Overall, how does the Atlanta region feel about global warming? We take a look here at data from the Yale Climate Change Study, drawing from some different questions than we considered in a previous post. The overall takeaways are that:

  • Over 50% of metro Atlantans (in the 29-county MSA) believe that global warming is happening, that it’s affecting the weather, that humans mostly caused it, and that scientists agree about it.
  • The lowest share believe that global warming is human-caused (60%)
  • The largest share (75%) believe that global warming is a reality

From this overall look at beliefs about climate change, we can target where education and communication efforts could perhaps bear the most fruit.

Above, we can see that 60% of the population believe (the fact) that the scientific community is in consensus regarding global warming, while 75% believe global warming is happening.

As we dive deeper into each question’ results, it’s worth considering more closely the questions themselves– i.e. the potential responses for the survey questions. Below is the first question we’ll be looking at:

So “yes” and “no” are not the only responses; there is also a “Don’t know” category. Something to keep in mind is that not every question has binary options. The choices as shown above in orange (coded as an “agree”) and blue (coded as “oppose”) may not necessarily add up to 100%.

With that said, let’s get to seeing how Metro Atlantans feel about climate change. The map below shows that Henry County has the lowest share of respondents believing that global warming is happening (though that share is still 64.7%) , with the highest share in Clayton County at 84.6%.

Now, what about beliefs that global warming affects the weather? For this quesition, Henry County is the third highest share, and Fulton County being the second lowest share. So, it’s not the case that someone who believes global warming is happening will also believe that global warming affects the weather.

But it must be noted that (see below) there is no “don’t know” option with this question–there’s only an agree or disagree “ramp”. It’s possible that people who selected “don’t know” for whether global warming is happening could select another option when presented a question that does not offer a “don’t know” answer choice.

Next question! Do people perceive that most scientists think global warming is happening? We see a much more even split (yes/ no/ etc.) than with respondents’ personal perceptions. Only Douglas County and Clayton County show close alignment (on shares) with the residents’ own beliefs about global warming .

There could be many reasons for this “non-alignment”, though it’s possible many respondents felt they didn’t know enough to say, at least when looking at the response choices for the question about scientists (see below) .

But even given the three options other than “agree”, it is interesting to see that over 50% of residents in every county is still perceive a scientific consensus on global warming.

Finally, Is global warming anthropogenic (human-caused)? Cherokee County leads the pack, with Douglas coming in last. Again, there’s a lot of inconsistency (at the county level) between the responses to questions.

For this question wording (see below) , there were four answer choices that indicated global warming either wasn’t mostly caused by human activity or expressed uncertainty regarding that claim.

So, even with the difficulties in fully understanding the “movement” of answers question to question, the majority of the Atlanta region is on the same page regarding climate change–they believe that it is real. BUT 1 in 4 to 4 in 10 (depending on the question) of our five million-plus regional population is still a very significant amount of people who don’t (believe) in climate change or in the impacts of it.

Next (v.v. the topic of climate change), we will be examining climate-related findings from the 2023 Metro Atlanta Speaks survey.