Rasmussen have recently performed a telephone survey on the public perception of scientific attitudes to global warming.  Presumably this was prior to the debuncking of Spencer's paper and resignation of the editor, although I doubt if this would have much effect.  The results are rather depressing (note the misquote of the headline corrected by me in brackets)

"The debate over global warming has intensified in recent weeks after a new NASA study was interpreted by skeptics to reveal that global warming is not man-made. While a majority of Americans nationwide continue to acknowledge significant disagreement about global warming in the scientific community, most go even further to say some scientists falsify data to support their own beliefs.

This doesn't surprise me. A while back I was discussing with my friend about these issues. He believes that the science of anthropogenic global warming is correct and generally has a good understanding of and interest in science. However, he thought that Climategate showed that some English scientists had not been honest in their research. All I needed to do was to tell him that it was all just climate science deniers using selective quotation in order to make it look like they did. He immediately understood the situation.

It is clear to me that explaining the real deal in specialized blogs doesn't carry the message very far. The story of my friend shows that there are lot of well-read people who have bought the denier lies.

A big part of the game is a PR war.

Isn't Rasumussen a conservative polling organization?

It will also be interesting to see what Americans have to say about AGW after the current hurricane season is over. Tropical Storm Lee is saturating Louisiana and Mississippi. Hurricane Katia is taking a bead on the Northeast US coast. I suspect there will be more to come before all is said and done.       

It's possible that this has happened. We don't have tracks of every single climate scientist's background work. But after releasing the juiciest bits of more than a decade of emails they didn't find any evidence of falsification of data (or haven't shown evidence of any yet), which adds a lot to confidence.

Willie Soon seems to have tried fraud, and the results of Lindzen & Choi; Lassen & Friis-Christensen; McLean, deFrietas & Carter plus Spencer & Braswell look suspiciously like fiddling results and hiding contradictions. It's possible they're all innocent (at least, outside of subconscious selectivity) but it wouldn't surrpise me to find out they've also defrauded readers.

Rasmussen definitely has a conservative lean, but it's generally a pretty good polling company.  Most of the questions they asked in the poll seem fine, not leading the surveyed in any particular direction.  This particular question was:

5* In order to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, how likely is it that some scientists have falsified research data?

I can see how people would have answered "somewhat likely" based on the phrasing of that question.  The question itself sort of plants the idea in their head that maybe scientists are falsifying data.  So anyone who had any inkling that maybe some scientists falsified data would answer to the affirmative.  Most of the questions in the poll were good.  This one was not.  It's a challenge to phrase a polling question in a neutral way, but Rasmussen failed on this one.

Like Ari says, Climategate is still in peoples' minds, as are the recent BS headlines about Spencer's paper.  It's a difficult PR situation, as neal says, because most of the media is firmly in the denialist camp.  Not necessarily intentionally, but because they want to be "fair and balanced" and sensationalist, which is why Climategate and Spencer got such widespread attention.  I doubt Dessler's paper or even the journal editor's resignation will get even a fraction as much attention in the MSM.

Maybe there's a blog post in here. Title could be something like: "Climate scientists have indeed committed frauds", followed by a list of peer reviewed frauds by denier "scientists" (perhaps not calling them frauds, though).

From Wiki

TIME has described Rasmussen Reports as a "conservative-leaning polling group".^[29] According to Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist who co-developed Pollster.com,^[30] “He [Rasmussen] polls less favorably for Democrats, and that’s why he’s become a lightning rod." Franklin also said: "It’s clear that his results are typically more Republican than the other person’s results.”^[31]

The Center For Public Integrity has claimed that Scott Rasmussen was a paid consultant for the 2004 George W. Bush campaign.^[32] The Washington Post reported "... the Bush reelection campaign used a feature on his site that allowed customers to program their own polls. Rasmussen asserted that he never wrote any of the questions or assisted Republicans in any way..." The do-it-yourself polling service is used by Democrats as well as Republicans today through a company that licenses Rasmussen’s methodology.

Rasmussen has received criticism over the wording in its polls.^[33][34] Asking a polling question with different wording can affect the results of the poll;^[35] the commentators in question allege that the questions Rasmussen ask in polls are skewed in order to favor a specific response

Agree with perseus - I usually ignore Rasmussen polls. It is very easy to bias a poll. And that 69% is pretty damn extreme since most people really don't know. But it is very easy for the person doing the phone poll to lead people to the 'somewhat likely' soft choice. (who wants to admit they don't know?)