I ran across this story in Science Progress, a “progressive science blog” which comes across as earnest, involved and. . . dull. Dull and earnest meant that I couldn’t get too worked up about this screed by Chris Mooney about climate change denialism, which mentions the Pew Center statistic that a declining fraction of the American public is concerned about climate change.
However this does raise a good question about why, with the majority of the scientific community that is knowledgeable about the topic of climate change issuing alarms, is climate change risk communication so ineffective. I look at climate change, and see nothing but ways to make capital flow so that lots of people can make money. There’s some kind of a lesson about how being smart and committed about a topic isn’t necessarily enough to galvanize interest and concern about it.
As always, Peter Sandman has some sensible things to say about the problem of climate change apathy and precaution advocacy. However, I recall a few months back something on his blog about him planning to retire soon. I wonder who’s going to be picking up the slack here.