The co-authors said that this distrust in climate science is one of the challenges to the successful implementation of climate action policies, such as climate change taxes (carbon taxes), congestion charges and efforts to end sales of the most-polluting vehicles.
Where’s the trust? US climate deniers have no faith in university researchers (phys.org)
The paper says if you lack confidence or trust in scientists or institutions, for any reason, you are a conservative climate denier. That’s the finding of this paper. Climate messaging and statements from experts, and especially Covid messaging, have been inconsistent, contradictory, sometimes ill-logical, or incoherent; if this left you confused and lacking in trust, this your problem, not theirs. This has harmed credibility in all sciences.
The paper, after a fair amount of name calling, almost sees the underlying problem: ‘Professor Debnath said, “If science wants to move the dial on the climate crisis, then we need to get out of our ivory towers and make regaining the public’s trust a key mission for every university.“‘
Mis-steps, name-calling and untrue statements galore by experts the past 3 years, caused long lasting harm to all of science, unfortunately.
