Criticism
In a 2007 climate change survey published in the American Geophysical Union's international journal, Eos, Earth scientists were asked whether global temperatures had risen since 1800 and if so, whether this was due to human influence. Overall, 90 percent of respondents agreed that temperatures have risen. Regarding causes, though 82 percent indicated that human activity was a 'significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures," less than half of economic geologists agreed.
Given that economic geoscientists had the lowest percentage of all Earth scientists surveyed, critic and author John Cook has claimed that "climate scepticism seems strongest among geologists closely linked to the mining and fossil fuel industries" and that this is due to the influence of their funding. In suggesting a rationale for climate change denial, Cook noted a maxim by Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
The 2007 study's senior investigator, Dr. Peter Doran, has noted as it relates to the findings that 'the American Association of Petroleum Geologists has a public position statement formally rejecting the likelihood of human influence on recent climate.'
Read more about this topic: Economic Geology
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“... criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)