Science is a crucial factor in government policy making, but is often ignored, said an American Nobel Prize winner on Friday in Suzhou, East China city.

"Science is particularly needed to bring the attention of government policy-makers to problems that they don't know about yet," said professor Burton Richter, the 1976 Nobel Prize winner for physics.

"However, it is really hard to get governments to pay attention to some science. Most of the time, scientific information tells governments things they don't want to hear," he said at a press conference at the ongoing 28th General Assembly of International Council for Science.

Richter mentioned the first report revealing the increase in carbon dioxide emissions in the late 1950s.

"The world scientific community was very worried about what was going to happen if it continued, but governments did not pay any attention until the Earth Summit in 1992," he said.

Now, global warming caused by the increasing emission of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide has become a global concern.

The Kyoto Protocol, aiming at curbing emissions of greenhouse gases, finally came into force in February this year, nearly eight years after it was negotiated in 1997. The Protocol has been ratified by 141 countries and regions.

"If you want to do science for policy, you have to be honest and very persistent," he said, "because if you ask governments to change what they are doing and spend lots of money on something, you have to be able to convince them."

The general assembly, held in Suzhou in east China's Jiangsu Province, approved its strategy plan on Thursday, which stressed that "science is necessary for decision-making and policy development."

Source: Xinhua