You gotta compare apples to apples. One poll asks "Do you believe human activity contributes to global warming?" Another asks "Do you believe human activity is primarily responsible for global warming?" Comparing the mix of answers you got to the first question last yearto the mix you get to the second question this year isn't helpful. So if Gallup asks one question and Rasmussen asks another, comparing them doesn't do much good. I did notice that, this year, Rasmussen asked "likely voters"; last year, mere adults qualified for the poll. Asking the same question to those two classes will generally get somewhat different numbers.
Speaking of classes, what the heck was the "Political class" in the article? I didn't see how this poll sorted those folks out from the rest of us. If Rasmussen is using the same group again and again for different polls, then the results are a bit suspect, since the group likely becomes self-selecting. Tracking polls can become unreliable for that reason and others.
Looks like Rasmussen has seen about 15% shift over the last 11 months. Their question is worded to get the least number of positive responses, so agreement was low to the same question last year (assuming they asked precisely the same question). The shift doesn't suprise me, and isn't that different from the shift seen in other polls.
Now, the next question: If a significant majority still believes that human activity "contributes to" global warming, how many of those would support political and/or economic actions to ameliorate the effect of human activity? And, of the ones who doubt that humans are"primarily responsible" for warming, how many would still support reduction in use of fossil fuels?
People are a lot harder to divide up and sort out than any given pollster will admit.
