Views on Climate Change: It's about the Scientists

— -- As negotiators in Paris set to work on a global climate change accord, it’s useful to know the key factors in public attitudes on the issue in the United States: Views on whether or not scientists agree on the issue, and political ideology.

Controlling for other factors, these emerge from the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll as the two strongest independent factors in whether or not Americans see climate change as a serious problem facing the United States.

Supporters of action on climate change have accused skeptics of sewing doubt by promoting the notion of scientific disagreement on the issue. Whatever the cause, perceptions of disagreement remain widely held. As we reported Monday, 51 percent of Americans say they think there’s “a lot of disagreement among scientists” on whether or not global warming is happening. Forty-three percent instead think most scientists agree – a new high, but still the minority view.

We tested this, others attitudes and demographic data in a regression analysis, which establishes the strongest independent correlates of an outcome – in this case, seeing climate change as a serious problem. Views on whether scientists agree account for about 25 percent of the variance in the model, a strong result.

Political ideology comes next, indicating that people are filtering their views on climate change through an ideological lens. Being more conservative strongly and independently relates to being less likely to see climate change as a serious problem, accounting for about 12 percent of the variance in the model.

Three other predictors also emerge – income, race and partisanship. Having a higher income and being white are related to less concern with climate change, while being a Democrat is associated with greater concern. Views on the likelihood of a terrorist attack and whether to prioritize security over privacy in terrorism investigations do not relate to views on climate change, indicating that terrorism-related concerns after the Paris attacks are not a key factor.

An additional model assessed the factors related to support for additional government action on climate change. Strongest by far is the view that climate change is a serious issue, covering about 43 percent of the variance in the model. Ideology, age and being a Democrat also relate, though much less so.

As noted Monday, 63 percent of Americans call climate change a serious problem, down from 69 percent in an ABC/Post poll in June 2014. This analysis indicates that this view – and support for action to address it – depend chiefly not on pronouncements by world leaders, but by the public’s perception – still less than robust – that the scientific community is on board.

Surely other factors beyond those measured in this survey are at play in views of climate change (examples may be belief in human causes, and personal experience of climate disruption). Regardless, the first model explains about 30 percent of the total variance in views on whether it’s a serious problem, and the second explains nearly 60 percent of the variance in views on government action. Both models therefore are informative. Results follow.