"Scientists may hesitate to link some of the weather extremes of recent years to global warming -- but the public, it seems, is already there."
"A poll due for release on Wednesday shows that a large majority of Americans believe that this year's unusually warm winter, last year's blistering summer and some other weather disasters were probably made worse by global warming. And by a 2-to-1 margin, the public says the weather has been getting worse, rather than better, in recent years.
The survey, the most detailed to date on the public response to weather extremes, comes atop other polling showing a recent uptick in concern about climate change. Read together, the polls suggest that direct experience of erratic weather may be convincing some people that the problem is no longer just a vague and distant threat.
'Most people in the country are looking at everything that's happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,' said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll. 'People are starting to connect the dots.'"
Justin Gillis reports for the New York Times April 17, 2012.
