Craig Miller / KQED

Wind turbines in Solano County. 78% of Californians polled favor federal support for renewable energy.

Much has been made lately of Berkeley physicist Richard Muller’s recent “conversion” to the position that global warming is both happening and stoked by human activity.* But it turns out that the controversial scientist and author has been playing catch-up.

In a statewide survey released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), 60% of Californians polled said that the effects of global warming have already begun. Asking the question in a slightly different way, both the Brookings Institution and the Pew Center for People & the Press found that in 2011, 60% and 63% of Americans, respectively, believed that there was solid evidence that global warming is happening.

Californians took it a step further, however, with nearly three-in-four of the 2,500 participants responding that government should take steps to “counter the effects of global warming right away.” PPIC conducted the survey in July and it includes responses in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.

Interestingly, Californians’ acceptance of mainstream climate science has flagged slightly from its peak from 2006-2008 — about 65%. LIkewise for opinions about the need for immediate climate action, with 80% of people responding, “yes, right away” in 2008. That enthusiasm waned some over the next several years, as Al Gore’s groundbreaking warming documentary faded in memory and critics launched high-profile attacks on the science. The Brookings study indicates that people often connect global warming to the experience of warmer weather, so it may have helped that a severe heat wave has made national headlines this summer.

Californians for the most part favor policies that will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Seven -out-of-ten respondents say they support AB 32, California’s law requiring the state to reduce its warming emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. And they support California’s tendency to go it alone, passing stricter regulations and laws than the national standards.

But don’t ask for too many details as a whopping 57% had never heard of cap-and-trade, the system of emission permits that can be bought and sold between companies. It’s the centerpiece of California’s strategy to comply with AB 32 and companies will begin trading permits in November. To be fair to the survey participants, once the policy was spelled out in the question, more than half the respondents said they favored cap-and-trade.

Let’s recap: for the most part Californians believe global warming is happening now, and something should be done about it now, including policies that would force emissions down. Some of the things favored include requiring greater energy efficiency in buildings, higher fuel economy standards in cars and trucks, and encouraging city planners to change land use and transportation strategies in order to reduce the number of cars on the road. The responses to questions about energy production, however, are a bit more mixed.

Nuclear power plants like this one at Diablo Canyon have fallen out of favor with Californians since the nuclear disaster in Japan. (Craig Miller/KQED)

Respondents were exactly split 48%-48% on whether to allow more oil drilling off the coast of California, and 63% oppose building more nuclear power plants. That number has gone up since the disastrous tsunami and nuclear meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant in March of 2011. Californians are also divided on “fracking,” the controversial process used to extract oil and natural gas from rock formations. Of those familiar with the term, slightly more oppose using the method in California (46-42%). Variations on the technique have been used for years in California’s oil patch. The current debate centers on using the method to wring natural gas out of shale formations.

On the question of renewable energy, Californians overwhelmingly favor of more federal funding to develop wind, solar and hydrogen technology, despite varying reports on the nation’s commitment to renewable energy.

*Hear an hour-long discussion with Muller, host Scott Shafer and Climate Watch Senior Editor Craig Miller, on KQED’s Forum program.

Craig Miller/KQED

The majority of Americans want the government to take action on climate change, but the majority is shrinking.

Two polls in as many weeks find that the majority of Americans support government policies to shift to cleaner energy. According to the first, conducted by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, nearly three-out-of-four Americans (72%) think climate change should be a priority for Congress, and 70% want corporations and industry to do more to address climate change.

The second, conducted by Stanford, finds that though they’re still a majority, the proportion of Americans who support climate change policies, versus those who don’t, has dropped by ten percentage points since 2010.

Despite the diminishing support, social psychologist Jon Krosnick, who directed the Stanford poll, says politicians stand to benefit by addressing climate change head-on.

“Our analysis suggests Obama did win votes from McCain on the issue in 2008,” Krosnick told me. “Climate change opinions are partly driving people in the direction of the president, but not as much as they would if he came out more strongly on the issue, talking more frequently not just about green jobs, but also saying, ‘Climate change is happening, we should do something about it, and we can.’”

Krosnick says political rhetoric is partially to blame for the change. Even though the majority of people in both parties want government to take action, the opinions candidates expressed in the Republican primaries didn’t reflect that.

“That hypothesis that public opinion would drive what candidates say doesn’t seem to be happening,” Krosnick said. Instead, the Republican candidates, who were unanimous in their opposition to taking action on climate change, seem to have swayed some people’s opinions. “After hearing such unanimity, it pushes people in a skeptical direction.”

One usual suspect that’s not a factor: the economy. Support for climate change policies fell more in states with good economies, than in states that are still struggling. Plus Krosnick adds, the timing wouldn’t make sense if the economy was to blame. “The notion that the economy has trumped climate change, there’s really no evidence of it at all. It would be hard to make the case that economy has gotten worse in the past two years, and yet support has declined.”

A couple things the Stanford survey finds probably won’t do politicians any good: supporting nuclear power (53% of people polled oppose tax breaks to build nuclear power plants, up from 49%) and increasing taxes (73% oppose increasing gasoline taxes; 80% oppose increasing electricity taxes).

Skytruth

Wells stretch to the horizon in a Wyoming gas field. A recent Pew survey found increased support in the West for expanded gas and oil drilling.

As gas prices surge, support is waning for alternative energy sources, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center released last week. The decline has been particularly pronounced in the western U.S., a region characterized in previous surveys by strong support for alternative energy.

Ebbing enthusiasm for alternatives, according to the survey, is coupled with greater support for “traditional” gas and oil development. In a survey last year conducted by Pew, 73% of Western respondents said they supported increased development of alternative energy, while only 19% were in support of increased development of traditional sources such as oil, gas and coal.

Fast-forward a year. With the price of gas nationwide averaging close to $4 per gallon – up nearly 9% from the same period last year – the percentage of respondents in support of alternatives declined by 20 percentage points, whereas support for expanding mining and drilling jumped by 20 points, to 39%.

Memory of BP’s massive Macondo spill – which spewed an estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico over five months – seems to have faded, with about two-out-of-three respondents saying they support increased offshore drilling in U.S. waters – slightly higher than in February 2010, two months before the BP spill.

The survey also indicates growing support in the West for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a controversial method of gas and oil production in which water and other chemicals are injected into the earth at high pressure, in order to release hydrocarbons from surrounding rock formations.

It’s not clear how well the trends illustrated in the survey match the opinions of Californians. A survey by the Public Policy Institute of California conducted last year, for example, found that more than three-quarters of respondents statewide favored a policy requiring one-third of the state’s energy portfolio to come from renewable sources by 2020. “We have seen very consistent support for renewable energy in California,” said Sonja Petek, a survey project manager for the PPIC.

Petek said there was a similar spike in support for offshore drilling in California a few years back, as gas prices jumped in the run-up to the 2008 election. Unlike this month’s Pew survey, however, increased support for drilling was not met with a corresponding decline in support for auto fuel efficiency standards or renewables, which remained strong (virtually unchanged at 88% and 83%, respectively). “And in spite of the ten-point increase,” said Petek, “it was not clear that Californians thought more drilling would significantly reduce gas prices.”

Like this month’s Pew survey, last year’s PPIC report showed that views on gas and oil development were sharply divided along partisan lines, with Republicans twice as likely as Democrats to support increased drilling off the California coast.

When signs on Burger King outlets started opining that “Global warming is baloney,” a Memphis reporter decided to check it out. His exchanges with the local burgermeister and the parent company make for pretty amusing reading.

Interesting that while polls taken within the last year have indicated flagging faith in the prevailing view of climate scientists that the world is warming, a spring poll by the Pew Research Center showed 59% of Americans supporting some kind of cap on carbon emissions. Though still sharply divided along party lines, that could indicate that some kind of reluctant consensus is forming around the issue.