American public opinion has been slow to catch up to these truths. But it is catching up. Seventy percent of Americans say climate change is happening; compared to only 13% who say it’s not real, according to a national poll of Americans released Wednesday by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication . . . The researchers interviewed 1,226 adults between November 18 and December 1, after the US presidential election. The percentage of Americans who say climate change is real is generally up from a low of 57% in 2010. It’s still slightly lower than the 71% who said climate change was real when this research started in November 2008.
The fastest growth in understanding? That comes from conservatives, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “The real movement is coming from Republicans and in particular among conservative Republicans,” he said. “The percentage [of conservative Republicans] is up 19 percentage points in the past couple years. That’s kind of remarkable.”
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