Americans "alarmed" by climate change double in just five years

By Sebastien Malo NEW YORK, Feb 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The proportion of Americans found to be "alarmed" by climate change has doubled in just five years, pollsters behind a nationwide survey revealed on Tuesday, signs of A TK, .

The findings TK "TK TK TK JUMP LARGEST EVER SEEN," said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication in Connecticut.

The poll found that 29 percent of respondents to a poll conducted last December by Yale and George Mason universities account for twice results collected from first conducting the same exercise in 2013. Those deemed alarmed represented an all-time high, the universities said in statements.

To reach their conclusion, which are nationally representative, the pollsters administered questionaires to 1,114 adults in the U.S in which they asked about their climate change beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. Answers were then used to classify respondents into six groups, from dismissive, or least worried about climate change, to alarmed, for those most worried.

Those deemed dismissive of global warming represented 9 percent of respondents, a dropping by 5 points compared to 2013. The findings come amid a growing polarization of the political debate over the issue of global warming in the United States.

The decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to pull from the Paris climate deal has fired up his base, while their opponents have championed a "Green New Deal" that seeks to eliminate the nation's heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions within a decade. The 2015 Paris accord, agreed by nearly 200 nations, seeks to wean the global economy off fossil fuels in the second half of this century, limiting the rise in average temperatures to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times.

The increased visibility of global warming such debates generate could explain Americans' rising concern, said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor emeritus at Hunter College in New York City. "The more information you get there more interested that you are," he said.

Academic research has further shown that growing exposure to bouts of extreme weather may also change minds, he added. "And it results in higher concern."

Climate change will cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century, hitting everything from health to infrastructure, according to a 2018 government report, the Fourth National Climate Assessment Volume II. Meanwhile, three of the five costliest hurricanes in the United States - Harvey, Maria and Irma - occurred in 2017, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the U.S. Commerce Department. https://coast.noaa.gov/states/fast-facts/hurricane-costs.html

(Reporting by Sebastien Malo @sebastienmalo, Editing by XX. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers climate change, humanitarian news, women's and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking and property rights. Visit http://news.trust.org/climate)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)