Why are nonscientists skeptical of climate change?

Hal Lewis is a professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Upset about how the American Physical Society (APS) has dealt with climate change, he resigned from the society last week—very publicly.

In a widely circulated open letter to Curtis Callan, the APS president, Lewis referred to anthropogenic climate change as “the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.”

I am not a climatologist, nor is Lewis, but we’re both scientists. Even though I disagree with his characterization of the science behind climate change, I respect both his skepticism and his dissent. But what of the skepticism of nonscientists, such as Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Virginia’s attorney general Ken Cuccinelli , or my sister’s friend Kate whom I met two years ago in the Castle Hotel in my hometown of Conwy ?

I don’t summarily discount the views of Jim, Ken, and Kate because they’re not scientists. But the answer to the question, Are humans warming Earth?, is a scientific one with a scientific answer. If their skepticism doesn’t spring from science, where does it come from?

Religion is not likely to be the source. Unlike evolution or Big Bang cosmology, anthropogenic climate change doesn’t challenge the dogmas of mainstream religions. Indeed, John Houghton , a former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has been successful in persuading his fellow evangelicals that climate stewardship is a Christian priority.

My guess—and that’s what it is—is that nonscientists don’t believe humans are warming the planet for the same reason that some sedentary people won’t eat more vegetables or exercise more to avert an untimely death: Those remedies are so unpalatable and onerous that people deny they’re needed.

But Earth’s climate or a human’s arteries don’t care what we think. Doing nothing is the risk.