I'm not sure it's a matter of emotional stance. It could just be that many people view the opportunity to answer a poll as a means to an end, and don't feel any

I'm not sure it's a matter of emotional stance. It could just be that many people view the opportunity to answer a poll as a means to an end, and don't feel any obligation to be truthful. In that case for some proportion of the respondents the poll question is equivalent to "would you like to take the opportunity to ask people to take climate change more seriously?". (This is probably particularly true in cases where the response option includes some vague undefined term like "somewhat likely", so that it's hard for selecting that option to be an outright lie.)