Many climate change polls suggest a clear enough overall trend: Majorities of Americans believe global warming is real and the federal government should act.

But that fact can offer little help for some policymakers trying to gauge public opinion, thanks to variations in how the polls are worded, along with people’s deeply rooted perceptions of how others view the topic.

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Three-quarters of the public believe that global temperatures have “probably” slowly increased during the past century — a finding that Jon Krosnick, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, says has been consistent throughout 15 years of surveys he has conducted on the topic.

“We’ve seen almost no movement,” he told POLITICO, adding that about the same percentage say humans are contributing to climate change. And the percentage of people who say the federal government should do more to address the problem has grown from 49 percent in 1997 to 61 percent in 2008 and 2012, Krosnick found.

Belief in global warming is strong even in politically deep-red states housing some of the biggest climate skeptics in Congress, says Krosnick, who compiled state-by-state results from about a dozen surveys he has conducted in partnership with media outlets over the past five to 10 years.

For example, 85 percent of people surveyed during the past decade in GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe’s state of Oklahoma believe that global warming has probably been happening — second only to Arizona’s 86 percent, Krosnick said. In nearly all states, he concluded that majorities believe humans are causing warming and that the federal government should do more — and in no states did skeptics come close to outweighing the believers.

Meanwhile, Democrats looking for more aggressive federal action may be heartened by poll results suggesting it’s a wise move politically to address climate change rather than be a skeptic.

“There’s been a certain myth that’s been created about climate change becoming the third rail of modern politics,” said Edward Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, who has briefed Democrats on his findings.

In January, Maibach’s center released the third in a series of polls underscoring his point that many Democrats and independents want action on climate change. He later discussed his findings with an informal group of Senate Democrats led by Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.).

Since early November, polls by Rasmussen, the National Wildlife Federation, the University of Michigan, Duke University, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Pew Research Center and others have found that most people agree with some language stating that climate change is a problem or is at least occurring.

But Republicans are skeptical that the polls are so conclusive, noting that Democrats remain skittish about taking steps on climate legislation.

“If it’s such a good concrete slam-dunk issue, why aren’t Senate Democrats doing anything about it?” one senior Senate GOP aide said. “And I think the reason is the cost implications. And nobody is addressing that. That is what all of these surveys fail to account.”

But other possible explanations exist for Congress’s inaction.

For one thing, people underestimate how many others believe climate change is a problem that should be dealt with, as well as the partisan divide on the issue, Krosnick said.