What do Canadians in every riding believe about climate change? February 22, 2016

As the Trudeau government prepares for its early March First Ministers Meetings on climate change, researchers from the University of Montreal, University of California Santa Barbara, Utah State University and Yale University have just released a new interactive tool to visualize, with unprecedented detail, the geographic distribution of climate opinions across Canada. It allows users to download the underlying estimates of public opinion for each province and riding in Canada. This new tool, presented in the form of maps, is available in English and in French.

The Canadian Climate Opinion Maps (CCOM) was created using a statistical model based on over 5,000 responses to national surveys from 2011-2015. It reveals that, nationally, 79% of Canadians believe that Earth is getting warmer, but the new public opinion maps show distinct differences among provinces and ridings. Moreover, about 67% of adults believe the Earth is warming in Alberta, for example, whereas 85% believe this in Quebec. Within federal electoral districts, percentages vary from 56% in the Souris-Moose Mountain riding in Saskatchewan, to 91% in the riding of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
"Our research shows that across the country, a majority of Canadians are aware of the problem of rising global temperature on Earth, and many believe humans are directly contributing to this warming. This is true across Canadian regions and across the urban-rural divide as well", said one of the project's lead researchers, University of Montreal Professor Erick Lachapelle.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-02-canadians-climate.html#jCp