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Have you ever wondered what percentage of professional climatologists believe that human activity is causing the earth's temperature to rise?

A study published in the January 2009 newsletter of the American Geophysical Union, the professional association of earth scientists, found that while nearly 90 percent of some 3,000 climatologists who responded agreed that there was evidence of human-driven climate change, 80 percent of all earth scientists and 64 percent of meteorologists agreed with the statement. Only economic geologists who specialized in industrial uses of materials like oil and coal were more skeptical.

This comes from a NY Times story about the schism between meteorologists and climatologists regarding climate change:

"In a sense the question is who owns the atmosphere: the people who predict it every day or the people who predict it for the next 50 years?" said Bob Henson, a science writer for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, who trained as a meteorologist and has followed the divide between the two groups.

Resentment may also play a role in the divide. Climatologists are almost always affiliated with universities or research institutions where a doctoral degree is required. Most meteorologists, however, can get jobs as weather forecasters with a college degree.

"There is a little bit of elitist-versus-populist tensions," Mr. Henson said. "There are meteorologists who feel, 'Just because I have a bachelor's degree doesn't mean I don't know what's going on.'"

So how many meteorologists actually believe that climate change is man-made?

A study released on Monday by researchers at George Mason University and the University of Texas at Austin found that only about half of the 571 television weather-casters surveyed believed that global warming was occurring and fewer than a third believed that climate change was "caused mostly by human activities.

More than a quarter of the weather-casters in the survey agreed with the statement "Global warming is a scam," the researchers found.

This is simply astounding! More than a quarter of meteorologists surveyed think that global warming is a scam? How many of them work for Fox News? (note: only 41% of the 1,373 contacted filled out the questionnaire, for which they were paid $30, btw).

Who are you going to trust to tell you what's going on in the long-term climate? The professional climatologists or the day-to-day meteorologists? Or that other climate change "experts" - the economic geologists?

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