How Scientists Finally Got Americans to Worry About the Climate

The evidence was strong 10 years ago, even 20, that the world had a problem with global warming. We knew then that it was going to exacerbate extreme weather and heat waves and raise the sea level. But nearly half of Americans didn’t take it seriously. Now they do, according to polls, and what changed wasn’t the amount of evidence but a shift in political forces and some changes in the way scientists learned to make their case.

A report last week on cumulative damage to the world’s oceans and ice caps, for example, got big attention in the media, though the message wasn’t all that different from earlier reports from the IPCC. A few more specifics are known: The report projects that by 2050, at many coastal locations, the historic once-in-a-century flood will become an annual event, said Princeton University climate researcher Michael Oppenheimer, who was an author of the report.