The majority of Americans believe in global warming
The number of people who believe global warming is a problem is ticking back up, according to a set of recent polls.
This news comes as the Senate voted down a measure by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases from power plants and other polluters under the Clean Air Act.
The rules will now go into effect in January, and some observers say is an indication of how energy legislation may tip.
As for the polls, one from the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University found that three out of four Americans believe that the Earth is gradually warming from human activity and want the government to do something about it.
Funding came from the National Science Foundation, and results were based on telephone interviews conducted from June 1-7 with 1,000 randomly selected American adults.
"Several national surveys released during the last eight months have been interpreted as showing that fewer and fewer Americans believe that climate change is real, human-caused and threatening to people," Krosnick said. "But our new survey shows just the opposite."
About three quarters said the Earth's temperature probably had been heating up over the last 100 years, and 75 percent said that human behavior was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred. The poll has been taken for the last four years and the decline in people who believe global warming has been happening is dropping, researchers said.
Skeptics who don't trust scientists often cite the weather -- 2008 was the coldest year since 2000 -- but researchers say year to year fluctuations are "uninformative." Other point to "climategate," where in late 2009 hacked emails from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia in Britain showed some appeared to be colluding to silence unconvinced colleagues. But trust in the scientists also appears to have remained high, with almost three-quarters trusting them, researchers said.
A second poll from Yale and George Mason universities showed public concern about global warming is again on the rise.
The number of people who believe global warming is happening has risen 4 points since January, to 61 percent. The number who believe that it's mostly caused by human activity rose by 3 points, to 50 percent.
The number who worry about global warming rose three points, to 53 percent. And the number of Americans who said that the issue is personally important to them rose five points, to 63 percent.
“The stabilization and slight rebound in public opinion is occurring amid signs the economy is starting to recover, along with consumer confidence, and as memories of unusual snowstorms and scientific scandals recede,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, said in a statement.
“The BP oil disaster is also reminding the public of the dark side of dependence on fossil fuels, which may be increasing support for clean energy policies,” he said.
The number of Americans who said President Obama and Congress should place a higher priority on developing sources of clean energy increased 11 points, to 71 percent.
There was also more public support for regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant (77 percent, up by 6 since January); funding more research into renewable energy sources (87 percent, up by 2); offering tax rebates for people who buy fuel-efficient vehicles and solar panels (83 percent, up by 1); signing an international treaty that requires the United States to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide 90 percent by the year 2050 (65 percent, up by 4); requiring electric utilities to produce at least 20 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources, even if it cost the average household an extra $100 per year (61 percent, up by 2); and expanding offshore drilling for oil and natural gas off the U.S. coast fell (62 percent, down by 5).
This poll surveyed 1,024 American adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percent. It was conducted from May 14, 2009 to June 1, 2010 by Knowledge Networks, using an online research panel of American adults.
NASA handout photo of the globe via AFP/Getty
Comments
Global warming is not in dispute is it?
Global cooling is real as well correct?
The issue is it's main cause, IF there is a cause at all other than natural.
Seeing as how the earth has cooled and warmed many many times before hominids were even around, the natural causes seems to be much more plausible than any other theory. And theory is all it is.
Posted by: Anonymous | June 11, 2010 11:09 AM
Global warming is real but IT IS NOT MAN MADE. What is MAN MADE is the hoax that mankind created and can reduce global warming through control of CO2 emissions. Over 30,000 US Scientists have signed a petition supported by a 12 page report which clearly shows global warming is part of the natural environmental cycle of our planet AND IS A GOOD THING. See the report / petition at... http://www.petitionproject.org/index.php
Posted by: Tom | June 11, 2010 11:26 AM
Would the Baltimore Sun be brave enough to conduct a nationwide poll asking what percentage of Americans are aware that valid peer-reviewed, published scientific findings exist contradicting Al Gore's, the IPCC's and President Obama's version of human-caused global warming?
TW: There are very few scientific issues where all the research points in one direction, Russell. Al Gore and President Obama aren't scientists, so they don't count. What contradictory peer-reviewed, scientific findings are there that haven't been reviewed and taken into accounty already by the IPCC?
Posted by: Russell C | June 11, 2010 6:21 PM
The peer reviewed, repeatable science analysis results coming from NASA and many other reputable places all say GW is real, and the probability is extremely high that it is man made. The Oil and Gas industry is in a highly monetized propaganda 101 ploy to drag the science kicking and screaming into a debate, and into a belief system. There they have a chance. Think it through people. The world is not flat, the moon is not made of green cheese, the sun doesn't orbit the earth, and man made global warming is dangerously real, no matter what the Oil & Gas sponsored institutes want you to believe.
Posted by: Jim Cairn | June 11, 2010 6:37 PM
Readers may be interested to compare a photo I took of Funafuti Island (Tuvalu) in 1973 with one taken in 2004. (NOTE I think the tide is higher in the 2004 photo) Note the differences!! http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2831763940083294338HgMOik IF THAT DOESN'T GET YOU TO THE PHOT DO A SEARCH ON "coopec100" and it is in my "Oceana" album.
TW: This AP story out of New Zealand reports research indicating that most coral atolls such as Tuvalu have either stayed the same size or grown over time, while a handfull have shrunk. But the scientist quoted there says that while many island seem to be holding their own for now against sea level rise, an acceleration of sea level rise could overwhelm the islands' growth rates. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gjWKD-4AsKF97q0HOYo1FhSKRqjQD9G3O5GO1
Researchers have found similar things with tidal marshes in the Chesapeake Bay - they've been growing in elevation, offsetting sea level rise. But similar concerns exist that if the rate of sea level rise increases, the natural accretion may not keep up. Complicating matters also is that many of the shorelines are built up, so there is little room for wetlands to migrate inland as sea level rises.
Posted by: Alan Cooper | June 11, 2010 8:29 PM
Global warming is not directly related to the release of CO2 in our atmosphere. The majority of Americans believe in global warming because we have been told to believe in it. Every time we turn around, we are blitzed by new "climate data" or told that we can be a more responsible people by buying "green" products. Lets not forget that, for the most part, Americans are not very bright as a whole. We are being led down a 'green' path by people that are trying to manipulate our way of thinking to line their own pockets. I found an interesting article by Philip V. Brennan that echoes my own thoughts on this matter and I highly recommend you take a look at it. I posted it on my website at http://votedemocraticparty.com/?p=804
Posted by: Blake Chiszar | June 11, 2010 8:40 PM
Shape-shifting islands defy sea-level rise
"AGAINST all the odds, a number of shape-shifting islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean are standing up to the effects of climate change.
For years, people have warned that the smallest nations on the planet - island states that barely rise out of the ocean - face being wiped off the map by rising sea levels. Now the first analysis of the data broadly suggests the opposite: most have remained stable over the last 60 years, while some have even grown."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627633.700-shapeshifting-islands-defy-sealevel-rise.html
Posted by: Anonymous | June 14, 2010 8:59 AM
TW: Al Gore and President Obama regurgitate IPCC conclusions about man-caused global warming. Can you or they point to a solitary instance in IPCC reports where conclusions about global warming resulting from natural causes were mentioned as a matter of full disclosure, with explanations of why they were rejected?
Again, the question is not about yours asking what "findings are there that haven't been reviewed and taken into account already by the IPCC?", but rather if the Baltimore Sun is brave enough to conduct a nationwide poll asking what percentage of Americans know about valid peer-reviewed, published scientific findings contradicting Gore's, IPCC's and Obama's version of human-caused global warming? For example, the 880 page report titled "Climate Change Reconsidered, The 2009 report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)", seen at this link: http://www.nipccreport.org/reports/2009/2009report.html
Would the Baltimore Sun be willing to do this or not? If not, why not?
TW: Actually, the IPCC's 4th assessment did explain why observed climate change cannot be explained solely by natural factors. Here's a link: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-9-2.html
As for your challenge, The Baltimore Sun doesn't conduct nationwide polls, as a general rule, so there'd have to be a compelling reason to do so. The report you cite isn't peer reviewed or published in a scientific journal. It's got loads of references in it, to be sure, though in a quick read of one key section I was hard-pressed to find any that directly addressed your argument.
So to help readers find Waldo in there, please cite one or two peer-reviewed studies published in reocgnized scientific journals that say human activity has nothing to do with climate change. That'd be a start, though even that wouldn't be surprising. Given the nature of scientific colloquy, I would be surprised if no one put forward a competing theory or two. Most scientists I deal with acknowledge there are uncertainties or unknowns about virtually everything, even on the margins of basically "settled" science.
The range of uncertainty IPCC authors have cited for human activity causing climate change has shrunk in successive reports over the years, based on the weight of scientific evidence and peer-reviewed published studies in the interim. So, given the ever-present uncertantiies, the question faced by policy makers and the public is: Should we wait until everything is nailed down before acting, recognizing that moment may never come? Or will it be too late by then to avert or mitigate the worst impacts?
Posted by: Russell C | June 16, 2010 1:39 PM