When the average American thinks about how climate change-caused global warming could affect their health, what do they think of? Not much, apparently, according to a new study,Public Perceptions of the Health Impacts of Global Warming, just released by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. The study is based on the results of a survey, Climate Change in the American Mind. The researchers found that Americans largely haven’t thought about the health impacts of global warming at all.
“Few Americans have thought much about the health consequences of global warming,” they said. “Asked how often, if at all, before taking this survey they had thought about how global warming might affect people’s health, six in 10 said they had given the issue little or no thought. Only one in 10 said they had given the issue a ‘great deal’ of thought and only about two in 10 (22 percent) said they had thought about it a ‘moderate amount.'”
Asked “In your view, what health problems related to global warming are Americans experiencing, if any?,” 43 percent offered no answer and 14 percent said they didn’t know. Ten percent answered incorrectly that there are no problems, while 27 percent named one. The respondents who correctly identified at least one health problem primarily mentioned eitherasthma and other lung diseases (14 percent) or the impacts of extreme weather events (6 percent).
Fewer than 5 percent were able to name anything else, such as diseases carried by tainted water, food and ticks.
The study found on question after question that large numbers of respondents didn’t know or were wrong. Only one in three respondents (31 percent) thought global warming was impacting the health of Americans now, and only 17 percent thought it was affecting their own health or that of members of their household. Only one in three respondents knew that some groups of people—including the elderly, children and the poor—were more likely to suffer health impacts than others (32 percent); most were not sure (43 percent).
http://ecowatch.com/2014/12/15...acts-global-warming/
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