Severe winter weather is linked to climate change, say most Americans in poll
Matt Ries has lived in Florida only three years, but everyone told him last summer was unusually hot. That was followed by three hurricanes in close succession. Then temperatures dropped below freezing for days this winter, and snow blanketed part of the state.
To Ries, 29, an Ohio native now in Tampa, the extreme weather—including the bitter cold—bore all the hallmarks of climate change.
“To me it’s just kind of obvious,” said Ries, a project manager for an environmental company and self-described conservative-leaning independent. “Things are changing pretty drastically; just extreme weather all across the country and the world. . . . I do think humans are speeding up that process.”
About 8 in 10 U.S. adults say they have experienced some kind of extreme weather in recent years, according to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, with about half saying they’ve been personally affected by severe cold weather or severe winter storms.
Among those saying severe cold was among the types of extreme weather they experienced, about three-quarters say climate change is at least a partial cause of those events—suggesting that many understand global warming can create an unstable atmosphere that allows cold air from the Arctic to escape farther south more often.
Midwesterners are most likely to feel the brunt of the cold weather, with about 7 in 10 adults who live in the Midwest experiencing severe cold in the past five years, compared with about half of residents of the South and the Northeast and about one-third of those in the West, the survey found.
“It’s counterintuitive to think, ‘Oh, gee, it’s really cold. That probably has something to do with global warming,'” said Liane Golightly-Kissner, of Delaware, Ohio, north of Columbus, who believes climate change is influencing many weather extremes.
Golightly-Kissner, 38, said it was so cold this winter that schools were closed and her family let faucets drip to prevent burst pipes. She remembers one extremely cold day when she was a child in Michigan, but she says now it seems to happen more often and over multiple days.
The poll also found that, while only about one-quarter of U.S. adults feel climate change has had a major impact on their lives so far, about 4 in 10 think it will in their lifetimes—including on their health, local air quality, and water availability. About half of adults under age 30 believe climate change will impact them personally.
About 7 in 10 U.S. adults believe climate change is occurring, and they are much more likely to think it has had or will have a major impact on them than those who say climate change isn’t happening.
Americans are catching on, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, who credits a combination of media coverage, political leaders speaking up, and public concerns that creates a “symbiotic relationship.”
“We have seen growing awareness among the American people that climate change is affecting them here and now,” though many still see it as a distant problem that their grandchildren will have to worry about, he said.
Rosiland Lathan, 60, of Minden, Louisiana, said she’s a believer because it seems that summers are getting hotter and winters colder—including a couple years ago, when snow and ice kept her car stuck at work for several days.
This winter, she said, there was a stretch of temperatures in the teens and 20s, while a couple of summers ago, it got “real, real hot” with highs in the 100s.
“It’s normally hot in Louisiana, but not that hot,” Lathan said.
Hurricanes, wildfires, and other natural disasters, like the devastating Southern California fires, also have many concerned that climate change could lead to higher property insurance premiums and household energy costs.
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults are “extremely” or “very” concerned about increasing property insurance premiums, and just over half are similarly concerned about climate change’s impact on energy costs, the AP-NORC survey found. About half are “extremely” or “very” concerned that climate change will increase costs for local emergency responders and infrastructure costs for government.
Republicans are less worried than Democrats and independents.
The survey also found broad support for a range of measures to help people who live in areas becoming more susceptible to extreme weather and natural disasters, with the exception of restricting new construction in these communities.
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults said they “somewhat” or “strongly” favor providing money to local residents to help them rebuild in the same community after disasters strike, while similar shares support providing money to make residents’ property more resistant to natural disasters and providing homeowners’ insurance to people who cannot get private insurance. About one-quarter of Americans neither favor nor oppose each of these proposals, while around 1 in 10 are “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed.
When it comes to restricting new construction, opinion is more divided. About 4 in 10 “somewhat” or “strongly” favor restricting new construction in areas that are especially vulnerable to natural disasters, about 4 in 10 have a neutral view and about 2 in 10 are “somewhat” or “strongly” opposed.
Golightly-Kissner said she believes there should be rebuilding restrictions or tougher building standards in disaster-prone areas.
“These extreme weather conditions, they’re not going anywhere, and it would be hubris for us to continue in the same way,” she said. “I think we we have to change. We have to look toward the future and what’s the best way to keep our lives together when this happens again. Because it’s really not a question of if, it’s when.”
Webber reported from Fenton, Michigan. _ The AP-NORC poll of 1,112 adults was conducted Feb. 6-10, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. _
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—Tammy Webber and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, Associated Press