Eric Kleefeld August 19, 2011, 4:33 PM

On Thursday, Jon Huntsman tweeted a jab at fellow GOP primary candidate Rick Perry with the declaration: “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy” — a brave move for a Republican presidential candidate in the age of the Tea Party. In response, his fellow (and much more conservative) candidate Rick Santorum seems to be saying: Yup, you are crazy.

Santorum on Friday singled out Huntsman for accepting the scientific consensus on manmade activities being a significant contributor to global warming — and did not talk at all about Huntsman’s belief in evolution, despite his own long political history of questioning evolutionary science and advocating for the teaching of the “intelligent design” movement of creationism.

“Yeah well, I’ll be the first one to take him up on his offer,” Santorum told MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell. “You know, look, I’ve been very, very clear that the science just simply doesn’t back up the issue of global warming.

“Yes, does the climate change? Of course it does, it’s changed for thousands of years. But the idea that one factor, and man’s contribution to that one factor, of which there are hundreds of factors that have an influence on climate, that that one factor of which man’s contribution is a small part of, is somehow the tip of that tail that wags the whole dog, and that we have to change all of our economic policy based on that, is just a pure overreaction that is not backed up by any kind of real evidence.

“And so I’m glad Jon Huntsman buys that — I don’t, and I don’t think most Americans do anymore.”

In fact, poll data shows that most Americans are not necessarily on Santorum’s side — at best for him, public opinion could be split or uncertain.

According to a recent survey from Yale and George Mason Universities, 47% of American adults answered a question that assuming global warming is happening, it would be caused mostly by human activities, compared to 35% who said it would be caused by natural changes in the environment (with only 8% saying none of the above, that global warming is not happening at all). In addition, another eight percent volunteered the answer that global warming is caused by a mix of both human and natural factors.

Also, a recent Rasmussen poll also found a similar split — tilted just slightly toward the skeptics’ side, compared to the Yale/George Mason numbers — with a statistical tie on whether global warming is caused by human activity or planetary trends (40% human activity, 42% planetary trends).

2012, 2012 Presidential Primaries, 2012 elections, Climate Change, Global Warming, Jon Huntsman, Pres '12, Rick Santorum