Survey says: public opinion on the snowpack
Survey says: public opinion on the snowpack
Plus: climbing a 14er exposes me to a rock glacier and the season's first snow
In an earlier life, I was an aspiring pollster and survey researcher.
In the early 1990s, my first job out of college was at the Urban Institute, a D.C. think tank where I helped analyze data from a national childcare survey and the U.S. Census.
It was the pre-Internet era, so I’d mount reel-to-reel tapes with the data onto blinking machines in a refrigerated room where I’d often find the oddball IT guy with a push-broom mustache who would confess to me that he was a “ne’er-do-well.”
A few years later, I studied under public opinion scholars in the Berkeley political science department who had a knack for making me feel like a fool. After suffering through several statistics courses, I bailed on the doctoral program to become a newspaper reporter—a decision I’ve second-guessed in three out of five episodes of self-examination.
I never became a producer of polls, but I’ve remained an avid consumer of public opinion research, especially in relation to the environment, climate change, and the weather. Skepticism is warranted when looking at polling data—quality varies greatly from survey to survey, and the wording of questions makes a world of difference—but I still think surveys can reveal important insights about our society’s hopes, fears, moods, and appetite for change.
There’s been a ton of polling about climate change—its causes, effects, remedies—but not much about snow per se. So I was excited to recently see a national poll that asked Americans what they think about global warming’s impact on the snowpack, along with many other issues.
The graphic below shows the results from the spring 2024 survey, a joint effort of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.
The poll found that a majority of Americans think global warming is affecting almost all of these problems. For “reduced snow pack,” the survey found 32% of Americans think climate change is having “a lot” of impact and 20% think it’s having “some” effect.
This is a nationally representative poll, and I didn’t find any breakdowns according to partisan affiliation or geography, but I was surprised to see so much concern about an issue that’s irrelevant in many parts of the country (about one in five respondents didn’t respond to the question or said they didn’t know). At the national level, worry about the snowpack was comparable to opinions about hurricanes and flooding.
Yale and George Mason—the former with a liberal reputation, the latter with conservative bona fides—have produced some of the most insightful public opinion research related to climate change, especially their concept of “global warming’s six Americas,” which partitions people into these categories: alarmed, concerned, cautious, disengaged, doubtful, and dismissive. The chart below shows that worry increased significantly betwen 2013 and 2023, with the percentage who are “alarmed” nearly doubling from 15% to 28%.
Which of the six Americas do you live in? Take the test here! I’d wager your categorization has a huge influence on how you interpret the news, the status of the snowpack, and much else.
Public opinion in Intermountain West
I found some other public opinion research related to the snowpack in the Conservation in the West Poll, from Colorado College’s State of the Rockies Project.
A bipartisan team of top-flight pollsters conducts these surveys, and over the years I’ve written about the results here, here, and here. This poll focuses on the Mountain West, so it excludes the left-leaning West Coast states but includes some very conservative states, such as Utah and Wyoming (this page has data for the poll’s past 14 years of data and allowed me to create the graphics below).
Back in 2013, “a low level of snowpack in the mountains” was one of the problems that the poll asked respondents about, but it doesn’t look like that was repeated. As shown in the graphic below, the 2013 survey found the highest levels of concern in Colorado, as you might expect, followed by Wyoming and New Mexico, with considerably less angst expressed by residents of Arizona, Utah, and Montana.
In 2022, the poll also asked about the snowpack, but the question was phrased differently, and the answer included “droughts,” so you can’t compare the results to 2013. As shown in the graphic below, the more recent survey revealed very high levels of concern across the region, with at least 50% of respondents saying they were “very concerned” in seven of eight states (and Idaho was close at 46%).
The 2022 survey includes blue, red, and purple states, yet in all of these places, very few Westerners are blasé about droughts and a shrinking snowpack. Even in conservative Wyoming and Idaho, around four in five respondents said they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned.
Another recent question asked people to assess the predictability of the West’s water supplies. As shown in the chart below, public opinion varied across the region. In 2020, around three-quarters of New Mexico and Arizona residents said the water supply is “becoming more unpredictable every year.” But in Wyoming and Idaho, more than 40% agreed that “the amount of rain and snow in the West is pretty predictable over time.”
One other question also touched on snow and climate change. It asked Westerners if they had altered their recreational activities due to “changes in the climate, such as fires, less snow, water,” or “crowding and more people.” The chart below shows that between one-third and one-half of respondents had shifted recreation due to crowds, but only 10% to 18% had modified their activities due to climate-related issues.
While the Conservation in the West Poll has only asked about the snowpack a few times, it has consistently polled Westerners about the water supply and river levels—both of which are intimately tied to the snowpack in our region. The charts below, from the most recent January 2024 survey, show large majorities think inadequate water supplies and low water levels in rivers are serious problems.
If you know of any other public opinion research related to snow, please reach out. Who knows, maybe if snow.news really takes off, I can create and field my own survey related to the snowpack, and finally cure myself of pollster envy!
The season’s first snow and a rock glacier
I recently climbed Mount Sneffels, a stunning peak that tops out at 14,155 feet in the San Juan Mountains near Ouray. Sneffels, not to be confused with Mr. Snuffleupagus from Sesame Street, was my 30th fourteener. There are around 58 peaks above 14,000 feet in Colorado (some sources put the number at 54), so I’ve crossed the halfway point, but foolishly, I’ve saved all of the hardest ones for my old age and decrepitude!
There’s something about these stark alpine landscapes, which are buried in snow most of the year, that keep me coming back, even though I tend to suffer mightily on 14ers (and 13ers, 12ers, etc.)
While snow is my guiding light here at snow.news, I must confess that the alpine environment attracts me in every season. Even when there’s no snow on the slopes, it’s still there in spirit with all the glacial landforms carved by ice in colder times.
Sneffels was one of the toughest climbs I’ve done, and it includes a grueling slog up a humungous talus and scree slope. It took me 90 minutes to progress less than a half-mile. The final section involves scrambling up a boulder-strewn couloir, where I was able to find a few patches of the season’s first snow hanging on in the shady spots.
While researching the area after the climb, I learned that the summit afforded a prime view of the Yankee Boy Basin rock glacier. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, rock glaciers are:
A glacier-like landform that often heads in a cirque and consists of a valley-filling accumulation of angular rock blocks. Rock glaciers have little or no visible ice at the surface. Ice may fill the spaces between rock blocks. Some rock glaciers move, although very slowly.
The photo below, from a 2003 scientific paper, labels some of the features of the rock glacier, and below that is my own photo from the summit, which gives a clearer view of the undulating ridges and furrows
On the way down, I saw a couple of chirping pikas, a species that faces an uncertain future as the planet warms and their suitable habitat shifts upslope.
This was my first 14er in a few years, and for days afterward, my quads were screaming. It felt like an irate Mike Tyson had been using my thighs as punching bags.
I’m actually not determined to climb all of the state’s 14ers since a bunch involve serious exposure and would require ropes, guides, and perhaps more than my 54-year-old body can handle (did I mention my asthma, beer belly, and fear of heights?) Since moving to Colorado 15 years ago, I’ve done an average of two 14ers per year, so at that pace, I’ll be nearly 70 when finishing off the last peak.
After climbing Sneffels, I did a little research on skiing in the area, and I wasn’t surprised to see plenty of trip reports (e.g., here, here, and here). At this point, such exploits are over my head, but I’m aiming to do more mountaineering and backcountry skiing, so maybe I can work my way up to the task. It sounds even more enticing than pretending to be a pollster!
