On Science and Scientists, Climate change and the Public – who is thinking clearly?
Just seen the results of this survey from Reuters. Of course we always need to take surveys with a pinch of salt, but I find the results of this particular survey (http://unhub.com/9Vmx) very interesting, particular about current opinions on Climate Change. The problems with surveys is they only leave us with more questions than provide any answers because they never seem to follow up and ask the really interesting things.
First a summary of the survey results with respect to the ’science’ of climate change:
The survey says that “while 84 percent of scientists say the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, less than half of the public agrees with that”.
There are two things of interest to tease out from this. Firstly the ‘public’ view.
Is it that the ‘public’ are in denial of the ’science’ or is it that actually they don’t believe in the models that the scientists are using? Now it would be good to survey that. My money is on the fact that most of the public simply don’t believe the models. If so that would be very interesting as well to know why.
The second thing of interest is the viewpoint of the scientists. This survey showed that 16% of the scientists surveyed did not believe the ’science’. From what you read in the media I would have thought that it was fewer than 5% of scientists who did not agree with the interpretation of the ’science’. Again it would be most interesting to know more about the scientists who are the ‘non-believers’
So this survey would have been far more useful if we could have found out something about those ‘public’ that don’t believe the ’science’ of climate change (or rather the way most scientists are interpreting the data). Are they all people who just want to go on decimating rain forests etc? Are they actually people (like myself) who want to stop burning fossil fuels and decimating the planet, but have no confidence in the models that scientists are using to predict the global effects?
And the 16% of scientists that don’t believe the (interpretation of the) ’science’? Are they all in the pocket of the energy companies? Or are they merely scientists who are concerned that the data is contradictory or selectively taken and the models are inadequate to make predictions?
