Monday, November 28, 2011

Reinhard Böhm surveys visitors of ZAMG


   Reinhard Böhm of the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geophysik (ZAMG) in Vienna, i.e., the Austrian weather service, has used "our" survey (cf. previous applications: http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2011/07/neue-ad-hoc-umfrage.html, http://klimazwiebel.blogspot.com/2011/06/ad-hoc-umfrage-unter-kreuzfahrt.html) to learn something about the views held by the visitors on their "open day" on October 1, 2012. Results are available here http://www.zamg.ac.at/klima/Klimawandel/Aktuelles/2011/2011-10-13.php (in German).

About 2000 visitors showed up; 214 filled in the survey; of these about 80% ticked off "interested citizens", less than 10% considered themselves "academics close to climate science". About 45% considered themselves "skeptics", which went along with more than 90% supporting the view that climate is presently changing (anthropogenic or natural); less than 10% attributed natural causes as main driver behind the warming, about 45% both natural and anthropogenic factors, and a little more than 50% mostly anthropogenic factors. Thus the attribute "skeptic" seems not to imply that the explanation, according to which the elevated levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases would play a significant role in the warming, is false, but that this effect would not be dominant.

Again, the respondents hardly recommended a political "wait and see" attitude, but pointed towards volunteer or enforced reductions of emissions as well as adaptation measures.

By and large, the results are rather similar to those obtained from a much smaller sample of a cruise ship audience.

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