Author: Americans Not Concerned With Climate Change

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - According to Austin Ruse, author of the new book, Fake Science, the majority of Americans are not worried about the impact of climate change and that scientists are overstating the threat in general.

During an interview with Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, Ruse said that climate change has never been a topic that aroused the interest of the American public.

"Most of us are not concerned about cataclysmic global warming. It is mostly an issue of elites. The problem with that, obviously, is that it is elites who get us to go sign on to the Paris Climate Accords. It is elites, in California, like the Governor, who says that California will live by the Paris Climate Accords and, of course, drive all the jobs to Texas, but, for the most part, most Americans are not that concerned with this particular issue."

He accused the scientific community of manipulating their areas of study in order to receive more funding.

"One of the trends in modern day science in peer review and in seeking to get grants from universities and foundations and the government is positivity. They don't give grants for saying something's not true. They give grants for saying something is true and here is how it's even more true and here is how we can take it to the next level. That's how you get grants these days and it's one of the problems in peer review is this fetish for positivity."

Ruse believes it is dangerous for scientists for ever to consider something as set in stone.

"Saying the science is settled is, perhaps, the most unscientific thing that somebody can say. That's why we have to resist it and why I wrote the book. Fake science, in many ways, is even more pernicious than fake news, which is ephemeral and can go away in 24 hours, but fake science has a tendency to settle deeply into the mind and it's hard to get it out."