Tom,

Just can't believe your contention that there is no medium for  
educating the public.

Okay the media peddles a lot of misinformation and peddles a lot of  
useless/dangerous
information e.g. how to go about catching your ideal partner.

"No FT: no comment."

Where have these large numbers of people who have a passable grip on  
the basics of climate
change got their information from? The New Scientist?

Brian

On 28 Jan 2011, at 19:26, Barker, Tom wrote:

> Well that's promising. Before Christmas the BBC did a survey that  
> recorded the most common response to the question, 'What is  
> biodiversity?' as: A washing powder.
> I sometimes wonder if the frequent whinge about scientists not  
> communicating to the public properly has got hold of the wrong end  
> of the stick. The press is not there to educate; it is there to sell  
> a product (papers, and hence adverts), and that is all. There is no  
> medium for educating the general public. We just have to be thankful  
> that some people manage to coax air-time and column space out of  
> editors for the purpose of science.
> Tom
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [[log in to unmask] 
> ] On Behalf Of Bob Ward [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 28 January 2011 18:59
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: New opinion poll on climate change
>
> The Department for Transport has just published the results of an
> interesting opinion poll from August last year:
> http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/trsnstatsatt
> /climatejan2011report
>
> Predictably, the Daily Mail has focused on the small but detectable
> change in the proportion of people saying that they are very convinced
> or fairly convinced that the climate is changing, from 83% in August
> 2009 (ie before Climategate etc) to 74% in August 2010. But given the
> amount of misleading nonsense in the mainstream media and blogosphere
> over that 12-month period, it is perhaps more remarkable that
> three-quarters of the population still agree that the climate is
> changing - it shows that the self-proclaimed 'sceptics' are not really
> having much success with their campaigns of misinformation.
>
> Unfortunately, the poll did not include a question on whether climate
> change is being mainly driven by human activities, although it did
> include a question about the types of things that contribute to  
> climate
> change, to which only 5% answered that they don't believe in climate
> change and only 15% answered 'natural causes' (which is technically
> correct anyway). However, it also shows a relatively low level of  
> public
> awareness of the specific human contributors to climate change (for
> instance only 59% think that emissions from road transport  
> contribute).
>
> The proportion of people who report that they are very concerned or
> fairly concerned about climate change only fell from 76% to 71%  
> between
> August 2009 and August 2010. And 72% say that they strongly agree or
> tend to agree that they would be prepared to change their behaviour to
> limit climate change, compared with 73% in August 2009.
>
> So I would say that these results show that Climategate etc has had a
> measurable but relatively small effect on people's acceptance of the
> reality that the climate is changing, it has had an even smaller  
> effect
> on whether they are concerned and almost no effect on whether they  
> would
> be prepared to act. But there remains relatively low awareness of
> exactly which human activities are driving climate change.
>
> Bob Ward
>
> Policy and Communications Director
> Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment
> London School of Economics and Political Science
> Houghton Street
> London WC2A 2AE
>
> http://www.lse.ac.uk/grantham
>
> Tel. +44 (0) 20 7106 1236
> Mob. +44 (0) 7811 320346
>
>
> Please access the attached hyperlink for an important electronic  
> communications disclaimer: http://lse.ac.uk/emailDisclaimer