Politics Over Science? Climate Change Skepticism Continues

 

This Gallup poll entitled Americans Most Likely to Say Global Warming Is Exaggerated documents political and personal beliefs that Americans have regarding the validity of climate change.  Studies have shown that a little under half (%42) of Americans think that climate change is an exaggeration. Though these numbers have gone down since 2010 this still means that virtually three-quarters of Americans don’t see climate change as a serious concern. Since 1998-- when the Environment survey was first issued but Gallup-- views that see climate change as unnecessarily alarmist have gone up even though scientists release studies yearly outlining the reality of global warming. Opinions don’t exist in a vacuum and the article states that most Americans agree that they’ve experience out of the ordinary weather, which means that there must be something other than the view from their window affecting these opinions. The article probed further into this issue and found that there seems to be political ties that may influence skepticism about the changing environment. They found that %68 of republicans think of global warming as a generally exaggerated issue whereas only %15 of democrats share this view. Their final study complicates this view even further because the split in the political realm does not reflect what people believe scientists are saying about the issue. Six out of ten people believe that scientists believe that climate change is happening. This proves that people know that our environment is changing but political alliances and wavering bipartisan claims on the issue in the media muddle the perception of threat, which also affects the immediacy of the issue. However, the rest of the statistics go all over the place with 40% who are unsure, have no opinion or who are complete naysayers of the issue. This brings light to a split between the truth as we know it and the truths that we are told.  It is clear that most people are aware of a scientific certainty around climate activity but political professionals whose agendas differ greatly from the scientist of the world distort their views.  The article concluded that most Americans believe that climate is happening but do not think that it will have a significant impact on their way of life. Messages from the media and scientific evidence suggest that human life will definitely change if patterns of human activity don’t change and yet there are still 29% of people that claim to be unsure about the seriousness of climate change. The data ultimately shows that the core of changing the American people’s minds about our climate rests with governmental cooperation on the issue that, because of deep political rivalries embedded in our government, seems unlikely.