American humans at war with science?

After reading the below article from The Australian newspapers website I find it hard to completly agree with the sentiment put forth by the author. You've got to agree with a lot of it, but the story does come from a group of scientists based in the US. I don't believe that places like Sweden or even India would be so closed minded about the importance of science to humanities successful future...


Stark warning emerges from science summit - humans at war with science

• From:AFP 
• February 21, 2012 5:10PM

A STARK theme emerged from an annual scientific get-together in Vancouver: the world must be helped to believe in science again or it could be too late to save our planet.

Science is "under siege," top academics and educators were warned repeatedly at the American Association for the Advancement of Science summit as they were urged to better communicate their work to the public.

Scientific solutions are needed to solve global crises - from food and water shortages to environmental destruction - "but the public now does not understand science," leading US climate change expert James Hansen told the meeting.

"We have a planetary emergency, and very few people recognise that."

The theme of the five-day meeting, attended by some 8000 scientists from 50 countries, was
"Flattening the world - building a global knowledge society."

"It's about persuading people to believe in science, at a time when disturbing numbers don't," said meeting co-chair Andrew Petter, president of Simon Fraser University in this western Canadian city.

Experts wrangled with thorny issues such as censorship, opposition from religious groups in the United States to teaching evolution and climate change, and generally poor education standards.

"We have to plan for a future, considering the risk of climate change, with nine to 10 billion people," said Hans Rosling, a Swedish public health expert famous for combating scientific ignorance with catchy YouTube videos.

Rosling, pointing to charts showing how human populations changed with technology and how without science the majority of a family's children die, said it's naive to think that humanity can easily go backward in history. full article...