The cold winter this year has led Americans to believe that news about global warming could probably be just a hoax.
According to a new study published online Thursday, the opinions of Americans on global warming seem to rise and fall with the temperatures they experience. Just last week, a new nationally representative survey that measures American sentiment on climate change suggested that most Americans are of the opinion that global warming is the cause of the worsening weather conditions in the U.S. over the past ten years.
Now, a new Yale University poll suggests that many Americans believe that the reports about extreme global warming could probably be just a hoax. A similar poll conducted last September showed that 70 percent of people believe that global warming is actually taking place. This number has dropped by 10 percent in just over 6 months to 63 percent.
One of the reasons for this change in opinion could be the chilling winter America experienced this year.
"Much of the United States experienced an unusually cold March, just before the survey was conducted," the study's authors write. "Prior research has found that personal experience with weather, particularly recent weather, can influence how some people think about global warming."
Americans are also of the opinion that there is a lot of "disagreement among scientists" on the topic of global warming. However, according to statistics released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, approximately 98 percent of scientists worldwide believe global warming is actually taking place and human activities is the cause.
"We use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that 97-98 percent of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of [man-made] climate change," that report says. "The relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of [man-made] climate change are substantially below that of the convinced researchers."
