Before the financial crisis hit, Americans were pretty
sure that the globe was warming, that humans were causing it and that it
was kind of a big deal. As the economy slumped, Americans decided
climate change wasn't actually happening — and even if it was, it wasn't
our fault. And now, after a flurry of wild weather — deadly tornados,
floods, droughts, an uncommonly mild winter and recent heat waves — U.S.
residents are back to believing that global warming is real. But we're
still hesitant to take the blame.
What accounts for the rebound? It isn't the economy,
which has thawed only a little. And it doesn't seem to be science; the
percentage of respondents to the Yale survey who believe "most
scientists think global warming is happening" is stuck at 35 percent,
still way down from 48 percent four years ago. (The statement remains
just as true now as it was then — it's the public, not the scientists,
that keeps changing its mind.)
No, our resurgent belief in global warming seems to be a
function of the weather. A separate Yale survey this spring found that
82 percent of Americans had personally experienced extreme weather or
natural disasters in the past year. And 52 percent said they believed
the weather had been getting worse overall in recent years, compared to
just 22 percent who thought it had gotten better.
Maybe it was all that priming, but 69 percent of
respondents in that March poll went on to say they believed global
warming was affecting the weather in the United States. And that, of
course, was before the Colorado wildfires and before the most recent
wave of storms and heat in the Midwest and Northeast, which have brought
renewed media attention to climate change.
If you polled the country today, the number might well top 70 percent.
To the science-minded, it might be disconcerting that
the weather drives Americans' beliefs about climate change. After all,
scientists' models have been showing and predicting climate change for
decades. And global warming's relationship to any given weather trend is
probabilistic, not causal, as David Roberts explained in a thoughtful
Grist post recently.
On top of that, those who base their climate judgments
on the weather rather than on science are missing out on all the data
that link global warming to greenhouse gas emissions. That helps explain
why, even as more people acknowledge global warming, fewer believe
humans are causing it. As Brian Merchant wrote in Slate a year ago, to
turn climate skeptics into believers would probably require dismantling
the denial industry and exposing more people to the actual evidence.
Still, it's at least good to know that most Americans
are aware enough of what global warming is supposed to entail — i.e.,
not just warmer temperatures but bizarre weather patternshttp://www.columbiatribune.com/opinion/weird-weather-adds-to-ranks-of-global-warming-believers/article_7c3a3e73-09dc-5339-a302-4845cf4d4159.html
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