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  3. Overall, belief in climate change has declined in the American public from roughly 75 percent to 55 percent between 2008 and 201

Overall, belief in climate change has declined in the American public from roughly 75 percent to 55 percent between 2008 and 201

admin2014-09-05  61
问题     Overall, belief in climate change has declined in the American public from roughly 75 percent to 55 percent between 2008 and 2011, with a recent rebound to 62 percent in the fall of 2011, the Brookings Institution survey finds. One noted reason for the rebound was personal experiences with warmer fall and winter temperatures.
    Though this kind of weather disruption is what climate scientists predict, they hesitate to place too much emphasis on one or two unusual seasons as a trend that changes public opinion. If next winter is more normal, the public may get the wrong impression about the dangers of climate change. Better for science to be more convincing.
    But there’s the rub. The American public is generally illiterate when it comes to science. And when American scientists complain about public illiteracy and lethargy on the vitally important subject of climate change, they also have themselves to blame.
    Generally, those who know the most about climate—and other important scientific fields—are locked up in their university ivory towers and conference rooms, speaking a language only they can understand. And they speak mostly to each other, not to the general public, policymakers, or business people—not to those who can actually make things happen.
    This is dangerous. We live in an age when scientific issues permeate our social, economic, and political culture. People must be educated about science and the scientific process if we are to make rational and informed decisions that affect our future. But instead, the relative absence of academics and academic scholarship in the public discourse creates a vacuum into which uninformed, wrong, and downright destructive viewpoints get voiced and take hold.
    Here’s a typical example. After the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh argued that " The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone. . . " In fact, the spill created extensive damage to wide ranging marine habitats as well as the Gulf Coast’ s fishing and tourism industries. Long-term impacts are still unclear as scientists continue to monitor underwater plumes of dissolved oil that lie along the bottom.
    The fact is that today’ s scientists are indeed lost to the academy. The failure begins with training in doctoral programs and continues through professional development where the constant immersion in academic seminars and journals serves to weaken scientists’ literacy in the language of public, economic, and political discourse. Scientists limit involvement in such "outside activities" because tenure and promotion are based primarily on publication in top-tier academic journals.
    In my view, few contemporary issues warrant critical analysis by problem-focused researchers more than environmental sustainability, and particularly climate change. Universities need to train emerging and seasoned scholars in the skills of communicating science to the public and policy makers. We need to develop a new generation of scholars for whom the role of public intellectual is not an anachronism. Without such changes, the climate change debate devolves into a " logic schism" where the ideological extremes dominate the conversation and the space for solutions disappears into a rhetorical shouting match.
Which of the following is not the" outside activities" in the eyes of scientists?
选项 A、Writing scientific columns for the broader media.
B、Churning out books for commercial press.
C、Serving as an advisor in government panel.
D、Travelling to take part in an scientific seminar.
答案D
解析 根据题干中的关键词outside activities锁定文章第七段的内容。第七段提到现在的科学家一心只顾学术研究的这种倾向实际上在他们攻读博士学位期间就已经形成了。他们马不停蹄地参加各类研讨会，在各类期刊上发表学术论文，这使他们忘记了面向公众、经济和政治人物演讲时应该使用的语言。因此，科学家现在的主要活动就是埋头搞研究，然后发论文，参加学术研讨会，这是他们的“正事”，而那些所谓的“外界活动”就是指和上述活动无关的一切社会活动。[A]、[B]、[C]中的内容都是所谓的“外界活动”，只有[D]参加科学研讨会是他们的“分内事”。因此，正确答案应该选[D]。
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