Pew Poll Shows Less Belief in Strength of Evidence for Global Warming

Overall, the poll of 1500 adults, released in October by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, said the percentage of people who believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming has declined from 77 percent (in 2006, when the question was first asked) to 57 percent.

Just over a third of respondents—down from 47 percent in 2006—said they thought human activity was behind global temperature increases.

Despite this, half of those polled said they favored limits on greenhouse gases, even if they resulted in increased energy prices. Fifty-six percent believed the U.S. should join other nations to implement emissions standards that could help curtail climate change.

Respondents from the Northeast and West Coast were more likely to regard global warming as serious and support emissions reductions measures than those in the Midwest and mountainous regions of the West.

Fifty-seven percent of Republicans responding to a recent poll said they believe there is no solid evidence of global warming—up from 31 percent only two years ago. Three-fourths of Democrats, in contrast, believe the science is credible.

The Pew poll was released only a day after 18 scientific organizations sent a letter to Congress reiterating that there is scientific consensus over global warming.

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew research center, said the shift was likely the result of concern about the economy, explaining that when the focus was elsewhere, “people forget and see these issues as less grave.”

Jon Krosnick of Stanford University, who has been conducting surveys about global warming for over 15 years, told the Associated Press he was surprised by the results of the recent Pew poll. He called the numbers “implausible.” His own polling has seen the number of Americans who believe in global warming remaining relatively constant—at a level of about 80 percent since 1997.

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