Science, media and public perception: implications for climate and health policies

International climate policy has been set back by the failure to achieve a strong and legally binding agreement at the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen in December 2009. This has been compounded by the unau-thorized release of email content dating back 10 years from leading climate sci-entists, and an acknowledged error (and other alleged errors) in the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), leading to widespread negative reporting of climate science.This is occurring just as the public health community has begun to pay much more attention to climate change, as evi-denced by a 2008 World Health Assembly resolution and statements by major public health associations. Given the allegations that are now being levelled at climate sci-ence, is this attention misplaced?At the most basic level, the answer is clearly no. The conclusion that climate change is happening, and is due mainly to human activities, is based on well-established physics, supported by a large and coherent body of theoretical and observational evidence. It is also endorsed by most relevant experts, i.e. more than 97% of climatologists who are actively publishing on the issue, according to a recent survey in the United States of America (USA).