News Journal:Since when did Americans stop respecting science?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued an important report last week. The Wall Street Journal described it as “a mega-review of 30,000 climate change studies that establishes with 95 percent certainty that nearly all warming seen since the 1950s is man-made…Today only a small minority of scientists challenge the mainstream conclusion that climate change is linked to human activity.”
Which leads me to wonder: When did the United States become a country that does not value science? In the twentieth century, science took us to outer space, cured diseases, and developed computers, the Internet and GPS. We idolized scientists. We acknowledged that scientific innovation was the engine that produced most of our economic success.
Of course, especially toward the end of that century, we also learned to “question authority.” And to be suspicious of “elites.” I get that. But when did that morph into an anti-science ideology? Why, on an issue that will affect every living thing on Earth, are Americans turning their backs on the overwhelming majority of scientists and scientific organizations? Here are a few on them:
Eighteen American scientific societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Medical Association, the American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, the Geological Society of America, the American Astronomical Society, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, and the Federation of American Scientists.
The U.S National Academy of Science and ten other international science academies. The U.S. Global Change Research Program.
Nearly 200 scientific organizations around the world including the European Federation of Geologists, the Geological Society of London, the French Academy of Sciences, the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, the Indian National Science Academy, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Islamic World Academy of Sciences, the Science Academy of Japan, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Every one of these groups has issued a public statement that climate-warming trends over the past century are very likely due to human activity.

Many of the scientists who belong to these groups have done original research on the subject. Wikipedia defines peer review as “the evaluation of work by one or more people of similar competence to the producers of the work (peers). It constitutes a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field.” A peer-reviewed article is the only kind other scientists take seriously. Over 97 percent of all peer-reviewed articles by climate scientists agree about the human causes of global warming.
The U.S. Navy takes those articles very seriously, and has conducted research of its own. That’s why the Chief of Naval Operations created Task Force Climate Change back in 2009. The Chief of U.S. Navy Pacific Forces warned last year that the impact of climate change will be the biggest new security threat in that area.
Still, what most scientists believe is not carrying the day. According to the latest Gallup poll, only 39 percent of Americans agree that global warming is happening, at least in part due to human activity. From the rest, I often hear things like, “didn’t we have a rather cool summer in Delaware?” And “what about all that snow we had last winter?”
There is also, of course, the more radical theory of some diehard deniers, that there is somehow a gigantic worldwide conspiracy by left-wing elites to promote climate change in order to foster government incursions on our freedom. Come on. Let’s get real. Tens of thousands of the world’s leading scientists are involved in a conspiracy to make us believe something that isn’t true?
Neal deGrasse Tyson has it right when he says, “the good thing about science is that it’s true whether you believe it or not.”

That Gallup poll actually said that only 25 percent of Americans are “cool skeptics” who aren’t worried about global warming much at all. Thirty-nine percent are very concerned, and 36 percent are in the “mixed middle” – without a strong opinion either way.
I fear most of the 25 percent may be beyond the reach of reason. But if you are among the mixed middle, I beg you to spend a few minutes at http://1.usa.gov/1zmXghN. NASA has put together a one-stop source for just about everything you need to know about climate change – key indicators, evidence, effects, the scientific consensus, and more.
One final plea. Sadly, science in this area has been turned by some into a political and ideological football. So for those who may harbor some suspicions about the motives of those who are warning about global warming, I close with just one question:
Exactly when do you think NASA and the United States Navy became hotbeds of left-wing doctrine?
Ted Kaufman is a former U.S. Senator from Delaware.