Global Warming is Happenng

Americans overwhelmingly believe that global warming is happening. According to the Yale Climate Opinion Maps the majority of people in every state in America believes that 'global warming is happening'.

Every year Yale surveys the opinions of Americans, aged 25 and over, about their attitudes, beliefs and policy preferences towards global warming. You can view the results of this year's survey at Yale Climate Opinion Maps. This interactive map visualizes the results at the state, congressional district, metro area, and county levels, allowing you to view how opinion on climate change breaks-down across the country.

According to the 2021 survey West Virginia (57%), Wyoming (58%) and North Dakota (60%) are the states with the lowest percentage of the population believing in global warming. The belief in global warming is strongest in the District of Columbia where 87% of the population believe in global warming. 

The percentage of the entire U.S. population who believe in the truth of global warming is 72%. However only 57% of Americans believe climate change is 'caused by human activities'. As the evidence for global warming has become more and more irrefutable.climate change deniers have shifted away from denying global warming is happening to arguing that it is just natural. The argument that the unprecedented and alarming rate at which the planet is now heating is somehow 'natural' appears to be believed by a worrying number of Americans. 

Since the 2018 Yale Climate Opinion survey the percentage of the people who believe that global warming is happening has risen by 2%. However the percentage of the American population who believe that global warming is caused by human activities has remained exactly the same on 57%. Somehow 43% of the population still believe that the current rate of rising global temperatures is somehow natural.

Ed Hawkins' clever Climate Stripes visualizations show global heating over time. The colorful image shown above uses colored stripes to show the average annual temperatures for every year over the course of more than a century. The result is a very powerful and clear visualization of how temperatures have begun to rise very quickly over the last few years when compared to previous norms. Such a rapid rise in the rate of global warming is unprecedented. It is also completely unnatural and almost completely a result of human activity.