If we're being honest in retrospect, the first decade of the 2000s was bad for science journalism.    Too many journalists decided they wanted to be cheerleaders for science or, worse, had scientist envy and wanted to be included in cool discussions about the mysteries of the universe.  
Basically, journalists stopped asking the awkward questions of scientists that journalists in other fields know makes their careers (see: Dan Rather and Richard Nixon).

And bloggers were no better - unless it was about Republican science positions, then they had plenty of skeptical outrage, but they didn't seem to care as much about science outreach as they did garnering votes for Democrats.  It's hard for a conservative who wants answers to read bloggers and be berated constantly because they don't think giving more money to the government is the solution to everything, and then believe the science answers will be any better thought out.   

Now, as we approach our fifth year after Al Gore filmed the most successful Powerpoint slideshow presentation in history - and global warming acceptance reached its fevered pitch - things haven't changed very much in climate policy.   And that frustrates some people.   They believe that if the data is right there hearts and minds should be changed; you know, like how conservatives know that giving more money to the government doesn't actually create a better world and wonder why everyone doesn't accept it.

And mindset and prioritization is really the crux of it.    When you discuss the science of the atmosphere, just like when you discuss economic policy, people are not always speaking a common language.  When you change the language, you get a different answer.

60.2% of Republicans accepted climate change as science fact but only 44% of Republicans accepted global warming in a recent survey, but they were the exact same thing to progressives - 86% of them accepted it no matter which term is used.   But it isn't the same thing at all.   When the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) held a recent press conference to talk about snowstorms and climate change, they were shucking off the constraints of global warming that wasn't global and embracing a more nuanced model of climate instability.   That means 56% of Republicans turned out to be right and 86% of Democrats were wrong throughout the entire decade that global warming was big news.    Properly framed - I know, I know, only Democrats are allowed to frame - it means Republicans were actually smarter about science all this time.
And they're gloating about it.  

James Taylor in Forbes showed no end to delight in the recent UCS conference because it gave him a chance to note that the IPCC stating global warming would accelerate and "milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms" along with “the science is settled” and “the debate is over” don't look all that scientific when instead snowstorms are heavier and Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground, quite patiently conceded, "Have we learned a great deal since the IPCC 2001 report? I would say yes, we have. Climate science, like any other field, is a constantly evolving field and we are always learning."

So why do Republicans buy into climate change but not global warming?   Language and presentation.   The incredibly flawed Kyoto protocol wanted American voters to accept that American cars were causing global warming and should be mitigated yet Chinese, Mexican and Indian cars were okay.    That was good science?  No, it was an economic/political agenda by competitors to America and it caused a rupture in acceptance that got attached to global warming as a term.   'Climate change', on the other hand, feels egalitatian and exculpatory.     It's also more exact; change can mean up or down, which is why Al Gore holding an urgent global warming seminar during a blizzard looked silly but UCS using blizzards as a teaching moment on climate instability is not, regardless of whether or not a few pundits delight in sticking it to the climate experts forced to endure press conferences and take some lumps.

People being people, there also may be some cultural tweaking happening.   Environmentalists have been keen on sending the message that  'Mother Nature is awesome and we are puny and insignificant' for decades though perhaps it has been ingrained in the collective unconscious longer than that.   James Hrynyshyn at Scienceblogs.com discusses Simon Donner's recent American Meterological Society presentation:
His experience among Pacific Island cultures suggests that this notion -- that climate change is by definition the purview of forces greater than ourslves -- is near universal, predating the Judeo-Christian canon and deeply embedded just about everywhere we go.

He suggests that any communications strategy designed to shift public opinion on global warming literacy "needs to include the full history and development of human thinking about climate."
10,000 years or more of nature being too big for us to imagine and now we are supposed to believe my incandescent light bulb is ruining the place?  

Donner's message is simple and it's one that all science writers, and certainly the more militant science bloggers, should take home:



Climate science is suffering some bad PR at the moment but it should not be a crisis of confidence.   The IPCC has vowed to rein in its Working Groups, climate scientists are not going to smugly declare "the science is settled" on something as complex as the climate and there should be fewer public relations blitzes designed to frame policy debates instead of getting people to accept science.

If even 60% of Republicans accept climate change, and they do, the science is going to win.