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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 problem the author is mostly concerned with in this article is______.
选项 A、the ignorance of Americans in scientific issues
B、scientists’ obsession with theoretical rather than practical researches
C、the absence of scientists’ voice in the discussion of public issues
D、the defects in the promotion mechanism of universities
答案C
解析 文章由美国民众对于全球变暖问题的民意支持率的反反复复开篇，美国民众对于科学问题的茫然让作者心怀担忧。但是作者写作的目的并不是想要抒发这种担忧，而是想要揭示大众愚昧背后的深层原因。文章第三段就明确指出，when American scientists complain aboutpublic illiteracy and lethargy on the vitally important subject of climate change，they alsohave themselves to blame。当科学家在抱怨民众对性命攸关的气候变化问题愚昧无知、漠不关心的同时，他们自己也难辞其咎。下文着重就科学家在公共问题上的缺席问题进行了分析和探讨，因此这才是本文的中心论点，正确答案应该选[C]。[A]只是作者用以引入话题的一个引子。[B]错误，作者确实在文中批判了科学家两耳不闻窗外事，但是批判他们专注于理论研究的目的并不是为了突出他们在实践上的不足，而是突出他们在社会公共问题上的不作为。[D]错误，大学晋升机制确实存在问题，学术论文发表数量直接和晋升挂钩，导致很多学者埋头学术论文而不参与社会活动，但是这并不是作者所要讨论的中心内容，只是一个细节内容。
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