I'd have been more interested in a poll pitting scientists against engineers. Not to disparage the general public, but this was played as a "numbers vs feelings" portrait, when it should have been a "theory vs reality" study.

People who consider themselves "scientists" cover a broad spectrum of disciplines (including "social science" and "political science"), so I'd be interested in the details of the makeup of that population. Also, scientists tend to be extremely narrow in their interests, and generally accept the pronouncements of other scientists outside of their field, as they are taught that one must be an expert in a specialty in order to question it. Engineers are the scientists "redneck cousins", who have to live in the real world and produce the wonders decreed by the scientists as to be expected, from the results in their antiseptic laboratories.

As you might guess, I'm one of the "rednecks", and being a systems engineer, somewhat disdainful of professional boundaries. Having had to bridge the communications gap between scientific disciplines more times than I can remember, you'll have to forgive me if I am somewhat less worshipful of "scientists" than most.

Science is more vulnerable to political influence than engineering, primarily because the scientist doesn't have to produce a product someone might be held accountable for. Scientists are also more dependent on the public dole, in the form of grants and research dollars, and negative results are forgivable, while engineers have to deliver useful products, and failure is not kindly tolerated.

I am not anti-scientist. I just think we need to give them a break, let them pursue their passion for research, and try to keep the political jackboot off of their necks. Maybe the scientific community is too sensitive. As an engineer I've taken great pleasure in telling politicians they can be the problem or the solution, and they usually listen when self interest is in play.

Thousands of years ago the earth was mostly covered in ice. It started melting, meaning that it was warming. There weren't enough people to cause warming and there was certainly no oil industry and there were no California liberal professors either. Now some scientists claim we are in a 30 year cooling cycle which I believe validates the thought that the earth constantly goes through climatic cycles. As a result, climate change is now the unwavering cry of the liberal nut cases who were exposed in the global warming fraud.

I wonder how much of sciences money comes from the public coffers? I suspect that those included in this survey get a substantial amount of it.

I wonder if this split might be in part due to the current religious vs. science climate in the country. Science tries to examine any unknown from the point of view of letting the evidence lead where it leads. Religion on the other hand, has its tenets and then goes looking for the facts that will back it up or in absence of those facts just claim "God (whichever God the religion represents) did it". And lately, I have witnessed that when the religious are exposed to information that doesn't conform with their world view, they would rather try to obfuscate and deny the facts than reevaluate that world view.

Probably going to set myself up, but when I read "...Scientists were more certain that global warming is caused by man...", it made me cringe.

What an awful blanket statement to make.

There is a 350-400 year period often referred to as the Medieval Warming Period that proves--beyond the shadow of any doubt--that good old planet earth is quite capable of warming up on its own, with no help from mankind.

I can't quite bring myself to make the case for public opinion over scientists' positions in scientific matters, but just because there's a difference, it doesn't automatically mean that the public is wrong and scientists are right.

(Give me a few minutes to don my body armor, and then fire away.)

A good Engineer is a scientist and a good Scientist is an Engineer.
I have been a Mechanical Engineer for 43 years.
I love thermodynamics, heat transfer, and Engineering Design. I understand the Science of Man-Caused Global Warming. I consider it to be Political Science rather than a true science. It is definitely politically motivated.

One big difference between Climate Science and other Sciences is that Climate Scientists are all employees of the government. They depend on governments for their existence.

I consider that Climate Science is an example of "Crony Science". These scientists have created a problem to justify their hand-out from the government.

The only reason that I can see for the promotion of this fraud is that it will enable the governments to gain complete control of the energy sector of the world's economies. When this happens, our last vestige of freedom will be gone.

Of course, I love science and have great respect for scientific achievement.

In my website,Iwww.texanhomeenergy.com I will be disclosing my research into the inadequate temperature data set and how it was manipulated to obtain their goal.

As our economy is controlled by the governments, Climate Science is also controlled and manipulated by the governments. It is "Crony Science",

"In the most dramatic split, 88 percent of the scientists surveyed said it is safe to eat genetically modified foods, while only 37 percent of the public say it is safe and 57 percent say it is unsafe."

" And 68 percent of scientists said it is safe to eat foods grown with pesticides, compared with only 28 percent of the general public."

How to lie with statistics.

Of the 88% of scientists that say GMO food is safe, how many have expertise in that area and are not financially prejudiced?

Of the 68% of scientists that say food grown with pesticides is safe, how many have expertise in that area and are not financially prejudiced?

Cui bono.

As I grew up, it was always a matter of science vs the great unwashed. Beliefs of the general public seemed to hinge on superstition, bad information, and religious zealotry. Over the course of the next 50 years or so, everything reversed itself and we have science often embracing downright lies, which in many cases, throws a web of suspicion on scientific breakthroughs.

This is very interesting. Love the GMO food opinion. What a smokescreen.
Surprised about human contribution to global warming. 87% of scientists see this correlation?
Nuclear power. Jesus christ. we need to get this moving, not for global warming, but it helps, for energy independence from the middle east, a most effective defense spending.

I have been through a lot of scat in my life. A few things I know for sure: Everybody thinks they have science on their side. Most are wrong. Much of what is passed of for "science" these days is just the result of massive financial contributions to the universities by special interests.

Note the "mandatory vaccinations" statement?

WHO’S AFRAID OF MONSANTO?
President Barack Obama signed a spending bill, HR 933, into law in March 2013. It is the “Monsanto Protection Act" which effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of controversial genetically modified or engineered seeds, no matter what health issues may arise concerning GMOs in the future.
It appears they were floating the legislation to determine backlash because it has a short expiration fuse. But as a harbinger of things to come it’s very scary.
“In this hidden backroom deal, Sen. [Barbara] Mikulski turned her back on consumer, environmental and farmer protection in favor of corporate welfare for biotech companies such as Monsanto,” Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, said in a statement. “This abuse of power is not the kind of leadership the public has come to expect from Sen. Mikulski or the Democrat Majority in the Senate.”

A little tidbit from one of those “uninformed” a farmer: GMO corn travels.
The air-born cross pollination of GMO corn travels 18 rows into neighboring fields when planted beside natural seeded corn field. Then Monsanto will sue you for patent infringement if you use any of that corn for seed the following year (or years.) And if you go to court against Monsanto, you will lose.

Another tidbit: If you are young haven’t been around long enough to notice the change, 20 or 30 years ago there were a lot more bugs on your windshield when you drove through the country. Bees are also getting scarce.

Climate changes over long periods of time.
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/Sunspo...
The ice caps on Mars also undergo changes, and the last I checked, there are no combustion engines on Mars.

But the inclusion of global warming in the survey reminds us that scientific fact is often just opinion itself. Pre-Clovis settlement of the New World is the most recent overturn of accepted (and hotly defended) scientific fact, but the folks on this forum can cite examples going back a century or more.

Jan

This is clearly a biased survey. Any broad scale survey of scientists on Global Warming is not going to show they are more likely to BELIEVE in AGW. This is even more true the more rigorous the scientific training of the scientists.

Study done by Pew Research, funded by Pew Chartitable Trusts whose primary current concerns are:

Efforts are focused on reducing the scope and severity of three major global environmental problems:
1) Destruction of the world's oceans, with a particular emphasis on marine fisheries.
2) The loss of large wilderness ecosystems that contain a great part of the world's remaining biodiversity.
3) Changes to the Earth's physical and biological systems linked to the buildup of greenhouse gases that are altering the world's climate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pew_Cha...

Secondary source of funding: HewlettFoundation
"The Hewlett Foundation awards grants to a variety of liberal and progressive causes."
"The Environment Program makes grants to support conservation in the North American West, reduce global warming and conventional pollution resulting from the use of fossil fuels, and promote environmental protection efforts in California. The Hewlett Foundation opposes coal and natural gas development."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_and...

Obvious conflict of interest. Pew research wants continued funding so promotes the existing beliefs of the funding organizations.

Thanks! I went to the Pew website and downloaded the entire report. The story from Earthlink was a nice precis, but having all the facts is important - and in this case, both entertaining and enlightening.

I can’t agree more. As a professional Engineer, i see scientists as a necessary evil, but engineers as the wealth producers.

interesting article. the operative word is opinion, and everyone has one just like _______. fill in the blank.
my opinion is some of the people who are considered as part of the public and some of the people who are in the scientific work place know something of what ever. most of the people in both areas know very little and that is because they don't care.

Reason did a good piece some years ago about a weather scientist who got blackballed by EPA and his career destroyed for suggesting that acidity in lakes might be a result of acid soil rather than acid rain. Now Mann and his friends wield the same power and use it against anyone who tries to expose his fraud.

Scientists sometimes think of engineers as people with a bag of tricks, models, and rules of thumb, but the engineers I knowand I are with the scientists in accepting the world as it is and not falling into the political pitfalls mentioned in the articles.

I know science isn't value neutral, but it tries hard to be. We're excited to be proven wrong. We want to how to prevent Galloping Gerties. We need more scientific fact and engineering models and fewer opions about things that should be characterized empirically.

I would like to see this study. You can be sure that the sampling of "scientists" is not unbiased when they say such things as global warming is primarily caused by man.

How about getting the facts into everyone's hands and see where the opinions fall? And, of course, that requires government to take politics out of the equation.