Why climate change opinions run hot and cold:
Recent polls suggest that belief in climate change, and concern about it, is picking back up. Those numbers dropped between 2008 and 2010. Why? Well, the economic downturn certainly played a role. A recent paper by sociologist Robert Brulle at Drexel University suggests the lack of federal leadership on climate change also makes a difference. Fortunately, we are seeing stronger leadership at the state and local level these days, in places like California and New York City. But some argue that the weather we saw over that period also played a role.
We had colder winters those years—and people stopped worrying about climate change. Now we’ve just gone through a record-breaking winter in December, January, and February. We’ve had the warmest winter on record—that’s since 1895. And March shattered all kinds of records. Every state in the nation experienced a record warm daily temperature during March. According to preliminary data, there were 15,272 warm temperature records broken (7,755 daytime records, 7,517 nighttime records). Hundreds of locations across the country broke their all-time March records. There were 21 instances of the nighttime temperatures being as warm, or warmer, than the existing record daytime temperature for a given date.
The Dish 