American Attitudes toward Climate Change #
Wired Science found a recent Pew survey on climate change both weird and confounding:
Over the last year and a half, the number of Americans who believe the Earth is warming has dropped. The decline is especially precipitous among Republicans: in January 2007, 62 percent accepted global warming, compared to just 49 percent now.
Seeing as how 2007 was the second-warmest year on record, and the popular press finally took climate change seriously, I’m not sure how attitudes shifted in this manner. That’s the troubling part.
The confounding part: among college-educated poll respondents, 19 percent of Republicans believe that human activities are causing global warming, compared to 75 percent of Democrats. But take that college education away and Republican believers rise to 31 percent while Democrats drop to 52 percent.