The chief finding is that, sadly, beliefs about and concern over global warming is becoming a deeply partisan issue. For instance, 27% of the Republicans polled believe GW is caused by human activity, as opposed to 58% of Democrats. Similarly, 22% of Republicans view GW as a 'serious problem' as opposed to 57% of Democrats.

I could understand the partisan divide, given that it's a presidential election year, and the chief spokesperson of the global warming issue is former Democratic candidate Al Gore - except that Mr. Gore has been doing no campaigning for either Democratic contender, and has largely opted to stay out of the race so as to focus on the issue at hand - namely, global warming, and has consistently spoken of global warming as a cross-party problem that we need to solve.

That being said, one of the truly shocking parts of the research comes at the end when you view where people rank global warming in terms of policy priorities :

For Democrats, it ranks 15th, for independents 18th, and for Republicans 21st. This despite that fact that of all people polled, 71% believe global warming exists, and 49% believe it is human-made.

The problem, of course, is that global warming is going to have negative impacts on the economy, energy policies, the environment, health care costs, and the problems of the poor, all issues people are even more concerned about.

It would appear that we really need to do a better job of explaining the problem, and it's many long term ramifications, to other people - including the media.