“Over the past few months, polls have shown that fewer Americans believe humans are making the planet dangerously warmer, despite a raft of scientific reports that state otherwise.” This has been a trend lately, and I’m trying to figure out why. Why are many people still so certain that climate change is false, when scientists are finding more evidence every day that it is both completely real and caused by humans? To answer this, there first needs to be an understanding why people DO believe in climate change.

Personally, I can’t tell you exactly why I believe in human-caused climate change. I actually don’t remember my life before believing in global warming and wanting to save the earth. As a 1st grader, I read a book of facts about how humans can help protect the earth, typed up my favorites, and stuffed them in my neighbors’ mailboxes. I also asked for acres of rainforest for Chanukah, and started a “Nature Club” at my school, although that somehow transformed into a spy club.

But looking back, it seems strange to me that I did all this without really understanding it. When you’re young you believe everything you are told about science, because you don’t know any better. As you grow older, you learn that there are other views, facts, and opinions that don’t agree with what you have been taught. You start to question the things you know and be wary of the new things you learn.

Describing this process, the similarities between science and religion become apparent. With religion, people are brought up having faith in certain things without questioning their validity. Later on, due to circumstances, people may start to question what they have always believed in.

Personally, I've always been skeptical of my religion (Judaism) because I was in the minority. Because of this, it was obvious to me that it wasn't the only one, and might not necessarily be the "correct" one. Of course, being at Cornell, I can hardly say I'm in the minority anymore.

But when it comes to science, things get trickier. Science is supposed to be irrefutable. It is comprised of numbers, facts, and data. But data on its own means nothing unless it is given a context; given meaning, given an explanation. Scientists interpret data and we are supposed to believe their interpretations. This is easy to do when we don’t understand and have no better explanation.

The world is still, by large, a place we don’t understand. We understand best only what is in front of us, what we experience for ourselves. But we have no direct experience with global data, and in particular data dealing with the global climate. Unless we ourselves become scientists, travel the world and interpret data, we are left to believe only what we are told about climate change. This takes persuasion and, most of all, faith.

With this faith comes a set of values and beliefs, and a pre-conceived notion of the world. When someone is given new information that fits into his set of beliefs, it is accepted easily. But when a new piece of information doesn’t agree with what someone believes in, it is much more likely to be discarded. This is common knowledge. But how does that explain why there are less and less people that believe in global warming?

It’s because the environmental movement is growing with such enormous power. For the environmentalists, this is a great thing. It seems that more people finally understand that we are approaching a crisis and something must be done. We are putting more and more pressure on governments and big companies to change, to “go green.” But this movement is creating an adverse reaction. The green movement is becoming a huge inconvenience, and those opposed to change are working harder than ever to convince us that global warming is NOT happening. As a result people who were on the fence before about global warming are now being convinced that it is not true.

This is mostly based on two incidents. One is “Climate-gate,” where climate scientists leaked e-mails that confessed to manipulating data. The other occurred two years ago, when the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) claimed that the Himalayas would lose all glacier mass by 2035, which was proven later to have no scientific backing. Anti-environmentalists have jumped on these facts to refute all evidence support the existence of global warming, destroying the credibility of climate scientists.

I once asked someone who didn’t believe in global warming why she felt this way. Her response: “the scientists are only proving global warming because they are paid to do so, not because it’s true.” Although she may not have known about the two incidents previously mentioned, her retort seems to have stemmed from them. But the fact is, global warming doesn’t fit in to her value system. And until her values change, her beliefs won’t change.

Now, I could spew millions of facts right now to prove that global warming DOES exist, and it WILL be a problem, and we are 99.999999% positive that humans ARE causing it. But chances are, this will mean nothing unless you already believe in it.