Seven in 10 Americans think that global warming is happening, and about six in 10 understand that it is mostly owing to human activity, but about one in five mistakenly think that there is a lot of disagreement among scientists about whether it is happening. Those were among the key findings of "Climate Change in the American Mind: Beliefs & Attitudes, Spring 2025" (PDF).
Presented with a definition of global warming as "the idea that the world's average temperature has been increasing over the past 150 years, may be increasing more in the future, and that the world's climate may change as a result" and asked whether they thought that global warming is happening, 69% of respondents said yes, 15% said no, and 16% indicated that they didn't know.
Asked about the cause of global warming, on the assumption that it is happening, 60% of respondents said that it is caused mostly by human activities, 28% said that it is caused mostly by natural changes in the environment, 8% opted for "none of the above because global warming isn't happening," and 4% said that it was a mix of human activities and natural causes.
Asked about the views of scientists, 58% of respondents agreed with "Most scientists think global warming is happening," which is correct, while 21% preferred "There is a lot of disagreement among scientists" and 3% preferred "Most scientists think global warming is not happening"; 19% said that they didn't know enough to say.
The study was conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. The survey was administered in a web-based environment from May 1 to May 12, 2024, using an online research panel of 1040 American adults.
According to the report, the sample "includes a representative cross-section of American adults — irrespective of whether they have Internet access, use only a cell phone, etc. Key demographic variables were weighted, post survey, to match U.S. Census Bureau norms." The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
