Graham,

Why is this article in the "Environment" section?

Clearly it's political with a religious zealot slant.

"Ginx, I know about the bias in online surveys because I conduct more online surveys on politics than anyone else in the country. Opinion polling is part of what I do for a living." (GY)

Your original comment in itself shows bias. Something I feel that cannot be avoided, because no matter who we represent;-what we are required to do;-we are individuals, with individual thought processes. Williams is no different. You allege bias on his part. Your reference to his father's activities were a clear indication of YOUR bias against Williams.

It's easily done isn't it? Because it is part of the human condition.

( And quite frankly Graham, if you are conducting more online political surveys than anyone else in the country...; I'm astonished at your assertion that most of them are Left biased!! Eh?)

"You also seem to be making a mistake in suggesting that the AGW issue is one of politics." (GY)

PLEASE. Credit me with a modicum of intelligence! :-

"There seems to be a general demarcation between the global warming deny-er Right, and the global warming believer Left. In general." (Moi)

In GENERAL.

And for the record, I was not referring to politics-I have left that to you-I was referring to philosophy. Truly.
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jc2;-nice to see you on the site, you have come in very handy on this thread.....

OMG Robyn Williams had friends who recieved calls from Bertrand Russell, and has been involved with radical causes! And he works for the ABC! He's probably even a godless atheist scientist! The commies - the commies are everywhere!!

Reading this thread, I'm reminded of the old advice about never arguing with a fool.

From what I've read so far, fools can also be highly-educated. Nevertheless, they're still fools.

Just a comment on the state of public opinion on climate change.

The 2004 Australian Election Study, conducted by the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, asked interviewees to respond to the question:

"E.5. In your opinion, how urgent are each of the following environmental concerns in this country?... The greenhouse effect"

on a scale of 1 to 5, on which 1 represented "Not Urgent", 3 represented "Fairly Urgent", 4 represented "Urgent" and 5 represented "Very Urgent".

23.6% of respondents rated the issue "Fairly Urgent", 24.0% rated it "Urgent" and 41.5% rated it "Very Urgent". Only 3.5% rated it "Not Urgent". This was in a study which found that a majority of respondents held views which could fairly be characterised as right of centre on a range of political and social issues, and were generally supportive of the then Howard government.

Given the progress of the climate change debate since 2004 and the shift in general public sentiment represented by the 2007 Federal election result, it is probable that public opinion on climate change would, if anything, have shifted further towards the "Very Urgent" end of the spectrum utilised by the 2004 AES researchers.

In short, Robyn Williams does have some basis in reputable empirical political science for invoking the "90 per cent" figure.

I hope you're kidding about the options Dr Paul. If you've got them right they don't rate a pass because the centre point is biased towards one side of the argument. And anyway, Williams was referring to a specific Climate Institute survey, although it was no better constructed than you say the one you cite was.