A brand new Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports national phone and online survey shows 54 percent of likely U.S. voters who say MSNBC is their favorite cable news outlet believe if global carbon-dioxide emissions continue to increase at a rate comparable to what occurred the past decade, humans will become completely or nearly extinct within 100 years due to climate change.
Those who say CNN is their favorite don’t disagree as 53 percent of those voters believe the same thing.
Conversely, 25 percent of Fox News viewers believe climate change could make humans extinct within 100 years.
According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Earth’s average surface temperature has increased by 2.1 degrees since the late 1800s.
Thirty-seven percent of voters correctly answered that the range of measured global warming is between one degree and three degrees Fahrenheit. Fourteen percent underestimated while 27 percent overestimated between three and five degrees, 14 percent said between five and 10 degrees and eight percent believed it was more than 10 degrees.
Interestingly, 41 percent of Fox News viewers answered the question correctly. Thirty percent of MSNBC and CNN viewers did.
Sixty-eight percent of MSNBC viewers and 65 percent of CNN viewers believe global temperature has increased three degrees or more since the late 1800s. Only 38 percent of Fox viewers overestimated.
“There is a strong correlation between a likely voter’s favorite television news outlet and his or her understanding of basic facts about climate change,” Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute observed in an analysis. “Respondents who don’t watch cable news and viewers of Fox News or ‘another’ outlet (such as The Blaze TV or Newsmax) were more likely to correctly estimate the amount of warming that has occurred since the late 1800s. More than four in 10 of the respondents in these three categories answered correctly, compared to about three in 10 viewers of CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC.”
