Mine in the desert – climate change or natural desert?

The Institute of Actuaries of Australia does a quick (36 seconds is the promise) survey of its members once a month, reported in its imaginatively titled magazine Actuary Australia. Of the 345 respondents (self selected, but a good proportion of all the actuaries in Australia) 35% don’t believe that global warming is happening at all.

I find that a bit depressing, that at a time when even the small number of climate change sceptical scientists still remaining are starting to believe that global warming is happening, but just that it is not caused by human kind, actuaries are still sceptics in such numbers. It’s our training to be sceptical, but our training is also to respond to evidence without emotion.

2 Comments

  1. 35%!??!????? That’s quite extraordinary. On the other hand, I seem to remember that a rather higher number of Americans believe in UFOs. And we all evidently believe in statistics 🙂

  2. It takes an actuary to promise 36 seconds. Why not just “about half a minute”?

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