"Judging from an annual survey by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities, the American public is roughly as fractured in its attitudes toward climate change today as it was last year.

In the first of four reports based on the poll, the researchers estimate that 64 percent of American adults now believe that the planet is warming, up slightly from 61 percent last year. When asked to assume that global warming is happening and to ascribe a cause, only 47 percent said that it was caused mostly by human activity, however, down from 50 percent last year. Roughly mirroring last year’s results, 52 percent of Americans said they were either “very worried” or “somewhat worried” about the warming trend, while 48 percent said they were “not very worried” or “not at all worried” about it.

Most Americans seem unaware of the broad consensus among scientists that global warming is under way."

Leslie Kaufman reports for the New York Times' Green blog June 9, 2011. [2]