthless.

    That’s the sole Tol poll goal.

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