A few maps show Americans' views on climate change confused. But they like renewable energy

David Roberts at Vox has taken a look at a study and accompanying maps about Americans' views on climate change and related subjects included in a study by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. The study was published in the peer-reviewed Nature Climate Change in April. You can see the interactive versions of the maps here.

The researchers undertook their task because "existing polls provide, at best, a limited view of the distribution and variation of opinions at the local scales relevant for many decision makers." Polling nationally doesn't include enough people in each state, much less each congressional district or county to get a good representation. And polling all of these jurisdictions would cost too much. So:

Fortunately, statisticians have recently developed reliable and accurate methods to take national survey data, and “downscale” this data to local snapshots. The technical name for this method is “multilevel regression and poststratification.” We collected over 13,000 survey responses from polls done by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication. We then built a model using this approach that leveraged this large dataset to provide estimates of popular climate beliefs in all 50 states, all 435 congressional districts, all 3,143 U.S. counties and 381 metropolitan areas.

The results are both disturbing and encouraging.
Follow me below the orange tangle to commentary on the study.