Opinion: Reaffirming climate science
DEC 24, 2009
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.023953
Nature News : The conclusion that our planet is warming thanks to human activity must not be forgotten amid discussion of research ethics, say climatologists Hans von Storch and Myles Allen.
In a recent survey of US citizens conducted by electronic media company Rasmussen Reports , 49% of 1,000 respondents said that they have “very closely or somewhat closely” followed news reports about the CRU e-mail leak, and 59% find it “very likely or somewhat likely” that, in order to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, some scientists have falsified research data. The Swedish daily newspaper Aftonbladet asked its readers—beginning on 21 November, just after the first publication of the CRU e-mails—if they considered the climate change threat to be oversold, and 51% of the almost 65,000 respondents thought so. After years of communication, researchers have to face the fact that a large body of public opinion still does not trust the evidence presented to them by the scientific community.
© 2009 American Institute of Physics
