Beyond "Climategeddon" - from science education to solutions

CONCRETE (didn't see that coming, didja? :-)
On another thread, I saw the headline "Up To 70,000 Barrels A Day Of Oil Could Be Leaking Into Gulf" and the phrase "Up To" just ticked me off. I thought "And 'down to' what? More likely to be 70,000 than 70? WHY? Or, WHY NOT?"
(Here is that article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/14/gulf-oil-spill-may-be-far_n_576127.html
And here is another: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126809525&f=1001 )

It just seems to me that in the same number of column inches, "science" "journalists" should say ">= 70,000 barrels per day @ 99% confidence" and force the reader to attain more than a sixth grade statistics-comprehension level (ie, none) before entertaining the belief that they fully understand the work of the best PhDs on Earth.

My hypothesis (or is this social science? making this a mere thesis? Hey, if it's both physical and social science, why can't it be a hyperthesis?) is that the obstacle to convincing ~40% of voters of the facts that 97% of qualified professionals know, is not climatologists' inability to simplify science, it is their *willingness* to entertain the fallacy that complexity can or should be simplified quite so much, and more than that, it is editors' insistence on sacrificing complexity -- and with it, NECESSARILY, accuracy -- to their assumptions about the "average" readers' ability.
About Climate Change
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost