With old divisions between left and right over matters such as economics and size of government breaking down, the primary difference between liberals and conservatives have come down to holding a reality-based world view versus one based upon superstition and the misinformation commonly spread by the right wing noise machine. With the Republican Party being dominated by the religious right it comes as no surprise to find that scientists are overwhelmingly backing the Democrats over Republicans. A Pew Research Center survey of scientists found:
Slightly more than half of scientists (52%) describe their own political views as liberal, including 14% who describe themselves as very liberal. Among the general public, 20% describe themselves as liberal, with just 5% calling themselves very liberal.
Most scientists identify as Democrats (55%), while 32% identify as independents and just 6% say they are Republicans. When the leanings of independents are considered, fully 81% identify as Democrats or lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 12% who either identify as Republicans or lean toward the GOP. Among the public, there are far fewer self-described Democrats (35%) and far more Republicans (23%). Overall, 52% of the public identifies as Democratic or leans Democratic, while 35% identifies as Republican or leans Republican.
The survey also compared views on scientific issues with those of the general public. You have to take such questions with a grain of salt as a survey which gives a choice of agreeing or disagreeing could obtain different results with changes in wording. The survey found far greater belief in evolution among scientists than the general public:
Scientists were also more likely to believe in a human role in global warming and see this as an important problem:
A large majority (85%) of Americans says that the earth is warming, but they are more divided on the cause of climate change than are scientists. About half of the general public (49%) says the earth is getting warmer “mostly because of human activity, such as burning fossil fuels,” while 36% say warming is occurring “mostly because of natural changes in the atmosphere.” About one-in-ten (11%) say “there is no solid evidence that the earth is getting warmer.”
By contrast, 84% of scientists say the earth is warming because of human activity. Scientists also are far more likely than the public to regard global warming as a very serious problem: 70% express this view, compared with 47% of the public. Public attitudes about whether global warming represents a serious problem have changed little in recent years.
It would also be helpful to have a break down by field. Typically when conservatives quote scientists who disagree with the scientific consensus on climate change such views are from scientists in other fields while there is a high degree of agreement among those actually in the field. Differences in opinion in the general population were strongly related to political affiliation:
The strongest correlate of opinion on climate change is partisan affiliation. Two-thirds of Republicans (67%) say either that the earth is getting warmer mostly because of natural changes in the atmosphere (43%) or that there is no solid evidence the earth is getting warmer (24%). By contrast, most Democrats (64%) say the earth is getting warmer mostly because of human activity. Nearly half of independents (49%) say human activity is causing the earth to warm, while 47% say either that the earth is getting warmer due to natural atmospheric changes (38%) or that there is no solid evidence that the earth is warming (9%).
The divide is even larger when party and ideology are both taken into consideration. Just 21% of conservative Republicans say the earth is warming due to human activity, compared with nearly three-quarters (74%) of liberal Democrats.
There also are significant differences in views about climate change by education. More than half of college graduates (58%) say climate change is occurring and caused by human activity while those with no more than a high school education are more divided in their opinions; 45% say the earth is warming because of human activity and 40% say it is due to natural changes in the atmosphere.
Scientists were more likely than the general public to be concerned about the suppression of scientific findings by the Bush administration:
Most scientists had heard at least a little about claims that government scientists were not allowed to report research findings that conflicted with the Bush administration’s point of view. And the vast majority (77%) says that these claims are true. By contrast, these claims barely registered with the public – more than half heard nothing at all about this issue. Only about a quarter of the public (28%) said they thought the claims were true.
Ron-I’m still going over the info on this, but let me compliment you, seriously, no joke, it looks like you brought the goods on this one. Off the cuff, I’m not yet impressed with PEW but they are citing the AAAS which to me, reading their web page info seems quite impressive. I really have wanted to see a survey of scientists, and having no reason to doubt it, they cite surveying 2,500 scientists. I would not put much weight to 100 surveyed but 2.5K is a good number in my book.
“By contrast, 84% of scientists say the earth is warming because of human activity.”
Wow! I would thought the percentage would be higher. I’m assuming that the percentage of employed and degreed biologists doing or evaluating research (e.g., reviewing articles for publication) who think “life” evolves and evolves according to know evolutionary principles has got to be close to 100%. If you reject that theory, there’s nothing really to do in terms of research.
“Scientists were also more likely to believe in a human role in global warming and see this as an important problem:”
“Important problem” is interesting. By what standard is something an “important problem?” From a physicist’s viewpoint, discovering the nature of dark matter is an important problem, but to the rest of us, not so much.
That fact that human activity can affect the environment is both “important” yet obvious. It’s not like C02 is the first by-product of human activity that’s ever influenced the environment. To the “scientists,” sure, this is both interesting and important, but from that viewpoint, for the rest of us, again, not so much, or “big deal — what else is new?”
Now, “Scientists” have access to computer models. Technically, this isn’t “science” in the hard sense of that term. Modeling and predictability is the realm of the mathematician and statistician, and that’s definitely not a “science.” The day it becomes a science is the day life on earth for all of us will become almost unimaginably easier.
Think of it this way: physics is practically perfect in the sense that no observation yet contradicts any hypothesis. Yet, for all that power, the theory of physics can’t predict when a specific leaf will fall from a specific tree. This is because “science” isn’t predictive in that way. “Science” seeks to understand phenomena in principle. When we say science has predictive power, we mean it can generate testable hypothesis, not that it can predict how a specific dice will row from a specific hand in a specific Vegas casino on a specific day.
Enter modeling. Modeling take known principles (e.g., differential equations), a bunch of variables, different probability distributions, good guesses at parameters, and they run it to see what happens.
This is highly skilled demanding work, and scientists and theorists work hand and hand with computational mathematicians and statisticians and computer scientists, but modeling in and by itself is not “Science.”
Economists do the same damn thing, and no one calls economic foresting a “science.”
So, some scientists think global warming is a practical important problems because the models “predict” certain outcomes. Other think it’s not a big worry because different models predict a different outcome.
On this front, there’s wide disagreement about how practically serious GW is — and for good reason: there’s tremendous uncertainty.
So is it any wonder the everyday guy and gal is confused? Look at the field of nutrition: last year we would told this, that, and the other thing was good, bad, or fattening, but now this year it’s a different story.
That the importance of GW splits along party lines has little to do with science and more to do with political stakes and liberals & some big business have a lot at stake, politically & economically, in everyone believing that GW is a huge and immediate crisis.
The best evidence for this is the Cap and Trade bill which hopefully the Senate will kill. Just like the invasion of Iraq had little, really, to do with WMDs, so the Cap & Trade bill has little to do with GW (unless the U.S. wants to ignite a gigantic trade war with China, India, etc., who, by the way, are all of our best hope to turn the global economy around)
Obama’s drive for climate change bill hits delay
Thank goodness!
A scientist’s definition of “important problem” is “I can get a grant to study this”. Actually a good definition. Pretty much matches my definition of “Important program to write”.
A scientist is temperamentally unfit to determine what is an important problem to throw trillions of dollars at. Or to figure out the cost/benefit analysis of “cripple our economy” vs “move stuff up a couple of feet”. Economists are usually a bit better at that.
“A scientist’s definition of “important problem” is “I can get a grant to study this”.”
Yes! That is the BEST definition!
“A scientist is temperamentally unfit to determine what is an important problem to throw trillions of dollars at. Or to figure out the cost/benefit analysis of “cripple our economy” vs “move stuff up a couple of feet”. Economists are usually a bit better at that.”
Perfectly said.