New report: most Americans underestimate how worried the American public is about global warming

The Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University has published a new report, “Climate Change in the American Mind: Beliefs & Attitudes, Fall 2025,” based on their latest national survey, conducted November 6-14, 2025. The survey – Climate Change in the American Mind – was conducted jointly by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.

Key Findings:

Americans who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it is not by a ratio of more than 5 to 1 (72% versus 13%).
64% of Americans say they are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming. However, 85% of Americans either underestimate how many Americans are worried, or don’t know enough to say.
Only 17% of Americans say they hear about global warming in the media “at least once a week,” which is the lowest percentage since the question was added to the survey in 2015.

Overall, they find that:

Americans who think global warming is happening outnumber those who think it is not by a ratio of more than 5 to 1 (72% versus 13%).
By a 2 to 1 margin, more Americans think global warming is mostly human-caused (58%) than mostly caused by natural changes in the environment (29%).
64% of Americans say they are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming. This includes 29% who say they are “very worried.”
64% of Americans think global warming is affecting weather in the United States, including 31% who think weather is being affected “a lot.”
12% of Americans have considered moving to avoid the impacts of global warming.

However, a majority of Americans (61%) underestimate the proportion of the American public that is worried about global warming, and an additional 24% indicate that they “don’t know enough to say,” while only 8% accurately estimate the public’s level of worry.

One potential factor that may contribute to this misperception is a lack of media coverage about global warming. Americans continue to report hearing about global warming in the media infrequently – only 39% of Americans say they hear about global warming in the media at least once a month, and only 17% say they hear about global warming in the media “at least once a week,” which is the lowest percentage since this question was added to the survey in 2015.

Nonetheless, majorities of Americans think global warming is affecting many extreme weather events or related impacts in the United States, including extreme heat (74%), wildfires (72%), droughts (72%), hurricanes (68%), air pollution (68%), flooding (68%), water shortages (66%), water pollution (62%), electricity power outages (61%), and diseases carried by mosquitoes and ticks, such as Lyme disease and West Nile Virus (58%).