What does the public think about climate change?

Nate Silver:

Inaugural speeches are often criticized as long on rhetoric and short on substance. But President Obama’s second inaugural address on Monday was surprisingly specific about his second-term goals.

Mr. Obama devoted an entire paragraph to climate change and energy, and later in the speech he pointed to several public policy issues where “our journey is not complete,” he said.

Polls show that the president has at least a slim majority of Americans in his corner on almost all of the issues he highlighted. ...

The PollingReport.com database includes two polls on global warming conducted after the Nov. 6 presidential election. An Associated Press-GfK poll in the field from Nov. 29 to Dec. 3 found that 78 percent of respondents said they believed the planet had warmed over the past 100 years, and 49 percent said they thought global warming would be a “very serious” problem for the United States if left unaddressed (31 percent said they thought it would be “somewhat serious”).

Fifty-seven percent of the 1,002 adults surveyed said the United States government should do “a great deal” or “quite a bit” on global warming.

A United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection poll conducted Nov. 8 to 11 found that 57 percent of adults said they thought global warming was increasing the likelihood of storms like Hurricane Sandy.