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Robert A asked in EnvironmentGlobal Warming · 1 decade ago

Has the Controversy over Climate Change rocked the public's faith in Science?

If this is in doubt can all science be in doubt??

Update:

Isn't Evolution a bit of a paper tiger - nobody cares (Re Weise Eate)

Update 3:

Religious Fundamentalism

Update 4:

Economic crisis

Update 5:

Pindar LOL

Update 6:

Guardian Angel - I am concerned that fewer and fewer people are listening to scientists

Update 7:

We are about as popular as Estate Agents

Update 8:

Your a fanatic conspiracy theorist then New Deal Democrat - What other one's do you believe in - gravity is a fraud invented by penguins?

Update 9:

It is not my perception here in the UK Dana 1981

Update 10:

They are questioning everything, even that humans breath out CO2 - and getting quite rude about it.

Update 11:

Romeo it is odd to have gangsters giving money away.

Update 12:

Well if it saves the planet some will welcome it - I mean all this green technology

16 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    yes definitely

  • 1 decade ago

    There was no real controversy among genuine scientists. Some hackers fiddled a few emails and totally misrepresented the situation. That should have been a controversy because it was criminal in nature. Some few of the many pieces of evidence turned out to be inaccurate, so some of the results out of the many hundreds were likewise inaccurate. The total overall picture did not change, the evidence remains overwhelming.

    Science is like that. It never claims to be 100% forever absolutely correct. That simply is not the way science operates. It is non scientists who portray results that way. Scientists look at all the evidence available and look at the most likely causes and effects. Non scientists happily pick on just tiny bits that suit their cause and taut them as if they were all there was. If we followed these non scientists we would not have computers or even electricity! Fortunately not all people in the world are so ignorant.

  • 1 decade ago

    It no doubt raises suspicion in many rational non scientists. When you have something like climate which is probably impossibly complex to accurately predict and at the same time it is useful as a political weapon, it is vulnerable to being abused by activists. The climate change movement long ago stopped being about the science and became promoters of AGW when they dramatically increased the budget to study it. The best way to make sure you got funded was to show some kind of crisis. Then political hacks became involved and that includes many of the most prominent scientists like Jones, Mann and Hansen.

  • 1 decade ago

    No. Not if you listen to scientists. The last decade was the warmest since the beginning of history. Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, and possibly even the last 2,000 years. Studies indicate that the average global surface temperature has increased by approximately 0.5-1.0°F (0.3-0.6°C) over the last century. This is the largest increase in surface temperature in the last 1,000 years and scientists are predicting an even greater increase over this century. Scientists who have been peer reviewed agree that this is a serious problem. If you listen to the peer reviewed scientists, and not the ones who speak for themselves, you will see that it is not in doubt.

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  • 1 decade ago

    People only dispute science when it's inconvenient for them. Religious people dispute evolution. A lot of corporations disputed the link between CFCs and ozone depletion, and SO2 and acid rain. The tobacco industry and smokers disputed the link between smoking and cancer.

    People are willing to rely on science constantly in their day-to-day lives, until they're faced with an inconvenient truth (if you'll pardon my use of the phrase, because it's quite apt). When faced with a scientific conclusion they don't like, suddenly people's faith in science wanes.

    So I don't think the manufactured climate change controversy impacts many people's faith in science in general.

  • Romeo
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago

    Yes, confidence in scientific research has been severely damaged. Al Gore is a weaselly politician, but he is no scientist.

    Most Americans know that big business has a powerful influence on politics. I think that the independent voter fled to Obama's side when he promised "change", believing that Bush and Chaney were only in politics to exploit Iraq "for the oil" to make money for themselves and their buddies. They hear this claim all day long from the extreme liberal left. They voted for change and got a White House full of Chicago gangster style robbers. These robbers handed out hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to banks, which put most of that money into risky investments, making the markets run like a bull market while the small businesses perished for lack of financial help. This drove unemployment even higher and the country deeper into a financial recession. This has made jobs even more scarce sending unemployment to record highs. It has made the rich richer and the poor poorer.

    The American Dream is drifting further and further away for the middle class, the small businessperson and the underprivileged. The entrepreneurial spirit of this country has been severely damaged.

    Are the American People wiser now. You bet they are. Where politics are involved, the American people can now smell a rat a mile away.

    EDIT:

    Odd you say?

    When the politicians gave investment banks money to buy stock and drive up the value of the stocks they are invested in or a technology they want to sell which needs AGW to be proven science, it doesn't seem odd any more now does it?

    These crooks are cunning, just like Madoff was.

    Al Gore has 100 million invested in green technology that he needs the government policies to push for him and inventment banks to pump the stock prices for him, so he can be a CO2 billionaire

    http://www.prisonplanet.com/al-gore-set-to-become-...

    http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/al-gore-the-worl...

    http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/11...

    Bank bailout money is part of this scheme just like the Carbon tax is. It is designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer

    Who is benefiting from the bailout money given to investment banker Goldman Sachs? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-...

    When they, through market manipulation, lure the little guy to use his retirement money to buy stocks, and then they sell out from under the little guy to take huge pay bonuses and pay tarp back to the government, who paid for that?

    Who paid for that?

  • 1 decade ago

    No.

    It's kinda the other way around. Most of the people who doubt global warming already thought scientists are evil due to the whole evolution "debate."

    Edit: Pindar, yes. That is exactly what I'm saying. There is a very, very large amount of overlap between the two groups.

    Both are science denialists who are supported by the right.

    Both use identical tactics, which you just demonstrated. You call AGW a religion, creationists call evolution a religion.

    Source(s): Scientist
  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    Yeah, let's all use common sense instead of what those communist, marxist,socialist,liberal,elitist scientists tell us.

    We don't need them!

    Any fool can see that it's the Sun that moves across the sky as the Earth stands still.

  • Kyle
    Lv 5
    1 decade ago

    Honestly, I would say that the recent snowstorms and generally cooler weather have caused more people to lose interest in global warming than the data scandals. I don't hear anyone talking about the climate conspiracy except for the conservative talk shows. You hear regular people talking about "how cold it has been this winter, so where is global warming,"

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    47% of adults do not know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun;

    41% of adults know think that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time.

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/09031...

    Millions of American think vaccines cause autism, global warming is a hoax, creationism is science, and that space aliens travel millions of light years just so they can kidnap and rape our planet’s white-trash demographic.

    http://www.alternet.org/environment/141679/unscien...

    If people were not so poorly educated and scientifically illiterate, they would not have to rely on faith.

  • 1 decade ago

    Yes I believe it has, as nobody knows what to believe anymore.

    Also what I find has hindered my belief in science is the experimenting that they do, and how every week there is something new that can cause you cancer. This has gotten to the point where practically everything can directly cause cancer it's absolutely pathetic.

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