Pew Poll Shows Public Still Doubts Climate Catastrophe Claims

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H. Sterling Burnett

Managing Editor, Environment & Climate News at The Heartland Institute

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is managing editor of Environment & Climate News and a research fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute. Burnett worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis for 18 years, most recently as a senior fellow in charge of NCPA’s environmental policy program. He has held various positions in professional and public policy organizations, including serving as a member of the Environment and Natural Resources Task Force in the Texas Comptroller’s e-Texas commission.

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Old weather station in Carpathians mountains

A Pew Research Center poll of 1,534 U.S. adults reports nearly three-quarters of Americans don’t believe there is a large “scientific consensus” among climate scientists that humans are causing climate change. According to Pew’s poll Americans are almost equally split over the question of whether humans are causing climate change, with nearly half of those polled, 48 percent, saying Earth is warming due to human activity, while 51 percent believe warming and other changes are either due to natural causes or there is no solid evidence Earth is warming at all.

Only 33 percent of Americans believe climate researchers “understand very well” whether climate change is even occurring. Just 28 percent of those polled say scientists “understand very well” the causes of climate change and only 19 percent say scientists know the best way to respond to climate change.

Oddly, two-thirds of those polled believe climate scientists should have a major role in shaping climate policy, despite believing climate scientists’ research is driven more by their political leanings (27 percent) or their desire to advance their careers (36 percent) than by the best available research (32 percent).

According to the Pew poll a majority of Americans distrust the news media’s coverage of climate change, with 51 percent saying the media does a “bad job” covering the issue. This high level of distrust comes as increasing numbers of mainstream news outlets refuse to cite or quote in their coverage of the issue scientists and scholars who doubt humans are causing catastrophic climate change.