Why Americans are Skeptical of Their Role in Global Warming

SAN FRANCISCO—While the evidence is clear that human-caused global warming is occurring and is a threat to many humans and other organisms on the planet, many Americans have been slow to buy the whole argument.

Yesterday at its annual meeting here, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest science organization in the world, issued a consensus statement that "global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now and is a growing threat to society,'' Earlier this month the Intergovernmental Panel in Climate Change issued a statement that global warming will "continue for centuries" and is "very likely caused by man."

While these statement may have changed public opinion in recent weeks, last year a joint poll between ABC News, Time, Stanford University and Ohio State University found that only 3 in 10 Americans believed that global warming is caused by humans. Less than 40 percent of the nation’s public called global warming is an immediate and serious problem.

"Americans are very much on the same wavelength with the scientific community about the basics of the issue," Jon Krosnick, professor of communication and of political science from Stanford University said during a talk here yesterday. "But they lack certainty" about how bad the problem really is