Shorter RP Jr.: “Accepted can only mean accepted in the most limited sense, not accepted enough to do much about it.”

When you write: “Sherwood suggests that, as was the case with the other theories, anthropogenic warming will eventually become largely accepted throughout society. But will it come too late?”

I wonder what you and Sherwood would define as “largely accepted” and what that would mean practically? In my view the science already is “largely accepted” pretty much everywhere around the world (see TCF for data) …

Thanks!

Let’s start with a recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. It finds that acceptance of the fact that there is solid evidence for warming has grown over the past year, to 63% of those surveyed. But only 38% in that survey responded that they felt it was because of human activities. I’m sure you can point to other surveys that show a higher percentage of belief in the anthropogenic nature of warming. But I don’t believe any survey shows it much above 50%. I take a smidgen more reassurance in that number than some other people I know. But it doesn’t come even remotely close to reflecting what the climate science community has found.

Compare public beliefs with the 97-98% of climate researchers most actively publishing in the field who say humans are causing warming and other climatic changes. And in the recent Climate Change in the American Mind survey, just 13% of respondents knew just how overwhelming that consensus is among climate scientists.

So rather than saying acceptance of AGW among the public has been “slow,” maybe I should have said that there remains a fairly large mismatch between what the public thinks about anthropogenic climate change and what climate scientists think. Also, that mismatch has persisted for many years. Let’s chalk it up to writing at 2 a.m.

Of course, this doesn’t say much about the lack of policy action. I am not arguing that the percentage of Americans who believe that anthropogenic climate change is real and significant must rise before we can get meaningful action. (Although don’t you think it would help?) This post was a fascinating article that describes a number of historical precedents — heliocentrism and relativity — to explain why major scientific paradigm shifts take a long time, and frequently involve vituperative debate and attacks on scientists.

So Roger, do you take exception with the general thrust of the article? Or with some of the particulars?

Question for you, can you substantiate this statement with data?

“the slow acceptance of anthropogenic climate change by the public”