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CBC: 43% of Canadians think science is opinion, 52% think GMOs are bad for the health

Hari Seldon

Member
Pretty vague question imo. That climate change question can be interpeted in alot of ways.
ie. If tommorows weather forecast is wrong, the science is unclear..

Yeah most of these polls are designed for internet clicks and not actual real data lol. You ask vague questions and you get unpredictable responses as people can interpret them in many ways. The more you know about science the more you would likely say that science is unclear. Science literally doesn't know a thing about the majority of the makeup of the universe, I'd call that unclear lol.
 
I will be deeply saddened if anti-science hysteria causes the great current and potential benefits of GMOs to go untapped. GMOs will allow for better and cheaper and more environmentally friendly food.

Organic food is unsustainable. It's yields are too low to be anything but a niche addition to food supply.
 

Kinitari

Black Canada Mafia
GMO is less of an issue in Canada than some places. Especially legally - because legally any food that has had it's genes changed in Canada is labeled as GM. By any method.
 

Xe4

Banned
Anti science sentiment exists everywhere in the world, sadly. People think of the US as the only place where anti-science idiots exist, but the fact is, anti science sentiments exist everywhere almost as bad or worse than the US.

I'd argue that science behind global warning is still unclear after reading a good number of papers on the subject

I don't argue it's not getting warmer, I believe humans plays a (possibly big) part on this (not sure on exact %), but the whole models behind climate are far from clear-cut. You can twitch the parameters and get vastly different results, and scientists themselves say they don't understand everything.

So yes, it's unclear. And while a minority, there's still several people that have different results and NOT unrespectable.

And I don't think it's that good a thing to tell people that science is a sure thing.

As someone who studies atmospheric science and climate, I'm not sure what you mean. Climate change is happening and human released emissions are responsible. In science, nothing can be factually true with 100% certainty, but climate change is one of the most studied and well known phenomena of this day.

Scientists who study climate are as certain of anthropogenic climate change as immunologists are about the effectiveness of vaccines, or that virologists are that HIV causes AIDS, or cosmologists are that the big bang occurred, or geologists are about tectonic activity being responsible for earthquakes and the changing geology of Earth.

There are a wide multitude of lines of evidence for climate change, from models as you mentioned, to measurements (of land and ocean and atmospheric temperatures, ice melting, sea levels rising) happening all over the world right now, to vast amounts of paleoclimatic records dating back hundreds of millions of years showing CO2 being the main driver of climate. While a few people may disagree, as with any scientific theory, the vast majority of the consensus (and science is determined by consensus) agrees that the earth is warming, with a temperature averaged around 2.5-3 K for a doubling of atmospheric CO2.

People like to quote Richard Lindzen or Patrick Michaels, or a few others who think global warming isn't going to be as intense as most other scientist predict, but to focus on them over the statistical average of what all climate scientists from a wide variety of fields predict is just as disingenuous as to quote the scientists who think an atmospheric doubling of CO2 will lead to an 6-8 K CO2 rise. Yet you see plenty of the first and not so much of the second.

Do uncertainties exist? Certainly, as with literally every scientific topic, including those that people take as a fact. But uncertainties existing does not preclude something from being a good idea in science, and the idea that human released CO2 is the current driver of climate is one of the most well studied and agreed upon ideas in science that there is.

Pretty vague question imo. That climate change question can be interpeted in alot of ways.
ie. If tommorows weather forecast is wrong, the science is unclear..
No it can't. Weather != climate. Meteorology is a notoriously unpredictable field due to it's chaotic nature. Climate is not unpredictable. It follows very well known trends of forcing due to solar activity, planetary structure, chemical composition of our atmosphere, and orbital motion. We can predict the effect that different parameters will have on climate and look back in the paleoclimatic record to confirm our predictions.
 

Bolivar687

Banned
The West's love affair with moral relativism necessitates that everyone is entitled to their own subjective construction of reality.
 

slit

Member
US allows some synthetic pesticides with organic food but EU doesn't.

It's irrelevant when the so called natural ones have to be extracted out of the natural source like Pyrethrin and Rotenone. It's like saying Cocaine is better for you because it can be organic.
 

99Luffy

Banned
No it can't. Weather != climate. Meteorology is a notoriously unpredictable field due to it's chaotic nature. Climate is not unpredictable. It follows very well known trends of forcing due to solar activity, planetary structure, chemical composition of our atmosphere, and orbital motion. We can predict the effect that different parameters will have on climate and look back in the paleoclimatic record to confirm our predictions.
This poll isnt asking only climate change scientists and the numerous 'Climate change more rapid than previously thought' articles in the past years gives the impression that its pretty unclear.
 

manfestival

Member
I don't know why people are so surprised about there being large amounts of dumb people in countries. In fact, that's pretty ignorant itself.
 

cameron

Member
The first line says that the poll suggests43%...

Read the article, WHERE does it suggest 43%? I don't see it.

I don't understand what you're asking. The article is listing off points from the survey.

CBC article: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/science-attitudes-survey-2017-1.4298800
Are scientific findings a matter of opinion? Forty-three per cent of Canadians agree that they are, suggests a new poll.

The survey found widespread concerns about fake news — 66 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement that "false information reported as fact (so called 'fake news') is affecting your knowledge of science."

OSC survey: http://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/Media/Details/457/
Most Canadians feel they are capable of understanding scientific findings; but one in three consider themselves science illiterate (33%) and feel they don’t have the ability to follow science reports in the media (30%). Four in ten Canadians (43%) believe science is a matter of opinion, while three in four Canadians (75%) believe scientific findings can be used to support any position.




Also, fucking millennials:
At a time when society needs to address urgent challenges through solutions rooted in science, these numbers raise concerns about Canadians’ ability to engage meaningfully with the issues. Alarmingly, nearly half of Canadians (47%) believe the science behind global warming is unclear – up from 40% in 2016. Also cause for concern: belief in vaccinations linking to autism, a connection that has been discredited by the scientific community, is highest among millennials (24%).
 
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