There’s an interesting new report (see .pdf) out today from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication which finds that extreme weather during the last year — heat, drought, floods, tornadoes and Hurricane Irene — appears to have penetrated the public mind.

Overall, 82 percent of Americans surveyed said they personally experienced one or more types of extreme weather or natural disaster in the past year, and by a majority of two-to-one (52 percent vs. 22 percent), they said the country’s weather has been getting worse.

The following graphic shows the percentage of respondents who believe climate change made the following events during 2011 and early 2012 worse:

On one hand climate activists will welcome this report as it suggests the American public has found an aspect of climate change that concerns them. This has been a real challenge because the prospect of some nebulous, future warming has not galvanized the public nor their politicians to action.

On the other hand, attributing extreme weather to climate change is a bit like playing with fire.

A recent IPCC report on climate and extreme weather took a fairly moderate view, saying of losses due to climate change, “In many regions, the main drivers for future increases in economic losses due to some climate extremes will be socioeconomic in nature, (rather than climate extremes).”

Attributing Hurricane Irene, which struck the northeastern United States as a tropical storm, to climate change is more perilous still. There is little or no scientific evidence to suggest a warming world made Irene worse, and while scientists generally agree that climate change may make the strongest storms a bit stronger in the future, but is actually likely to depress the number of hurricanes that form.

What will the effect on public credibility on the science of climate change be when the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation flips negative, and the Atlantic starts seeing a few years of 6 to 8 named storms?