Belief in global warming rises with thermometers

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 Press-GfK 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 of Americans polled 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.

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 of the people 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, often in the past, 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. Krosnick, who consulted with The Associated Press on the poll questions, said the changes the poll shows aren’t in the hard-core “anti-warming” deniers, but in the next group, who had serious doubts.