Experts Agree, Citizens Don't

Under the disheartening headline “Climate Change: Public Skeptical, Scientists Sure” comes NPR’s reporting on recent studies of Americans’ views of climate change: a Yale University Project on Climate Change poll called “Climate Change in the American Mind,” and a Pew Research Center poll called "Beyond Red vs. Blue,” which found that the public is less likely to believe in climate change than it was five years ago.

Among many enlightening if tear-out-your-hair tidbits, Yale’s Anthony Leiserowitz asked citizens to estimate how climate scientists feel about global warming. "Only 13 percent of Americans got the correct answer,” he says, “which is that in fact about 97 percent of American scientists say that climate change is happening, and about a third of Americans just simply say they don't know."

The Yale poll can be found here and the Pew report here.

--Reed McManus