Public acceptance of climate science has been slow in the United States. As elite conflict over the issue has grown, Americans’ views have become heavily polarized along partisan and ideological lines. In particular, though awareness of rising temperatures has increased somewhat, many people refuse to acknowledge the role of human activity in climate change — an anomaly internationally.

A recent Pew poll found, for instance, that only 48 percent of Americans believe temperatures are rising because of human activity — about the same as the proportion who believed smoking caused lung cancer all the way back in 1960, which came several years before the surgeon general’s landmark report on the subject. (By now, only a handful of Americans reject the science on smoking.)

One obstacle to public acceptance of climate science has been the prominence of advocates who reject the scientific consensus in public debate, which may mislead people about the state of the scientific evidence (as it probably did with tobacco). Climate activists have extensively publicized the fact that 97 percent of scientists endorse the consensus, but to little avail — in part because of conflicting cues from political elites and declining trust in science among conservatives.