Financial Times: Public losing faith in science

[Questioninggeller]

The Financial Times reports:

Public losing faith in science
Financial Times
By Clive Cookson
Feb. 21, 2010


Public trust in science as a whole has suffered from recent attacks on climate research, the head of the senior US scientific body admitted at the weekend.

“There is evidence that the corrosion in the public attitude to climate science has spread over to other areas of science,” said Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, citing public opinion surveys in the US and elsewhere.
...
Prof McCarthy was critical of the way the media had joined sceptics in attacking the idea of manmade climate change – as for example when they pointed to this winter’s heavy snow on the US East Coast as evidence that the world was not warming.
...
Prof Cicerone added that cold and snow in one part of the world were balanced by warmth in another – as the current lack of snow for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver is demonstrating.

Full article: Link

 

[Trevor from Toronto]

What a bizarre claim. The public hasn't lost ANY faith in science thanks to the downfall of AGW. In fact, the ones who are paying attention and not mentally blocking this process are getting a real education. They're learning how science actually works. Peer review, skeptical inquiry, slaying sacred cows, insistence on real facts and data and not made up opinions, adjusting views on a topic in light of new information -- or on the uncovering of schemes to hide and manipulate information -- this is how real science and skepticism works.

Climategate and all the rest of this disaster is making the public more science literate and more skeptical of claims which don't add up and are "closed" to questioning. It's very healthy and science positive.

 

[macdoc]

What downfall is that Trevor....you keep pronouncing it like it's some commandment handed down yet despite this being a science forum you provide no backup for your declaration....

just some nonsense about logical and skeptical as if they are badges of wisdom divorced from empirical reality.....

Climate science and even the fossil fuel interests acknowledge

it's getting warmer
we're primarily responsible due to fossil fuel use

hell both the climatologists AND the fossil fuel companies knew that reality in the mid 90's

Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate - NYTimes.com
24 Apr 2009 ... A fossil fuels industry group campaigned against an idea its own ... such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts ... sake of companies' fight against curbs on greenhouse gas emissions. ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html

did you drop out of the science community for a decade and a half??

or are you just trying to justify your own confusion on the science end.....?
uninformed skepticism for it's own sake is just a fancy term for willful ignorance.

Indeed there is much that is unclear on how to proceed in dealing with the problem at hand....but those are political and economic issues - not particularly science issues unless you count climate engineering as a possible approach..

The world is moving on from climate change denial to doing something about it....there is where the discussion is indeed fraught with difficulty....but that's not the science at issue....it's silly monkeys having to deal with fouling their own nest....and making much ado about cleaning up