Poll: US belief in global warming is cooling

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Sunday, October 25, 2009

WASHINGTON, USA (AP) - Americans seem to be cooling toward global warming.

Just 57 per cent think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years, a new poll says. And the share of people who believe pollution caused by humans is causing temperatures to rise has also taken a dip, even as the US and world forums gear up for possible action against climate change.

The share of people who believe pollution caused by humans is causing temperatures to rise has taken a dip.

In a poll of 1,500 adults by the Pew Research Centre for the People & the Press, released Thursday, the number of people saying there is strong scientific evidence that the Earth has got warmer over the past few decades is down from 71 per cent in April of last year and from 77 per cent when Pew started asking the question in 2006. The number of people who see the situation as a serious problem also has declined.

The steepest drop has occurred during the past year, as Congress and the Obama administration have taken steps to control heat-trapping emissions for the first time and international negotiations for a new treaty to slow global warming have been under way. At the same time, there has been mounting scientific evidence of climate change - from melting ice caps to the world's oceans hitting the highest monthly recorded temperatures this summer.

The poll was released a day after 18 scientific organisations wrote Congress to reaffirm the consensus behind global warming. A federal government report Thursday found that global warming is upsetting the Arctic's thermostat.

Only about a third, or 36 per cent of the respondents, feel that human activities - such as pollution from power plants, factories and automobiles - are behind a temperature increase. That's down from 47 per cent from 2006 through last year's poll.

Andrew Weaver, a professor of climate analysis at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said politics could be drowning out scientific awareness.
"It's a combination of poor communication by scientists, a lousy summer in the Eastern United States, people mixing up weather and climate and a full-court press by public relations firms and lobby groups trying to instil a sense of uncertainty and confusion in the public," he said.

Though there are exceptions, the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring and that the primary cause is a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal.
Jane Lubchenco, head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told a business group meeting at the White House Thursday: "The science is pretty clear that the climate challenge before us is very real. We're already seeing impacts of climate change in our own backyards."

Despite misgivings about the science, half the respondents still say they support limits on greenhouse gases, even if they could lead to higher energy prices. And a majority - 56 per cent - feel the United States should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change.

Since 1997, the per centage of Americans that believe the Earth is heating up has remained constant - at around 80 per cent - in polling done by Jon Krosnick of Stanford University. Krosnick, who has been conducting surveys on attitudes about global warming since 1993, was surprised by the Pew results.

He described the decline in the Pew results as "implausible", saying there is nothing that could have caused it.

The poll's margin of error was plus or minus three percentage points.

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