Last month, hackers, possibly from Russia, snatched more than 1,000 e-mails and 3,000 documents from Britain's University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit and published them online. While ignored at first by some mainstream media, the e-mails have provided conservative bloggers with plenty of fuel with which to flog their ideological opponents.
The impact on negotiations and US legislation isn't clear yet.
Rasmussen said December 3 in its latest national telephone survey that just 25% of adults think most scientists agree on the subject. Twenty-three percent are not sure.
Meanwhile, 59% of Americans say it's at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming, Rasmussen said. Thirty-five percent say it's very likely and 26% say it's not very or at all likely.
But Rasmussen said the skepticism does not appear to be the result of the recent disclosure of e-mails in what some are calling "Climategate." Just 20% of Americans say they've followed news reports about those e-mails very closely, while another 29% have followed them somewhat closely.
That's a lower level of interest than has been shown about Tiger Woods' marital troubles and the White House party crashers. Whether Climategate, along with news coverage of the climate summit in Copenhagen, raises public awareness of the issue remains to be seen.
