More doubters believing in global warming: poll
WASHINGTON — A growing majority of Americans think global warming is occurring, that it will become a serious problem and that the U.S. government should do something about it, a new Associated PressGfK poll suggests.
Even most people who say they do not trust scientists on the environment say temperatures are rising.
The poll found four out of every five Americans surveyed said climate change will be a serious problem for the United States if nothing is done about it. That’s up from 73 per cent when the same question was asked in 2009.
And 57 per cent say the U.S. government should do a great deal or quite a bit about the problem. That’s up from 52 per cent in 2009. Only 22 per cent of those surveyed think little or nothing should be done, a figure that dropped from 25 per cent.
Overall, 78 per cent of those surveyed said they believe temperatures are rising, up from 75 per cent three years earlier. In general, U.S. belief in global warming, according to AP-GfK and other polls, has fluctuated over the years but has stayed between about 70 and 85 per cent.
The biggest change in the polling is among people who trust scientists only a little or not at all. About one in three surveyed fell into that category.
Within that highly skeptical group, 61 per cent now say temperatures have been rising over the past 100 years. That is a substantial increase from 2009, when the AP-GfK poll found that only 47 per cent of those with little or no trust in scientists believed the world was getting warmer.
This is an important development because opinion about climate change does not move much in core groups — like those who deny it exists and those who firmly believe it is an alarming problem, said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University social psychologist and pollster.
The AP-GfK poll was conducted Nov. 29-Dec. 3 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved phone interviews with 1,002 adults nationwide. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points; the margin of error is larger for subgroups.