The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication released a poll on attitudes about the weather today and most Americans — based on the sample size of 1,000 of them — apparently think that climate change has a role in most of the significant weather events of the last year.
At the same time, however, most say they haven’t seen their local meteorologist talk about climate change, which doesn’t come as a surprise, as I’ve written about before on NewsCut. Without conclusive science, most meteorologists seem to steer clear of a topic they’re not particularly well trained to handle.
At the same time, however, 58-percent want to hear what the local forecaster has to say.
Overall, researchers say, people are basing a scientific conclusion on how they personally experience the weather. “That’s what we think is starting to happen for people,” Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale project told LiveScience.com. “One natural disaster they might see as random; two, that’s a coincidence; but three, and you’re starting to see a pattern.”