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AP-GfK Poll: Belief in global warming rises with thermometers, even among science doubters
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly 4 out of 5 Americans now think temperatures are rising and that global warming will be a serious problem for the United States if nothing is done about it, a new Associated Press-GfK poll finds.
• Belief and worry about climate change are inching up among Americans in general, but concern is growing faster among people who don't often trust scientists on the environment. In follow-up interviews, some of those doubters said they believe their own eyes as they've watched thermometers rise, New York City subway tunnels flood, polar ice melt and Midwestern farm fields dry up.
• Overall, 78 percent of those surveyed said they thought temperatures were rising and 80 percent called it a serious problem. That's up slightly from 2009, when 75 percent thought global warming was occurring and just 73 percent thought it was a serious problem. In general, U.S. belief in global warming, according to AP-GfK and other polls, has fluctuated over the years but has stayed between about 70 and 85 percent.
• The biggest change in the polling is among people who trust scientists only a little or not at all. About 1 in 3 of the people surveyed fell into that category.
• Within that highly skeptical group, 61 percent now say temperatures have been rising over the past 100 years. That's a substantial increase from 2009, when the AP-GfK poll found that only 47 percent of those with little or no trust in scientists believed the world was getting warmer.
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Russia's Foreign Ministry denies its Syria point man talked of Assad's impending defeat
• MOSCOW (AP) -- A day after a senior Russian official was widely quoted as saying that Syria's President Bashar Assad was losing control, Russia's Foreign Ministry on Friday rolled back on his assessment by insisting that Moscow's stance on the crisis hasn't shifted.
• Russia's pointman on Syria, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, was quoted by three Russian news agencies, two of them state-owned, telling a Kremlin advisory body on Thursday that "there is a trend for the government to progressively lose control over an increasing part of the territory," adding that "an opposition vic (Continued on page 28)
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