The declining interest in global warming and other environmental issues might be unsurprising at a time when Americans face far more imminent threats to their jobs and homes. “Strengthening the nation’s economy” was the top-ranked concern of voters in the Pew poll. A relatively cool year and a harsh winter in North America and Europe have not helped, inspiring some commentators and a small cluster of scientists to make skeptical remarks about “global cooling.”

Social scientists say that environmental concerns are often the first to fall off the table when any more immediate threat surfaces. Andrew Kohut, the president of the Pew Research Center, said a similar pattern was seen in the Pew poll after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when second-tier issues faded in voters’ minds.

“Concern for terrorism overshadowed all else,” Mr. Kohut said.

The public’s waning interest in global warming poses a challenge for Mr. Obama, who emphasized climate change throughout his campaign and pledged to seek a cap on emissions in the United States of heat-trapping gases, led by carbon dioxide, which come mainly from burning coal and oil. Such a cap, even if it includes various mechanisms intended to ease the cost, would by design raise the price of energy coming from those fossil fuels, which still underpin the American and the global economies.

Mr. Obama’s political foes have already seized on the cooling of public concern.

Marc Morano, the communications director for the Republican minority on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has been sending out e-mail alerts, sometimes several a day, highlighting stories on winter weather and other surveys suggesting a shift in public attitudes.

Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content , updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.

But some experts in climate and energy policy say, given Americans’ continuing concern about filling their gas tanks and lighting their homes, Mr. Obama might still succeed in shoring up public support by packaging his climate policy as part of a larger push for a safer, cleaner menu of energy choices.

“Obama can effectively tie conservation, efficiency and renewable energy to jobs, sustainable growth and national security,” said Riley E. Dunlap, a sociologist at Oklahoma State University who studies public and political discourse on climate.

“This will be easier with energy efficiency and independence than with climate change,” Dr. Dunlap said. But, he said, “I think he can ‘legitimate’ climate change and the need to act on it to a considerable degree.”

Richard C. J. Somerville, a climate scientist at the University of California, San Diego, said there was plenty of evidence that a sustained push on improved energy technology and energy efficiency, including public education by scientists and political leaders, could pay off politically and environmentally.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

“France, a country of 60 million people, went from near zero to 80 percent nuclear electricity in about three decades,” Dr. Somerville said. The shift, he added, “was done smoothly and effectively, and public education was a big part of it.”

David Goldston, a former chief of staff of the House science committee, noted that no American president had previously made global warming a central issue, “so we don’t know what will happen when that occurs.”

“We’ll see,” Mr. Goldston added, “but I think it’s wrong to assume too much about the future based on our current prolonged torpor.”