Mary Alice C.

“A Closer Look at Climate Change” by Charles W. Schmidt is about scientists and the general public view climate change in 2010. One problem that scientists are dealing with is that the public has developed a small sense of distrust of scientists because if a scientist says that global warming is not occurring because of human activity, then those scientists are viewed as siding with the oil companies because of funding. There is also a huge amount of difference between scientists’ opinions about the causes and speed of global warming. Economic and political factors are also at play, in that it might be more cost-effective to pay for green technologies in the future, when they will be further developed. There is also a definite trend that less people think that global warming is occurring, but this may be partially due to social factors.