This is scientific American's 60 second science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who heads the House Science Committee,

has long been skeptical of global warming.

He's accused government climate scientists of doctoring their climate data, and he's called the

UN's climate reports, quote, more political than scientific.

It's all part of what he called the climate change religion

in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

But those views may be increasingly out of step

with what Republican voters actually think,

because a new analysis finds that a majority of Republicans across the country

would actually support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

As for the overall consensus on whether climate change is indeed a thing, half of Republican

voters think the climate is being transformed, although far fewer think human activity

as what's responsible for the changes.

The studies in the journal Climatic Change.

Study author Mado Mildemberger of the University of California,

Santa Barbara.

I think here the picture that's emerging is that the public has a lot more appetite and

would have a lot more tolerance and interest in seeing political officials act in the U.S.

on this, then you'd think just listening to some of the debate and rhetoric that we hear at the federal

level in the United States right now.

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