I slightly mistook the AMS sentiments as reported by Forbes. According to
the survey of Meterologists in Feb 12 2012 The found:
89% thought global warming was happening
4% thought NOT
7% didn't know
Of these 46% were extremely sure, and 37% very sure.
Only 12% of the Nos were extremely sure.
Causes
59% human activiey
11% equally human and natural
23% said we could not determine
6% mostly natural
1% didn't know
Of the future problems:
38% very harmful
38% somewhat harmful
12% neutral
2% beneficial
0.4% very beneficial
10% don't know
So the consensus of meterologists is very positive (70%) on anthropogenic
global warming, which is lower than the extremely positive concensus of
climatologists.
Of course what Forbes said was that people say "97% of scientists" agree
with anthropogenic global warming, and in reality most publications that I
have seen say that 97% of climate scientists agree. Also Forbes ignores the
fact that 74% of meterologists think it will be harmful. They only quoted
the very harmful percentage and pretended that this was a minority view.
Lest anyone have doubts, this has become a political football Andre Revkin,
a Republican meteorologist, pointed out:
"How did so much of the Republican Party enter perpetual denial? We've
turned climate science into a bizarre litmus test for conservatism. To
pretend that heat-trapping gases can be waved away with a nod and a smirk is
political fairytale."
So just as the politicians ignore science when they penalize earthquake
specialists, they ignore the concensus of climate specialists. Again I say
the teaching of science didactically as if it is religious dogma has bred a
gross misunderstanding of science. The general public and politicians do
not nut understand that science involves firm laws, strong theories
(models), but also randomness that makes some things unpredictable or
marginally predictable. I have data that less than 1% of HS graduates
understand statistical reasoning, and these were the upper half of the
class. So how can you expect most politicians to understand it when most
have had little real scientific training.
I would love to see all of them be required to take some of the current HS
standardized tests and see how well they do. Perhaps we should have an
amendment to the constitution for this, and just publicize the results.
Then maybe some of the most radical uninformed politicians will go away.