The FINANCIAL -- Al Gore may think it’s "BS", but most voters believe solar activity has an impact on global cooling and warming.
A narrow plurality gives human activity the edge over sun activity, though, when it comes to which one has a bigger impact on the problem.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 60% of Likely U.S. Voters think it’s at least somewhat likely that the level of activity on the sun, including solar flares and sunspots, has an impact on the long-term heating and cooling of the earth’s atmosphere. Just 22% feel that it’s unlikely solar activity influences the atmosphere’s long-term temperature.
These findings include 29% who say it’s Very Likely that solar activity has a long-term impact and only six percent (6%) who believe it’s Not At All Likely. Seventeen percent (17%) are not sure.
Still, 44% of voters thinks human activity has a bigger impact on the long-term heating and cooling of the Earth’s atmosphere than solar activity does. Thirty-seven percent (37%) disagree and believe solar activity has a greater impact. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure.
Gore in a speech last month at the Aspen Institute dismissed critics of global warming, including those who cited solar activity as a warming and cooling factor, with a popular barnyard euphemism. Gore and President Obama, among others, continue to argue that human activity is chiefly to blame and seek major limits on that activity. But global warming skeptics have seized on a new study out of Europe that links solar activity to long-term changes in the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere.
Most voters (59%) say global warming is at least a somewhat serious problem. However, voters over the past three years have been trending away from the belief that human activity is primarily the cause of global warming and have been more inclined to blame planetary trends instead.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 2-3, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
A majority of Americans nationwide continues to believe there is significant disagreement about global warming in the scientific community, and most go even further to say some scientists falsify data to support their own beliefs.
Sixty-seven percent (67%) of voters say they have at least somewhat closely followed recent news stories about the possible causes of global warming, although only 23% are following Very Closely.
Men are more inclined than women to believe solar activity has an impact on the long-term temperature of the atmosphere. A plurality (48%) of female voters believes human activity has a bigger impact than solar activity on global warming, while male voters are almost evenly divided on the question.
Sixty-four percent (64%) of Democrats blame human activity more; 52% of Republicans think solar activity is the primary culprit. Voters not affiliated with either party are evenly divided.
Seventy-two percent (72%) of Tea Party voters believe solar activity has a bigger impact on the atmosphere’s long-term temperature. Fifty-two percent (52%) of voters who are not members of the grass roots movement see human activity playing a bigger role.
Sixty-two percent (62%) of the Political Class feel human activity plays a bigger role. Mainstream voters are almost evenly divided on the question.
With hurricane season in full swing, 41% of American Adults believe global warming is creating climate changes that lead to more extreme weather events. But that’s down 14 points from June 2008 when 55% felt that way. Forty-three percent (43%) disagree and say global warming is not producing more extreme weather.
In early May as deadly storms were tearing up the South, 51% of Americans thought the severe weather was primarily caused by long-term planetary trends. Only 19% blamed the extreme weather on human activity.
www.rasmussenreports.com
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