Climate Change Denial Research Articles

An acceptance speech.

An acceptance speech.

The Case for Ecosocialism in the Face of the Worsening Climate Crisis

A fierce intellectual battle continues over the ideological character of green politics. The overall conflict that emerged in past decades between environmental justice advocates on the one hand, and on the other, a coalition of states, corporations and their academic, NGO and media allies will now revive in earnest, given the Biden Administration's January 2021 pledge to take climate change seriously. After the Trump regime's climate denialism, a longstanding challenge to environmental justice now returns in the form of supposedly-pragmatic “ecological modernization” strategies, i.e., regulatory, technicist, market-based, or some combination. These characterized the pre-Trump era but had no discernable impact on emissions. In contrast, David Harvey has long advocated “radicalization of the theses of ecological modernization.” The temptation to avoid in this process is deradicalization through cooptation. But even as technical questions reemerge, the radicalization Harvey calls for becomes ever more relevant.

Parasitic Knowledge Infrastructures: Data Reuse by Anthropogenic Climate Change Skeptics

ABSTRACTStakeholders from academia, industry, funding agencies, and scholarly publishing are increasingly investing in open data partially in the hope that it will democratize science and promote more diverse data reuse. However, fewer studies examine how unconventional communities outside academia and industry use open data. Through an investigative digital ethnography, I observed the data practices of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) skeptics, specifically how they discuss, evaluate, and reuse open data. This poster focuses on the knowledge infrastructure that affords the data practices of ACC skeptics. I argue that ACC skeptics are building a parasitic knowledge infrastructure on the back of the climate science knowledge infrastructure it often seeks to discredit. Understanding the infrastructure that supports skeptics' data reuse can inform how we design policies and infrastructure to actualize open data's promises while minimizing its perils.

Science by YouTube: an Analysis of YouTube’s Recommendations on the Climate Change Issue

Citizens increasingly use online platforms, and in particular YouTube, to get informed. This paper addresses the role of YouTube’s recommendation system in science communication to assess whether YouTube's recommendation system is creating filter bubbles on the climate change issue. It, therefore, contributes to the growing literature that finds that such filter bubbles actually do not exist. The paper shows that users are likely to get content with similar opinions, at least for a few recommended videos in a row. In addition, it was observed that the same promoters of climate denial appear over and over again in different recommendations. Given all that, YouTube can lead to the creation of filter bubbles where users do not have access to all relevant scientific information.

Exploring climate change on Twitter using seven aspects: Stance, sentiment, aggressiveness, temperature, gender, topics, and disasters.

How do climate change deniers differ from believers? Is there any correlation between human sentiment and deviations from historic temperature? We answer nine such questions using 13 years of Twitter data and 15 million tweets. Seven aspects are explored, namely, user gender, climate change stance and sentiment, aggressiveness, deviations from historic temperature, topics discussed, and environmental disaster events. We found that: a) climate change deniers use the term global warming much often than believers and use aggressive language, while believers tweet more about taking actions to fight the phenomenon, b) deniers are more present in the American Region, South Africa, Japan, and Eastern China and less present in Europe, India, and Central Africa, c) people connect much more the warm temperatures with man-made climate change than cold temperatures, d) the same regions that had more climate change deniers also tweet with negative sentiment, e) a positive correlation is observed between human sentiment and deviations from historic temperature; when the deviation is between −1.143°C and +2.401°C, people tweet the most positive, f) there exist 90% correlation between sentiment and stance, and -94% correlation between sentiment and aggressiveness, g) no clear patterns are observed to correlate sentiment and stance with disaster events based on total deaths, number of affected, and damage costs, h) topics discussed on Twitter indicate that climate change is a politicized issue and people are expressing their concerns especially when witnessing extreme weather; the global stance could be considered optimistic, as there are many discussions that point out the importance of human intervention to fight climate change and actions are being taken through events to raise the awareness of this phenomenon.

Socio-semantic configuration of an online conversation space: The case of Twitter users discussing the #IPCC reports

In public debates, climate change communication tends to polarize into communities for and against the scientific basis of global warming. We analyze mention networks on Twitter around the publication of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 2 and 3 reports that were published in March–April 2014. Building upon earlier research into climate skepticism and polarization of climate change debate, we focus on the relative prominence of different types of Twitter user accounts, in terms of engagement with other users and their alignments towards the scientific basis of climate change. We distinguish a “heart” actively discussing IPCC from a “shadow”, which more anecdotally mentions IPCC and is likely to correspond to the remainder of a public space minimally interested in IPCC-related reports. We develop an original network analysis framework that enables us to analyze and deconstruct the inner structure of this heart’s strongly intertwined engagement dynamics. Interesting observations relate to the position of critical users, who are in the minority, but are in relative terms most engaged with and most engaging with other users in this arena, while the media, casual users and governmental agencies occupy relatively less prominent positions. We further qualify the various structural positions by demonstrating that they correspond to different types of vocabulary specific to user types and positions. This socio-semantic approach may be generally helpful to disentangle semantic and structural polarization in online conversation spaces where opposing poles precisely appear to be mixing.

Consumers in the Circular Economy: A Path Analysis of the Underlying Factors of Purchasing Behaviour.

One of the major obstacles to the adoption of the circular economy is the lack of consumer interest and awareness. Despite this, the unique role of consumers in the circular economy is an understudied topic, as the literature tends to focus rather on the application of circular practices in the organizational and industrial sectors. This paper aims to examine the individual-level factors that have an influence over circular purchasing behavior. Specifically, this paper elaborates an explicative path model of purchasing circular products that takes into account environmental concern, climate skepticism, and the attitudinal factor towards circular products. The final sample consisted of 566 respondents from Romania. Our findings showed that environmental concern has a positive significant impact on circular purchase behaviour and this relationship is mediated by the attitude towards circular products. Moreover, those with high levels of climate skepticism showed an increased level of perceived greenwashing among organizations.

On Snakes and Ladders

The climate emergency mandates a refocusing of society and education on the relationship between humans and the more-than-human world. Emerging from decades of social constructionism that openly promoted climate science denial, social and educational theorising now engages with new materialist philosophies and the agency of matter. Physicist Karen Barad’s book Meeting the Universe Halfway, cited over 13,000 times, offers an ontological foundation for new materialism based on her idiosyncratic application of quantum physics. While critically reviewing Barad, I found myself unexpectedly “sliding back down” into the terrain of my physicist pastime, rereading quantum mechanics in depth. I reflect here on how this “ontological detour” empowered me to “climb up a ladder” towards the theoretical foundation for my PhD project in climate change education. I argue that ontological grounding and cross-disciplinary engagement are vital for advancing research and gaining perspectives through lateral connections.

What Does “Environmental Populism” Mean?

Abstract The current article brings together and reviews the literature on “environmental populism”; that is, environmental issues that could be explored through a populist frame. The article reviews four different cases of environmental populism: (i) right-wing populism and climate denial, (ii) resource populism, (iii) eco-populism, and (iv) the populism of environmental movements. For each case, the article analyzes how different theories of populism explain the environmental issues under consideration and how the environment is constructed. Lastly, the article argues that these four different cases only share very abstract features between them, and greater clarity would be gained by dropping the “environmental populism” label altogether in favor of “environmental populisms,” in the plural.

Book Review. Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial

Book Review. Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change Denial

How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason by Lee McIntyre

Reviewed by: How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason by Lee McIntyre Michael Filas (bio) Lee McIntyre, How to Talk to a Science Denier: Conversations with Flat Earthers, Climate Deniers, and Others Who Defy Reason. MIT Press, 2021, 264 pages, $24.95 cloth. This book is Lee McIntyre’s fourth monograph from MIT Press, and it continues his examination of how we understand truth and post-truth. While he examines science deniers of many stripes—from flat-earthers to anti-vaxxers to climate deniers—he juggles his own deference to the principles of science with an earnest investment in swinging science deniers, one at a time, face-to-face, into the fold of science believers. Readers get a thorough review of the history and key moments in several pockets of science denial, but this review comes in the context, as advertised, of a reformer’s guide to converting the nonbelievers. McIntyre discovers that you do not convert science deniers by throwing volumes of data at them, or by belittling their perspective. Science deniers hold on to their beliefs less as rational facts than as a dimension of their identity. Only a respectful, recursive, face-to-face conversation will initiate a person’s belief transformation, and commensurate identity shift. The book begins as McIntyre recounts his investigatory trip to the 2018 Flat Earth International Conference in Denver, engaging with “six-hundred shouting, clapping true believers” (xvi), and documenting, through personal accounts, how he engaged with the convention attendees. He sustained listening, respect, and a measured approach throughout his interactions with the flat-earthers, but his mind was not changed (“don’t worry, I’m not one of them” he writes [p. 29]). However, through respectful dialogue, McIntyre learns how to recognize the telltale attributes, a nomenclature of five tropes he calls a “secret decoder ring” for fighting science denial (xiii). This methodological centerpiece argues that all science deniers make “the same [End Page 497] few mistakes in human reasoning: (1) Cherry picking evidence; (2) Belief in conspiracy theories; (3) Reliance on fake experts (and denigration of real experts); (4) Committing logical errors; and (5) Setting impossible expectations for what science can achieve” (p. 33). And McIntyre uses this five-trope critique throughout subsequent chapters, which include discussions of anti-vaxxers, climate denial, coronavirus denial, and opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The book is structured in part as a travelogue through various brands of science denial, exemplifying as it goes McIntyre’s method for engaging in dialogue. Through the introduction and first chapter, we learn the nuances of how and why flat-earthers at the 2018 Denver conference have come to believe that “globalists” have bought into a hoax, sustained by faked photos from NASA; this exemplifies the conspiracy theory element of the five-trope critique. In chapter 2, we get a more in-depth explanation of each of the five telltale tropes, enumerated above, that reveal the errant thinking in science denial, plus a look at the motivational and psychological roots of science denial. This section importantly shifts the focus from how science denial is created to why people believe it, such as “motivated reasoning . . . whereby we are more prone to look for information that backs up things we want to believe” (p. 47, emphasis in original). And it also broaches one of the main insights of this book: “The content of the belief may not be as important as the social identity it affords” (p. 54). Chapter 3 goes deeper into the psychology of how and why science deniers hold their beliefs, and why they are difficult to convince with facts alone. He writes about concepts like the “backfire effect,” wherein a person becomes more convinced of their original mistaken belief when they are presented with correcting information (p. 63). “Belief formation and change are not just a matter of having correct factual information, but of the emotional, social, and psychological context within which beliefs are formed” (p. 66). The second part of the chapter illustrates the importance of face-to-face conversations in convincing hard-core science deniers to reconsider their beliefs. And here, McIntyre provides an...

The American electric utility industry’s role in promoting climate denial, doubt, and delay

It is now well established that fossil fuel companies contributed to undermining climate science and action. In this paper, we examine the extent to which American electric utilities and affiliated organizations’ public messaging contributed to climate denial, doubt, and delay. We examined 188 documents on climate change authored by organizations in and affiliated with the utility industry from 1968 to 2019. Before 1980, electric utilities’ messaging was generally in-line with the scientific understanding of climate change. However, from 1990 to 2000, utility organizations founded and funded front groups that promoted climate doubt and denial. After 2000, these front groups were largely shut down, and utility organizations shifted to arguing for delayed action on climate change, by highlighting the responsibility of other sectors and promoting actions other than cleaning up the electricity system. Overall, our results suggest that electric utility industry organizations have promoted messaging designed to avoid taking action on reducing pollution over multiple decades. Notably, many of the utilities most engaged in communicating climate doubt and denial in the past currently have the slowest plans to decarbonize their electricity mix.

Learning from Experience? COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories and Their Implications for Democratic Discourse

Learning from Experience?COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories and Their Implications for Democratic Discourse Jennifer Hochschild (bio) and David Beavers (bio) in a survey fielded on march 7, 2020, more than three times as many Democrats as Republicans (61 percent and 20 percent, respectively) agreed that the United States was concealing the true scale of SARS-CoV-2 deaths. Republicans were nearly 20 percentage points more likely than Democrats (57 percent and 38 percent, respectively) to agree that the coronavirus is a man-made epidemic. With fewer than 300 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States (CDC 2020), pandemic beliefs with no clear basis in fact were already flourishing and were already colored by Americans' partisan lenses. This case points to large questions. Although research shows that "basically all Americans hold conspiracy beliefs" (Smallpage et al. 2020, 264), we do not know enough about adherence to these beliefs and consequences for American politics. The very concept is contested—one person's plausible hypothesis or praise for imaginative thinking is another's conspiracy theory. But at least for those who see conspiracy theories as a threat to democratic governance, definitions share a few features. Karen Douglas and coauthors define [End Page 859] them as "attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots by two or more powerful actors" (Douglas et al. 2019, 4). Joseph Uscinski and his colleagues, who are among the most influential political scientists writing on this topic, similarly define a conspiracy theory as "a proposed explanation of events that cites as a main causal factor a small group of persons (the conspirators) acting in secret for their own benefit, against the common good" (Uscinski, Klofstad, and Atkinson 2016, 58). Such theories are not new to American politics. Richard Hofstadter set their pejorative framework by "borrowing a clinical term for other purposes" in describing conspiracism as a mental illness ([1964] 2008, 3). Although some argue that conspiracy theories should be analyzed neutrally or even favorably in some circumstances (Butter and Knight 2020a), most analysts of democracy agree with Hofstadter in fearing and condemning them. They worry that conspiracy theories are gaining importance in our era of partisan polarization, hyperpartisan media, disdain for norms of civility and facticity among some political elites, and digital networks' capacity to create "a global network of village idiots" (Lenny Pozner, in Kolbert 2019). Adherence to conspiracy theories might even be deadly. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, exposure to misinformation was associated with increased cases and deaths, most likely by discouraging individuals from wearing masks, socially distancing, and minimizing travel (Ash et al. 2020; Bursztyn et al. 2020). By March 2022, Americans over age 12 who were not vaccinated, sometimes due to acceptance of theories about vaccines' harms to one's body, were 17 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than were those who had received primary vaccines and a booster dose (CDC 2022). Coronavirus-related conspiracy narratives may also undermine democratic discourse and practice. Furious encounters between people with opposing views on COVID-19 are commonplace on- and offline. Patients and their families who deny the disease's existence have spit on and threatened medical staff, and some public health [End Page 860] experts feel under threat (McKay et al. 2020). Belief in a connection between COVID-19 and 5G telecommunications technology was positively associated with state anger and greater justification for violence now or perhaps in the future (Jolley and Paterson 2020). More generally, as one scholar summarizes, "conspiracy theories … have been linked to climate denial, vaccine refusal, political apathy, apathy in the workplace, prejudice, crime, and violence. … Conspiracy theories about COVID-19 are no exception" (Douglas 2021, 271). Despite the fact that some beliefs arguably endanger public health, democratic polities must be cautious about restraining conspiracy narratives. Commitments to freedom of speech and assembly, along with protections for privacy, civil liberty, and freedom from surveillance, make it difficult to balance the need for effective governance and public safety against the imperative of individual freedom. And disagreement about how to attempt the balance itself adds another layer of challenge to democracy. In the survey that we describe and analyze...

Psychotherapy for Eco-Anxiety: Shifting From Catastrophizing to Action

Psychotherapy for Eco-Anxiety: Shifting From Catastrophizing to Action

“It Wasn't Like a Big Light Bulb Moment”: Factors that Contribute to Changing Minds on Climate Change

AbstractThis article uses interview data with people who were once skeptical about climate change but have come to accept climate science to assess the factors that contribute to their shifts in perspectives. Our findings show two trajectories of change for skeptics, depending on the nature of their skepticism. For those who move from actively denying climate change, shifting beliefs about climate change occur via a profound need to reconcile what emerges as cognitive dissonance due to challenges to their religious identities. For skeptics who move from being unsure about climate change, moving to accept climate science happens through either encountering new information from a trusted source or personally observing the effects of climate change. This extends existing scholarship on the factors that contribute to changing minds on climate change.

Associations of locus of control, information processing style and anti-reflexivity with climate change scepticism in an Australian sample.

A proportion of the Australian public remains sceptical about the reality of climate change, its causes, impacts and the need for mitigatory action. To date, scepticism research largely focuses on factors highly resistant to change, particularly socio-demographic and value factors. This mixed-methods study investigated whether more malleable psychological factors: locus of control; information processing style; and anti-reflexivity, predicted climate change scepticism above and beyond socio-demographic and value factors. A sample of 390 participants (Mean age = 41.31, standard deviation = 18.72; 230 male) completed an electronic survey. Using hierarchical regression, trust in forces of anti-reflexivity and external locus of control predicted impact scepticism. Decreased trust in forces of reflexivity also predicted attribution and impact scepticism. Finally, external locus of control predicted response scepticism. Key qualitative themes identified were, trust in alternative science; mistrust of climate science; belief in natural cycles; predictions not becoming reality; and ulterior motives of interested parties.

Truth over identity? Cultural cognition weakly replicates across 23 countries

Political and cultural polarisation are leading explanations for climate change denial and inactions as seen in the Cultural Cognition Thesis (CCT). In this view, individuals hold positions on contested issues to conform to their ideological groups: people ascribe to certain beliefs, not to express what they know but to show their group identity. We present a conceptual test of the CCT using high-quality cross-national data from 21 European countries, Russia, and Israel (total N = 44,378). Climate change concern was correlated with identification with the political left (rs = 0.04–0.13), egalitarianism (rs = 0.04–0.13) and communitarianism (rs = 0.01–0.07), but in a broad definition cultural cognition was a weak predictor of climate change beliefs (R2 = 3.82%), policy preferences (R2 = 2.09%), and actions (R2 = 0.62%). Moreover, climate change polarisation was not greatest among the highly educated as predicted by the CCT. Education was positively associated with climate beliefs (rs = 0.07–0.17), irrespective of political affiliation. Non-linear regressions indicated little evidence that the CCT's predictions held better for more extreme ideological groups. These results suggest cultural cognition may not be central to thoughts about climate change in Europe.

A Report from LGBTI Philanthropy

A Report from LGBTI Philanthropy

I'm Not a Scientist, I Just Know What I See: Hurricane experience and climate change acceptance

Objective Although severe weather events are becoming more frequent and more severe, for many citizens, climate change and its consequences are still a distant concern. In the United States, Republicans, in particular, have expressed skepticism about the threat posed by climate change. Is this skepticism reduced by direct experience with severe weather events? Methods Using two surveys of registered voters in North Carolina, we test whether the threat of being hit by Hurricane Florence, or experiencing its effects directly through power loss, flooding, or wind damage, was associated with reduced skepticism about the impact of climate change. Results Republican voters who were the most threatened by the storm and who experienced one or more of its impacts were more likely to say climate change poses a threat to the state than their copartisans who were not threatened or impacted. However, among highly educated and motivated Republican voters, experience with Hurricane Florence was associated with increased skepticism about climate change. Conclusion Severe weather events have the potential to moderate climate change skepticism in the United States but not among the most engaged, dedicated partisans.

A Marshall Plan for the 21st century: Addressing climate change in the Asia-Pacific through diplomacy, development, and defense.

The inevitable climate challenges facing the Asia-Pacific territory require a massive whole-of--government approach comparable to the Marshall Plan of 1948. While many political leaders have called for such a plan, no policy currently exists for this region or purpose. With nearly eight trillion dollars in trade revenue passing through crucially strategic straits daily, seven of the 10 largest militaries in the world (five of which are nuclear capable) operating throughout this territory, and a forecast for nearly exponential population growth, the geopolitical provenance of the United States (US), ties inextricably to this portion of the globe. A document analysis assessing existing diplomatic, developmental, and defensive policies concludes that a modern-day Marshall Plan for the 21st century Asia-Pacific is achievable by realigning lines of effort within current frameworks. As long as the US continues to deny climate change, other nation-state actors within the area will rise to fill the void. The US must commit to the funding, development, and proliferation of clean and sustainable energy solutions, which evolve past current fossil-fuel reliant technologies and, most importantly, be open-source in description and shared with other large polluters throughout the world. Finally, the nations of the Asian-Pacific realm should contemplate a theater-specific treaty organization. As climate change threatens to destabilize the region, a unified force intent on providing stabilization efforts, preventing internal conflict and escalation, and enforcing international law deserves consideration and deliberation.