Register Log in  Scientific Method / Science & Exploration  Not
just the weather: climate change acceptance nosedives with the
economy  A study of polls across the start of the great
recession reveals that there's …  A few years back, the US
public's acceptance of conclusions reached by climate scientists
took a dramatic drop. It's only now beginning to recover. Not a
lot has changed about the science during that time, raising
questions about what's driving the ups and downs in the polls.
Studies have found correlations with the weather and a role for
political leaders in driving these changes, but a new study
suggests some of that is misplaced. Instead, its authors come to
a conclusion we've heard before: it's the economy, stupid.  The
authors use polling data from a variety of sources, which
creates a bit of a challenge. Not all polls ask questions that
address the same things. For example, one of the studies we
linked above asked about the public's acceptance of a basic
fact: has our planet been getting wa