In Monday morning's Topline, the Minnesota Reformer's Christopher Ingraham reports in the lead digest item, Minnesotans slightly above average on climate change:
The latest data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication shows that 73% of Minnesotans say global warming is happening, up from a hair over 60% back in 2010. This is nothing to be particularly proud of, as the truth of the warming climate should be apparent to anybody with a thermometer and the ability to remember what things were like as recently as several years ago.
It should come as no surprise that agreement with the scientific consensus on global warming is highest in the Twin Cities, with readings over 80% in Hennepin and Ramsey counties. And it’s lowest in parts of greater Minnesota, with Big Stone County clocking in at a paltry 60%.
Minnesotans report being slightly more worried than average about the effects of global warming overall, while less concerned with its effects on themselves personally, probably due in part to the perception that we’ll be somewhat insulated from the worst of it. They say that corporations and individual citizens need to do more to address warming, and put slightly less of an onus on politicians at the state or federal level, even though we’ll need significant changes to energy, agriculture and transportation law and policy to make any progress.
When it comes to statewide averages, at least we have a better grasp on things than people in North Dakota, where only 60% say global warming is happening. The influence of the state’s powerful oil and gas industry may have something to do with it. . . .
Just across the border here in South Dakota, Grant County and Roberts County touch Minnesota's Big Stone County, which Ingraham notes clocks in at a paltry 60%. Only 57% of Grant County residents saying global warming is happening, while here in Roberts County, it's 61%.
The residents of South Dakota as a whole? A stateside average of 65% of us believe global warming is happening. The national average? 72%.
It's not surprising to read that 75% of Roberts County residents support policy that would "Fund research into renewable energy sources" and "Generate renewable energy on public land in the US" given that the wind industry has several farms in or near the county,
Read the entire Topline article, The Topline: A little above average on climate awareness, The article also digest unfortunate news about monarch populations, in "A bad year for overwintering monarch butterflies."
Photo: South Dakota farmers have received billions of dollars in crop insurance payments due to hail, drought and excessive moisture, a condition that flooded this farm near Herreid, S.D., in June 2022. (Photo: Stu Whitney / South Dakota News Watch).
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