Do the public trust scientists?

On the 14th of September of this year, at the British Science Festival in the University of Bradford, was presented the seemingly awkward project called SPICE (Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering) led by UK scientists. The basic idea is to suspend a huge balloon one kilometre up in the stratosphere which would then pump out tap water out to produce artificial rain. This would lead to an abatement of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and reduce the effects of global warming.

The project is an example of research by the developing discipline called ‘geo-engineering’ or ‘climate engineering’, in which technologies, such as ‘cloud seeding’ or solar radiation management (SRM) would be used to counteract the effect of global warming on the planet.

Dr Matt Watson from the University of Bristol, leading the SPICE project said: “This is a controversial and potentially alarming subject”. The word “alarming” implicitly refers to public perception, but this time it seems that not all of the scientists’ usual assumptions are ‘elementary, my dear Watson’.

An international survey conducted in November and December 2010 by the University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University (Canada) and Harvard University (US) found that the public’s understanding of the field of climate engineering is unexpectedly high and that there is significant support from the public to explore the potential of SRM technologies in grappling with global warming. The internet-based survey involved about 3,000 people from different cultural and economical background in Canada, US and UK. The results were published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

People answered 18 questions grouped into five sections which, respectively, aimed to assess their knowledge of: “geo-engineering” or “climate engineering” terms, the indices of global warming belief and technological optimism, the technical information about SRM, the perception about its potential use to reduce global warming and to understand the geographical provenience and cultural background of the participants. The questionnaire was first performed without allowing the public to obtain any information about geo-engineering, and was repeated a second time after providing as neutral as possible technical information about the subject.

Interestingly, the survey revealed that while there is general confusion about the term ‘geo-engineering’ (only 8% of participants could correctly defined it, the others often mistakenly associating it to geotechnical and environmental engineering) the public understanding of ‘climate engineering’ is generally much higher (45%).

Regarding the controversy about the potential use of SRM technologies in combating global warming, two distinct groups, supporters (about 29%) and detractors (20%), appeared together with a considerable number of the uncertain participants (25%).

The supporters strongly believed that global warming is an ongoing serious issue and trust the scientists studying and applying SRM techniques to tackle the problem. After a more detailed explanation of the potential risks of SRM techniques, such as slow recovery of ozone layer, the number of supporters in favor of its immediate use decreased, but they still supported the study of the technology for future applications. On the contrary, detractors were much more skeptical that global warming was an issue and believed that humans should not manipulate nature in this way.

While the percentage of supporters were equally distributed among the three countries, detractors appear to be more present in US. Ideological and political views do not seem to determine into which group a participant falls. Environmentalists and political conservatives were equally distributed in two groups.

It is noteworthy that all participants said we should rely more on future information about benefits and risks coming from scientists at research centers and academics, rather than from federal governments.

“I think this is the first in line of many studies that will show that SRM intersects with people’s political and environmental attitudes in surprising ways” says Ashley Mercer, lead author of the study. The perception of risk will likely play a central role in the debate about the use of SRM to reduce global warming, but this survey shows that the public are aware of what scientists are doing and support them more than the scientists might expect.

DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044006