The percentage of Americans who say there is “solid evidence” of global warming is the highest its been in the past five years, at 67 percent overall, a new study from the Pew Research Center published Monday found.
The 67 percent who agreed that there is “solid evidence that the earth’s average temperature has been getting warmer over the past few decades,” is up from 63 percent in 2011 and up 10 points from the nadir of 57 percent in 2009. It’s the highest since 2008, when 71 percent said they believed the Earth was heating up.
The rebound in belief of global warming was seen across party lines, with 48 percent of self-identified Republicans saying there was evidence of global warming, up from 35 percent in 2009. Democrats, too, were up at 85 percent this year from 75 percent in 2009.
Pew pointed out though that a political disparity was slightly more evident in thepPresidential election, with 88 percent of President Obama supporters saying they recognized evidence of global warming compared to 42 percent of Romney supporters indicating the same.
There also remains a lack of consensus with respect to the cause of increasing global temperatures, though more this year believe it’s human caused (42 percent), than last (38 percent) and in 2010 (34 percent).
Overall, 64 percent of Americans said they think of global warming as a “serious problem,” Pew found.
Pew’s study, which surveyed 1,511 adults from October 4 through 7, comes on the heels of a recent report from the Carbon Disclosure Project indicating that most of the top 500 companies in the world also view global warming as a serious threat to their business going forward, but that only a few have concrete plans in place for minimizing their own contributions to it.
