Analogies and Natural Cycles in Climate Change Skepticism

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This paper examines the “natural cycles” explanation of climate change skepticism found among some Oklahomans. Natural cycles skepticism rejects the anthropogenic cause of climate change and asserts that observed weather changes are the result of the Earth's natural cycles. This explanation is a folk model, a type of cultural model, of the climate that makes analogic comparisons between present and past weather patterns. In this paper, we use insights from cultural model theory to examine the logic of the natural cycles explanation. Cultural models provide the basis for analogic thought, which is a common cognitive strategy people use to compare new experiences and concepts to unfamiliar ones. However, analogic thought is a double-edged sword because it may map relationships from the familiar to the novel that do not hold or leave important factors associated with a new experience unrecognized. In this instance, analogies drawn with the natural cycles model between past and current experience with extreme weather do not account for important changes, such as increased greenhouse gas emissions and technological changes. This can lead to inferences about the present and future that differ from scientific consensus. Since the strongest signals of climate change are still remote phenomena for most Oklahomans, holders of the natural cycles model may not yet perceive incongruences between their models and experience. A direct challenge to the natural cycles model is likely to fail because it is connected to holders' lived and learned experience as well as their conception about the world. Therefore, we include a recommendation for using analogy to frame arguments for the anthropogenic nature of climate change that are based on Oklahomans' lived experiences and that may be useful in facilitating some Oklahomans' reconceptualization of humanity's influence on the climate.