https://apnews.com/article/poll-extreme-cold-climate-change-4899de252a4107ee529e2f134fb68f59
WASHINGTON (AP) — Matt Ries has lived in Florida only three years, but everyone told him last summer was unusually hot. That was followed by three hurricanes in close succession. Then temperatures dropped below freezing for days this winter, and snow blanketed part of the state.
To Ries, 29, an Ohio native now in Tampa, the extreme weather — including the bitter cold — bore all the hallmarks of climate change.
“To me it’s just kind of obvious,” said Ries, a project manager for an environmental company and self-described conservative-leaning independent. “Things are changing pretty drastically; just extreme weather all across the country and the world. … I do think humans are speeding up that process.”
About 8 in 10 U.S. adults say they have experienced some kind of extreme weather in recent years, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, with about half saying they’ve been personally affected by severe cold weather or severe winter storms.
Among those saying severe cold was among the types of extreme weather they experienced, about three-quarters say climate change is at least a partial cause of those events — suggesting that many understand global warming can create an unstable atmosphere that allows cold air from the Arctic to escape farther south more often.
Midwesterners are most likely to feel the brunt of the cold weather, with about 7 in 10 adults who live in the Midwest experiencing severe cold in the past five years, compared with about half of residents of the South and the Northeast and about one-third of those in the West, the survey found.
“It’s counterintuitive to think, ‘Oh, gee, it’s really cold. That probably has something to do with global warming,’” said Liane Golightly-Kissner, of Delaware, Ohio, north of Columbus, who believes climate change is influencing many weather extremes.
Golightly-Kissner, 38, said it was so cold this winter that schools were closed and her family let faucets drip to prevent burst pipes. She remembers one extremely cold day when she was a child in Michigan, but she says now it seems to happen more often and over multiple days.
The poll also found that, while only about one-quarter of U.S. adults feel climate change has had a major impact on their lives so far, about 4 in 10 think it will in their lifetimes — including on their health, local air quality and water availability. About half of adults under age 30 believe climate change will impact them personally.
About 7 in 10 U.S. adults believe climate change is occurring, and they are much more likely to think it has had or will have a major impact on them than those who say climate change isn’t happening.
Americans are catching on, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, who credits a combination of media coverage, political leaders speaking up and public concerns that creates a “symbiotic relationship.”
“We have seen growing awareness among the American people that climate change is affecting them here and now,” though many still see it as a distant problem that their grandchildren will have to worry about, he said.
Rosiland Lathan, 60, of Minden, Louisiana, said she’s a believer because it seems that summers are getting hotter and winters colder — including a couple years ago, when snow and ice kept her car stuck at work for several days.
