h/t Judith Curry

From A-CNN comes this report:

“In shocking news first reported a week ago, businessman Donald Trump has converted to Catholicism and has now declared his candidacy for Pope. Today’s announcement coincides with critical statements Pope Francis made about Mr. Trump not being a Christian. Mr. Trump just held a rally outside of New York City. Although video is not available, A-CNN has just acquired the audio transcript which we are providing below:
Thank you….thank you. You know, when I first started this campaign, people didn’t believe me. First they said, he’s not converting, he’ll never convert. Then I converted. Then they said, he’ll never get baptized, he won’t want the water to mess up his hair. But then I got baptized. Then they said he won’t get confirmed, and I got confirmed. And then they said he’d never run for pope. Well here I am, and I’m running for Pope; and I’m doing very well I must say.

The whole article (here) is a hoot, but here are my favorite parts from the speech “transcript”:

Trump takes Francis to task for ignoring the real problem

You know, it’s a sad thing to say, but the Church is in such bad shape; terrible shape under Francis. The Catholic Church doesn’t win anymore. We just don’t. When is the last time Catholics won anything? Lepanto? When was that, the 1500’s? We don’t win anymore. But, let me just say, Under a Trump papacy, we are going to win again. We are going to win so much. We are going to win so much you are all going to be sick of winning, ok? But right now, it’s terrible. Just the other day, I see the Pope is praising Martin Luther. Martin Luther! Can you believe it?
(Boos)

Our Pope is over there praising Martin Luther; meanwhile millions of Hispanics are converting to Protestantism in Latin America. It’s true. We are losing millions and millions of people to the Protestants and our Pope does nothing. He does nothing. And I have nothing against the Protestants. Many of them are good people. I employ thousands of Protestants. I used to be a Protestant. But their leaders are just too smart for our leaders. We have people in power in the Church today who have no idea what they are doing. They are incompetent. All our leaders do is “dialogue.” We don’t convert anymore, we “dialogue.” What the hell is dialogue? Excuse me, but shouldn’t we be converting these people? If we have the Truth, why aren’t we converting them? But we don’t convert, we “dialogue”, and we lose millions and millions of these people to Protestantism. They are saying if the head of the Catholic Church thinks it’s ok to be Protestant, why convert? Why do we need to convert? Let him convert. Let the Pope convert. That’s what they’re saying. They’re laughing at us. There is no respect there. No respect. When I’m Pope, they are going to respect us again, let me tell you.
(Cheers, applause)

Trump says traditional practices have been abandoned

You ever notice today that all the nuns dress like Hillary? When did that happen? When did nuns start dressing like Hillary? It’s scary. It’s really scary. Anyway, you have some layperson up there and they read the Gospel and say some words and do this and that and then they hand out the Communion that the priest already consecrated. The priest isn’t even there, he just consecrated the hosts. So in other words, he’s disposable. But then they’ll say, but he can hear confessions. He can hear confessions, but who goes to confession? Who goes to confession nowadays? When the Pope says “Who Am I to Judge” who goes to confession?
(Boos)

That is why when I’m Pope we are going to make the priesthood great again.
(Cheers, applause)

We are going to make the priesthood so exclusive. I tell you. So exclusive and so special, you have no idea. We are going to have the best priests, the brightest priests. They will be lining up to enter the seminaries. And the seminaries will be the best seminaries, let me just tell you. No more dopey professors. The seminaries are a mess today, they’re a disgrace. You might as well have Bernie Sanders running our seminaries that’s how bad they are. They’re filled with dopey professors from the 60’s. Their brains are burnt from whatever they smoked. Who knows what they smoked back then, God only knows what they smoked. But they’ll be gone, I promise you, they’ll be gone.
(Cheers, applause)

Trump will make the Mass great again

So anyway, that was my first experience at Mass, folks, and I almost left to tell you the truth. This Mass was bad, I almost left, but then someone told me that this was the “New Mass.” Apparently there was an “Old Mass” and now there is a “New Mass” it’s called the Novus Ordo have you heard of it?
(Boos)

That is apparently what I attended, but I had no idea, I thought it was just the Mass. That it had always been the Mass. But no, this form of the Mass was apparently made up in 1969 by a Pope Paul VI. Sort of like by executive order, if you want to know the truth. He put it in like Obama, even though he had no consensus for it, he puts it in anyway and there you go. Well, I have to tell you folks, under a Trump papacy we are going to repeal and replace the Novus Ordo.
(Wild cheers, applause)

Francis has taken his eye off the ball and follows modern fads

Maybe we go back to Latin. I’m a big fan of the Latin. When we used Latin we were number one. We went to English and now the Muslims outnumber us. They kept Arabic they go to number one, we ditch Latin, we go to number two. I’m just saying. Are there any Trads in the audience? Where are my Trads? Are there any Trads here?
(Cheers, applause)

I have to say that I love the Trads. Under this pope, the Trads get treated like second class citizens. He calls them, what’s the word? “Neo-Pelagians.” “Neo-Pelagians,” you believe that? By the way, why is the Pope always calling us names? He’s always calling us names. He never calls the Muslims names, the Protestants names. But he calls us names. He’s really not a very nice guy in my opinion, ok? He’s actually sort of a nasty guy. Isn’t calling a whole group of Catholics Neo-Pelagians, kind of nasty? And, by the way, did you see the papers today? Today he said I’m not a Christian because I want to build a wall to protect our country’s border? Can you believe it, folks? Just unbelievable.
(Boos)

Trump will keep his focus down to earth

I think we should also maybe build a wall around the Vatican so the pope can’t get on an airplane again, let me tell you. Too many interviews on the airplane. Way too many interviews.
(Cheers, applause)

And isn’t this the pope who’s always talking about the greenhouse gases and the carbon footprint and harming the earth? But yet he keeps flying all over the world on these big 747’s belching all kinds of pollutants all over the place. Why? To give interviews? Do you want your pope flying around giving interviews or making the Church great again? I’d be at the Vatican every day making us win again, let me tell you.

(Cheers, applause)

A woman walks past a map showing the elevation of the sea in the last 22 years during the World Climate Change Conference 2015 near Paris. A new study asked 5,000 Canadians their opinions on the cause of climate change. (Stephane Mahe/Reuters)

As a Canadian living near Montreal, I was of course curious about this survey:
The distribution of climate change public opinion in Canada
Mildenberger et al. 2015 (here)

CBC created some controversy by switching headlines on its report of the findings.
First the title was:
Climate change: Majority of Canadians don’t believe it’s caused by humans
Then it changed to:
Canadians divided over human role in climate change, study suggests

I’m wondering what really was learned from this survey.

What Was Asked and Answered

With any survey, it is important to look at the actual questions asked and answered. While we do not have access to specific responses, the script for the telephone interviews is available. The first two questions asked about global warming (not climate change).

Survey Questionnaire

1. “From what you’ve read and heard, is there solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past four decades?”
Yes
No
Don’t Know (volunteered)

2. [If yes, solid evidence] “Is the earth getting warmer mostly because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels or mostly because of natural patterns in the earth’s environment?”

Human Activity
Natural Patterns
Combination (volunteered)
Not sure / Refused (volunteered)

The finding reported in the Study:

Our results reveal, for the first time, the enormous diversity of Canadian climate and energy opinions at the local level.

At the national level, 79% of Canadians believe climate change is happening but only 44% think climate change is caused mostly by human activities.

So the 79% who said there’s solid evidence of warming the last 40 years got a followup question: mostly caused by human activity or mostly natural? Slightly more than half said mostly human, thus a result of 44% believing both that it is warming and that humans are mostly to blame.

Now some people were unwilling to decide between mostly human and mostly natural, and volunteered that it was a combination. This fraction of respondents was recorded as partially human caused, and they added 17% to bring the number up to 61%. The remaining 39% combines people who don’t accept evidence on warming and those who think warming is mostly natural or are uncertain about both issues.

From having done opinion surveys in the past, I suspect that many who were uncertain between human or natural causes didn’t want to say “don’t know”, and instead said it was a “combination”. Thus the group counted as “partially human-caused” is a soft number.

My suspicions are reinforced by a question that was asked and not included in this report: “How much do you feel you know about global warming?” Typically about 25% say they know a lot, 60% say they know a little, and the rest less than a little. As we know from other researchers more climate knowledge increases skepticism for many, so it is likely the soft number includes many who feel they really don’t know.

This process does determine a survey result about the size of the population who believes warming is happening and mostly caused by humans.  Everything else is subject to interpretation, including how much is due to land use, urbanization or fossil fuel emissions.  The solid finding is displayed in the diagram below:

Yes, the map shows I am living in a hotbed of global warming believers around Montreal; well, it is 55%, as high as it gets in Canada.

Responses on Carbon Pricing
Now consider the script for the last two questions on policy options

3. “There is a proposed system called cap and trade where the government issues permits limiting the amount of greenhouse gases companies can put out. If a company exceeds their limit, they will have to buy more permits. If they don’t use all of their permits, they will be able to sell or trade them to others who exceed their cap. The idea is that companies will find ways to put out less greenhouse gases because that would be cheaper than buying permits.

Do you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose this type of system for your province?”

Strongly support
Somewhat support
Somewhat oppose
Strongly oppose
Not sure / Refused (volunteered)

4. “Another way to lower greenhouse gas emissions is to increase taxes on carbon based fuels such as coal, oil, gasoline and natural gas. Do you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose this type of system?”

Strongly support
Somewhat support
Somewhat oppose
Strongly oppose
Not sure / Refused (volunteered)

And the finding is (from the report):
Despite this variation in core beliefs about climate change, we find widespread public support for climate policies. Support is greatest and most consistent for emissions trading. . . The overall pattern is clear: there is majority support for emissions trading in every Canadian district.

We find larger variation in support for a carbon tax across the country. At the national level, support for carbon taxation at 49% is just below a majority, with opposition at 44%.

Now here is the underlying motivation for the survey: to determine the level of support in the Canadian population for government action to increase the price of carbon-based energy. Not surprisingly, people who mostly know only a little about this like the sound of companies footing the bill for policies, more than the government raising my taxes. With a little more knowledge they will understand that cap and trade increases the cost of energy within all of the products and services they use, and therefore raises the price of pretty much everything. It is a hidden tax completely without accountability.

I described in some detail how this is already at work in Quebec by virtue of the province joining California’s carbon market: https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/04/15/quebec-joins-california-carbon-market/

Conclusion

No one should be surprised that those conducting this survey think they know the correct answers and want the population to agree with them. The sponsors include numerous organizations advocating for carbon pricing:

Thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Fonds de Recherche du Québec – Société et Culture, the Skoll Global Threats Fund, the Energy Foundation, and the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment for financial support. Funding for individual survey waves was provided by the Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie, the Public Policy Forum, Sustainable Prosperity, Canada 2020, l’Institut de l’énergie Trottier and la Chaire d’études politiques et économiques américaines.

And as we have seen with virtually all marketing-type surveys, opinion-makers know that conducting surveys is itself an intervention to raise awareness and concern about the issue