Meandering through the newsosphere (can I call mainstream media the newsosphere if I access it online?), I stumbled upon two facts which, in and of themselves, were both unsurprising and not terribly interesting.

1. American citizens have an abiding faith in technology, more so than any other country in the world.
2. Americans don’t believe in climate change.

Individually, each of these facts is unremarkable.  But together, they pose an interesting question about how we handle science in our society.  I have been musing about some of the possible explanations for this apparent contradiction.

Perhaps it is that we don’t understand science, so we are skeptical.  Of course, we don’t understand the science behind how our television works either (at least I don’t), but we know that it turns on when we press the power button.  Most of the time.  So even if we don’t understand it, we have faith that it’s going to work when we need it to.

Or, as I hear echoed time and again, could there really be two Americas?  The first America has faith in technology, believes in climate change, and theoretically hopes that we will be able to build a bright green future thanks to technological innovation.  And the second America doesn’t believe in climate change, evolution, stem cell research or any other science?

I don’t buy it.  I don’t buy it because it doesn’t work.  You cannot lump the vast range of views about science and technology into two simplistic groups.

After all, climate deniers still use computers and drive cars.  They still go to the doctor, take prescription medications, get flu shots, and treat their cancer with chemotherapy.  This is all science.  This is all technology.  And they believe in it.  They have faith in it.  They trust the science, scientists, and engineers behind all of these things.  Likewise, many people who understand the science behind climate change do not believe there is a technological solution to the problem.  Some even advocate a large-scale re-adoption of older methods of production and distribution that are not dependent on current technological developments, much less future advances.

But the question is, if not through a theory of two Americas, how can we describe the apparent contradiction between these two statistics?  Because it does seem that there should be some connection between the two.  And it is fascinating that on both sides of the aisle, there seems to be among non-scientists (laymen, really) an inclination to pick and choose which science we are going to believe in and which we will blatantly disregard or actively deny.

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