{"id":17479,"date":"2016-10-06T08:37:43","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T12:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=17479"},"modified":"2016-10-06T09:21:24","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T13:21:24","slug":"the-pew-climate-change-survey-and-the-state-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=17479","title":{"rendered":"the Pew climate change survey and the state of science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewinternet.org\/2016\/10\/04\/the-politics-of-climate\/\">Pew&#8217;s new survey<\/a>, only about one third of Americans care &#8220;a great deal&#8221; about climate change. That might be a matter of values: some citizens may\u00a0set a higher priority on liberty or\u00a0growth than on environmental protection, or they may not trust the government plus scientists to protect the climate.<\/p>\n<p>But the public is also divided on a key matter of <em>fact.\u00a0<\/em>In reality, there is <a href=\"http:\/\/climate.nasa.gov\/scientific-consensus\/\">near-universal\u00a0scientific consensus<\/a> that humans cause global warming, but only 27% of Americans perceive that consensus, including\u00a0just over half of liberal Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>If I thought that scientists were divided on the basic question of whether humans cause climate change, I would be much less confident that the problem is worth combating.<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pewinternet.org\/2016\/10\/04\/the-politics-of-climate\/ps_2016-10-04_politics-of-climate_0-01\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17480 size-full alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/climate.png\" alt=\"climate\" width=\"594\" height=\"324\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/climate.png 594w, https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/climate-300x164.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Two fairly obvious but crucial lessons:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Giving an impression that a topic is contested is a great way to sew doubts about it. Once\u00a0just a\u00a0few people who\u00a0claim expertise\u00a0criticize the mainstream scholarly view, the issue\u00a0looks\u00a0debatable. Then everyone has permission to be skeptical.<\/li>\n<li>Scientists must take more responsibility for how their work is communicated, debated, received, and used by the public. There&#8217;s not much point to specific studies of climate change if a large majority of the public remains unconvinced about the basic problem. If the traditional division of labor&#8211;scientists conduct research; reporters cover it&#8211;<em>ever<\/em> worked, it doesn&#8217;t work now. Scientists and their institutions (including universities) must develop better\u00a0ways of engaging in public life.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>See also\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=6423\" rel=\"bookmark\">Five Strategies to Revive Civic Communication<\/a>;\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=14348\" rel=\"bookmark\">science, democracy, and civic life<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Pew&#8217;s new survey, only about one third of Americans care &#8220;a great deal&#8221; about climate change. That might be a matter of values: some citizens may\u00a0set a higher priority on liberty or\u00a0growth than on environmental protection, or they may not trust the government plus scientists to protect the climate. But the public is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-criticism","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17479"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17497,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17479\/revisions\/17497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}