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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

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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.
The recent rebound in American’ s belief in climate change is______.
选项 A、the result of a successful environment campaign
B、an accurate prediction by scientists
C、a natural response to unusual temperature
D、a regular cycle in public opinion
答案C
解析 文章第一段就提到了美国民众对于气候变暖问题的民意调查。2008到2011年间，美国民众当中相信气候变化的比例从约75％降至55％，而这一数据在2011年秋季有所回升，达到62％。这一反弹是由于人们亲身感受到了气温在2011年的秋冬两季明显高于往年。可见，相信气候变暖趋势的支持率上升，这并不是环境运动的成效，也不是科学知识普及的结果，只是来自人们朴素的感官认识。正确答案应该选[C]a natural response to unusual temperature。[D]a regular cycle in public opinion有一定的迷惑性。但是cycle一词指“循环往复”，文中并没有讨论美国公共舆论界是否在全球变暖问题上存在一个舆论的周期，只是谈到在近几年中全球变暖的支持率不断发生着起伏，而最近的这次起伏是由于人们对于不太正常的天气的亲身感受造成的。
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