Americans are not concerned about climate change, according to a recent poll. Just 24 percent of Americans said they were concerned "a great deal" by changing global temperatures.
Gallup asked Americans how concerned they were about 15 different subject areas. When the results were tabulated, respondents said climate change was the second-to-last issue about which they were concerned. Only race relations had a lower level of worry among those people surveyed. A majority of people answering the survey said they were "only a little" or "not at all" concerned with those two problems.
The issues that most concerned Americans in this latest poll are the economy, federal spending and healthcare.
NASA has a different opinion. The space agency recently stated that despite a recent slowdown, they believe the Earth will continue to warm.
Scientists looked at climate sensitivity around the planet. This is the amount that temperatures respond to changes in the atmosphere. Many climatologists believed this number to be quite low, indicating a nearly-uniform response in areas around the Earth. A new study shows climate sensitivity may be far greater than believed.
The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that if the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubles, it could raise average global temperatures by over three degrees Fahrenheit. If the new study is accurate, the amount of actual heating could be 20 percent greater than IPCC estimates.
The northern hemisphere is likely to experience the greatest sensitivity to changes in the atmosphere. This is due to the production of aerosols by industrialized nations.
This NASA study was led by Drew Shindell, and published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
In February, Secretary of State John Kerry stated that global warming is as serious of a problem as terrorism. Americans in the Gallup poll listed terrorism as a much greater worry than global climate change.
Just 31 percent of people said they worry about the quality of the environment "a great deal." This number is the lowest it has been since 2001, when Gallup began asking the question. A total of 35 percent of respondents said climate change concerned then a "fair amount," While 51 percent said the issue was not a concern for them.
Congress has recently formed the Climate Action Task Force. Over two dozen lawmakers took to the Senate floor to show support for the new group.
The poll surveyed 513 randomly-selected people. The study has a degree of error of plus or minus six percentage points.
