I have expressed more or less identical views as Tamsin Edwards here. Joshua made the same question to me:
Is there evidence that the loss of trust has been important enough or is it rather true that only very few people have changed their mind.?
The question is a relevant one. It’s relevant to ask, whether Stephen Schneider was right when he discussed the choice between advocacy and presenting science only in strictly scientific manner with all caveats and uncertainties, and when he leaned towards advocacy.
I have not changed my mind. I do still agree with the views expressed by Tamsin Edwards. I believe that strong advocacy may be more effective over short term but much less effective in the long run, and the climate issue is really “long run”. Science must be kept separate from advocacy and scientists must stick to the rules of science as long as they don’t tell explicitly that what they tell next is personal views that they cannot fully support by science.
We need moderate scientists in public, those who try to explain the whole range of views held by scientists, and also why they disagree with skeptics, whose views don’t fall in that range. Lengthy presentations don’t reach wide audiences but we have seen scientists who write successfully on those lines. We have also seen some science journalists who describe successfully the controversies. (My judgement of who has succeeded in that is dependent on my own views on the same issues, but I do believe that some of these writers are judged similarly by many.)
The public cannot learn to understand science, what it can provide and what not, without the help of scientists and the best science journalists. They must keep on fighting the misleading influence of activists of all sides, and also that of badly written science news and other bad science journalism.
