Climate change denial, or global warming denial, is
denial, dismissal, or doubt that contradicts the
scientific consensus on climate change
There is a strong scientific consensus that the Earth is warming and that this warming is mainly caused by human activities. This consensus is supported by various studies of scientists' opinions and by position statements of scientific org ...
, including the extent to which it is
caused by humans, its
effects on nature and human society, or the potential of
adaptation to global warming by human actions.
Many who deny, dismiss, or hold doubt about the scientific consensus on
anthropogenic
Anthropogenic ("human" + "generating") is an adjective that may refer to:
* Anthropogeny, the study of the origins of humanity
Counterintuitively, anthropogenic may also refer to things that have been generated by humans, as follows:
* Human im ...
global warming
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
self-label as "climate change skeptics",
which several scientists have noted is
an inaccurate description.
Climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
denial can also be implicit when individuals or social groups accept the science but fail to come to terms with it or to translate their acceptance into action.
Several
social science
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...
studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denial or
denialism,
[: "There is debate over which term is most appropriate ... Those involved in challenging climate science label themselves 'skeptics' ... Yet skepticism is ... a common characteristic of scientists, making it inappropriate to allow those who deny AGW to don the mantle of skeptics ... It seems best to think of skepticism-denial as a continuum, with some individuals (and interest groups) holding a skeptical view of AGW ... and others in complete denial"] pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...
, or
propaganda
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded ...
.
The campaign to undermine public trust in climate science has been described as a "denial machine" organized by industrial, political and ideological interests, and supported by
conservative media
Media bias is the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of many events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening of J ...
and skeptical bloggers to
manufacture uncertainty about global warming.
[: "From the outset, there has been an organized ']disinformation
Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate.
The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the L ...
' campaign ... to 'manufacture uncertainty' over AGW ... especially by attacking climate science and scientists ... waged by a loose coalition of industrial (especially fossil fuels) interests and conservative foundations and think tanks ... often assisted by a small number of contrarian scientists. ... greatly aided by conservative media and politicians . and more recently by a bevy of skeptical bloggers. This 'denial machine' has played a crucial role in generating skepticism toward AGW among laypeople and policymakers".[: "ICE and the Global Climate Coalition lobbied hard against a global treaty to curb greenhouse gases, and were joined by a central cog in the denial machine: the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank. ... the denial machine—think tanks linking up with like-minded, contrarian researchers"]
The
politics of global warming have been affected by climate change denial and the political
global warming controversy, undermining the efforts to
act on climate change or adapting to the warming climate.
[: "Despite a high degree of consensus amongst publishing climate researchers that global warming is occurring and that it is anthropogenic, this discourse, promoted largely by non-scientists, has had a significant impact on public perceptions of the issue, fostering the impression that elite opinion is divided as to the nature and extent of the threat."] Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the
appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none.
Organized campaigning to undermine public trust in climate science is associated with
conservative economic policies
The economy of governments covers the systems for setting levels of taxation, government budgets, the money supply and interest rates as well as the labour market, national ownership, and many other areas of government interventions into the e ...
and backed by industrial interests opposed to the regulation of emissions.
Climate change denial has been associated with the
fossil fuels lobby, the
Koch brothers
The Koch family ( ) is an American family engaged in business, best known for their political activities and their control of Koch Industries, the 2nd largest privately owned company in the United States (with 2019 revenues of $115 billion). ...
, industry advocates and conservative
think tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
s, often in the United States.
[David Michaels (2008) '' Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health''.][ See, e.g., pp. 31 ''ff'', describing industry-based advocacy strategies in the context of climate change denial, and p73 ''ff'', describing involvement of free-market think tanks in climate-change denial.] More than 90% of papers skeptical on climate change originate from right-wing think tanks.
As recently as the 1970s,
oil companies were
publishing research which broadly concurred with the scientific community's view on global warming. Despite this, oil companies organized a climate change denial campaign to disseminate public disinformation for several decades, a strategy that has been compared to the
organized denial of the hazards of tobacco smoking by the
tobacco industry
The tobacco industry comprises those persons and companies who are engaged in the growth, preparation for sale, shipment, advertisement, and distribution of tobacco and tobacco-related products. It is a global industry; tobacco can grow in any ...
, and often even carried out by the same individuals who previously spread the tobacco industry's denialist propaganda.
Terminology
"Climate change skepticism" and "climate change denial" refer to denial, dismissal or doubt of the scientific consensus on the rate and extent of global warming, its significance, or its connection to human behavior, in whole or in part.
Though there is a distinction between
skepticism which indicates doubting the truth of an assertion and outright
denial of the truth of an assertion, in the public debate phrases such as "climate skepticism" have frequently been used with the same meaning as climate denialism or
contrarian
A contrarian is a person who holds a contrary position, especially a position against the majority.
Investing
A contrarian investing style is based on identifying, and speculating against, movements in stock prices that reflect changes in th ...
ism.
[: "Climate scepticism in the sense of climate denialism or contrarianism is not a new phenomenon, but it has recently been very much in the media spotlight. ... Such disagreements are not new but the emails provided climate sceptics, in the sense of deniers or contrarians, with a golden opportunity to mount a sustained effort aimed at demonstrating the legitimacy of their views. This allowed them to question climate science and climate policies based on it and to promote political inaction and inertia. ... footnote 1. I shall use 'climate sceptics' here in the sense of 'climate deniers', although there are obvious differences between scepticism and denial (see Shermer, 2010; Kemp, et al., 2010). However, 'climate sceptic' and 'climate scepticism' were commonly used during the 'climategate' debate as meaning 'climate denier'."]
The terminology emerged in the 1990s. Even though all scientists adhere to
scientific skepticism
Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism (also spelled scepticism), sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence. In practice, the term most commonly refe ...
as an inherent part of the process, by mid November 1995 the word "skeptic" was being used specifically for the minority who publicized views contrary to the
scientific consensus
Scientific consensus is the generally held judgment, position, and opinion of the majority or the supermajority of scientists in a particular field of study at any particular time.
Consensus is achieved through scholarly communication at confe ...
. This small group of scientists presented their views in public statements and the media, rather than to the scientific community. This usage continued. In his December 1995 article "The Heat is On: The warming of the world's climate sparks a blaze of denial",
Ross Gelbspan Ross Gelbspan was a journalist, writer and environmentalist. He has written two books relating to global warming: ''The Heat Is On'' (1997) and ''Boiling Point'' (2004). ''The Heat Is On'' received national attention when President Bill Clinton told ...
said industry had engaged "a small band of skeptics" to confuse public opinion in a "persistent and well-funded campaign of denial".
His 1997 book ''The Heat is On'' may have been the first to concentrate specifically on the topic. In it, Gelbspan discussed a "pervasive denial of global warming" in a "persistent campaign of denial and suppression" involving "undisclosed funding of these 'greenhouse skeptics' " with "the climate skeptics" confusing the public and influencing decision makers.
[ p. 3 "But some individuals do not want the public to know about the immediacy and extent of the climate threat. They have been waging a persistent campaign of denial and suppression that has been lamentably effective."]
pp. 33–34 "The campaign to keep the climate change off the public agenda involves more than the undisclosed funding of these 'greenhouse skeptics.' In their efforts to challenge the consensus scientific view ".
p. 35 "If the climate skeptics have succeeded in confusing the general public, their influence on decision makers has been, if anything, even more effective"
p. 173 "pervasive denial of global warming"
A November 2006
CBC Television
CBC Television (also known as CBC TV) is a Canadian English-language broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster. The network began operations on September 6, 1952. Its French-l ...
documentary on the campaign was titled ''The Denial Machine''.
[: "The ideological justification for this came from the sceptics (e.g., Lomborg 2001a,b) and from the industrial 'denial machine'. ... CBC Television Fifth Estate, 15 November 2006, The Climate Denial Machine, Canada.] In 2007 journalist
Sharon Begley reported on the "denial machine",
a phrase subsequently used by academics.
In addition to ''explicit denial'', social groups have shown ''implicit denial'' by accepting the scientific consensus, but failing to "translate their acceptance into action".
[: "Climate change denial is most conspicuous when it is explicit, as it is in controversies over climate education. The idea of implicit (or "implicatory") denial, however, is increasingly discussed among those who study the controversies over climate change. Implicit denial occurs when people who accept the scientific community's consensus on the answers to the central questions of climate change on the intellectual level fail to come to terms with it or to translate their acceptance into action. Such people are in denial, so to speak, about climate change."] This was exemplified in
Kari Norgaard's study of a village in
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
affected by climate change, where residents diverted their attention to other issues.
The terminology is debated: most of those actively rejecting the scientific consensus use the terms ''skeptic'' and ''climate change skepticism'', and only a few have expressed preference for being described as deniers,
[: "There is debate ... about how to refer to the positions that reject, and to the people who doubt or deny, the scientific community's consensus on ... climate change. Many such people prefer to call themselves skeptics and describe their position as climate change skepticism. Their opponents, however, often prefer to call such people climate change deniers and to describe their position as climate change denial ... 'Denial' is the term preferred even by many deniers."][: "Many climate change deniers call themselves climate 'skeptics' ... However, refusing to accept the overwhelming 'preponderance of evidence' is not skepticism, it is ''denial'' and should be called by its true name ... The use of the term 'climate skeptic' is a distortion of reality ... Skepticism is healthy in both science and society; denial is not."] but the word "skepticism" is incorrectly used, as
scientific skepticism
Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism (also spelled scepticism), sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence. In practice, the term most commonly refe ...
is an intrinsic part of scientific methodology.
The term ''contrarian'' is more specific, but used less frequently. In academic literature and journalism, the terms "climate change denial" and "climate change deniers" have well-established usage as descriptive terms without any pejorative intent.
Both the
National Center for Science Education
The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit membership organization in the United States whose stated mission is to educate the press and the public on the scientific and educational aspects of controversies surrounding t ...
and historian
Spencer R. Weart recognize that either option is problematic, but have decided to use "climate change denial" rather than "skepticism".
[: "Recognizing that no terminological choice is entirely unproblematic, NCSE—in common with a number of scholarly and journalistic observers of the social controversies surrounding climate change—opts to use the terms "climate change deniers" and "climate change denial. The terms are intended descriptively, not in any pejorative sense, and are used for the sake of brevity and consistency with a well-established usage in the scholarly and journalistic literature."]
Terms related to "denialism" have been criticized for introducing a moralistic tone, and potentially implying a link with
Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that falsely asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a myth, fabrication, or exaggeration. Holocaust deniers make one or more of the following false statements:
...
.
There have been claims that this link is intentional, which academics have strongly disputed.
The usage of "denial" long predates the Holocaust, and is commonly applied in other areas such as
HIV/AIDS denialism: the claim is described by John Timmer of ''
Ars Technica
''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...
'' as itself being a form of denial.
[: "some of the people who deserve that label are offended by it, thinking it somehow lumps them in with Holocaust deniers. But that in its own way is a form of denial; the word came into use before the Holocaust, and ... denialism has been used as a label for people who refuse to accept the evidence for all sorts of things: HIV causing AIDS, vaccines being safe, etc."]
In December 2014, an open letter from the
Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), formerly known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), is a program within the US non-profit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to "prom ...
called on the media to stop using the term "skepticism" when referring to climate change denial. They contrasted scientific skepticism—which is "foundational to the scientific method"—with denial—"the a priori rejection of ideas without objective consideration"—and the behavior of those involved in political attempts to undermine climate science. They said "Not all individuals who call themselves climate change skeptics are deniers. But virtually all deniers have falsely branded themselves as skeptics. By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry."
In June 2015
Media Matters for America were told by ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' public editor that the newspaper was increasingly tending to use "denier" when "someone is challenging established science", but assessing this on an individual basis with no fixed policy, and would not use the term when someone was "kind of wishy-washy on the subject or in the middle." The executive director of the
Society of Environmental Journalists said that while there was reasonable skepticism about specific issues, she felt that denier was "the most accurate term when someone claims there is no such thing as global warming, or agrees that it exists but denies that it has any cause we could understand or any impact that could be measured."
The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry letter inspired a petition by climatetruth.org
in which signers were asked to "Tell the Associated Press: Establish a rule in the
AP StyleBook
The ''AP Stylebook'', also known by its full name ''The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law'', is an American English grammar style and usage guide created by American journalists working for or connected with the Associated Pr ...
ruling out the use of 'skeptic' to describe those who deny scientific facts." On 22 September 2015, the Associated Press announced "an addition to ''AP Stylebook'' entry on global warming" which advised, "to describe those who don't accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from human-made forces, use climate change doubters or those who reject mainstream climate science. Avoid use of skeptics or deniers."
On 17 May 2019, ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' also rejected use of the term "climate skeptic" in favor of "climate science denier".
History
![191203 Furnaces of the world - Popular Mechanics - Global warming](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/191203_Furnaces_of_the_world_-_Popular_Mechanics_-_Global_warming.jpg)
Research on the effect of
on the climate began in 1824, when
Joseph Fourier
Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (; ; 21 March 1768 – 16 May 1830) was a French people, French mathematician and physicist born in Auxerre and best known for initiating the investigation of Fourier series, which eventually developed into Fourier an ...
inferred the existence of the atmospheric "
greenhouse effect
The greenhouse effect is a process that occurs when energy from a planet's host star goes through the planet's atmosphere and heats the planet's surface, but greenhouse gases in the atmosphere prevent some of the heat from returning directly ...
". In 1860,
John Tyndall
John Tyndall FRS (; 2 August 1820 – 4 December 1893) was a prominent 19th-century Irish physicist. His scientific fame arose in the 1850s from his study of diamagnetism. Later he made discoveries in the realms of infrared radiation and the p ...
quantified the effects of greenhouse gases on absorption of infrared radiation.
Svante Arrhenius in 1896 showed that coal burning could cause global warming, and in 1938
Guy Stewart Callendar found it already happening to some extent.
[: "The doubts and confusion of the American people are particularly peculiar when put into historical perspective"] Research advanced rapidly after 1940; from 1957,
Roger Revelle
Roger Randall Dougan Revelle (March 7, 1909 – July 15, 1991) was a scientist and scholar who was instrumental in the formative years of the University of California, San Diego and was among the early scientists to study anthropogenic global ...
alerted the public to risks that fossil fuel burning was "a grandiose scientific experiment" on climate.
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
and
NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...
took on research, the 1979
Charney Report concluded that substantial warming was already on the way, and "A wait-and-see policy may mean waiting until it is too late."
In 1959, a scientist working for
Shell suggested in a ''
New Scientist
''New Scientist'' is a magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organisation publishe ...
'' article, that carbon cycles are too vast to upset Nature's balance. By 1966 however, a coal industry research organization, Bituminous Coal Research Inc., published its finding that if then prevailing trends of coal consumption continue, "the temperature of the earth's atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the earth will result." "Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London."
In a discussion following this paper in the same publication, a combustion engineer for Peabody Coal, now
Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal supplier, added that the coal industry was merely "buying time" before additional government air pollution regulations would be promulgated to clean the air. Nevertheless, the coal industry for decades thereafter publicly advocated the position that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beneficial for the planet.
In response to increasing public awareness of the greenhouse effect in the 1970s, conservative reaction built up, denying environmental concerns which could lead to government regulation. In 1977 the first Secretary of Energy, Republican
James Schlesinger, suggested President Jimmy Carter inaction regarding a climate change memo citing uncertainty. With the 1981
Presidency of Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following a landslide victory over D ...
, global warming became a political issue, with immediate plans to cut spending on environmental research, particularly climate-related, and stop funding for monitoring. Reagan appointed as
Secretary of Energy James B. Edwards
James Burrows Edwards (June 24, 1927 – December 26, 2014) was an American politician and administrator from South Carolina. He was the first Republican to be elected governor of South Carolina since the post-Civil War Reconstruction Era in the ...
, who said that there was no real global warming problem. Congressman
Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...
had studied under Revelle and was aware of the developing science: he joined others in arranging congressional hearings from 1981 onwards, with testimony by scientists including Revelle,
Stephen Schneider and
Wallace Smith Broecker. The hearings gained enough public attention to reduce the cuts in atmospheric research. A polarized party-political debate developed. In 1982,
Sherwood B. Idso published his book ''Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe?'' which said increases in would not warm the planet, but would fertilize crops and were "something to be encouraged and not suppressed", while complaining that his theories had been rejected by the "scientific establishment". An
Environmental Protection Agency
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
(EPA) report in 1983 said global warming was "not a theoretical problem but a threat whose effects will be felt within a few years", with potentially "catastrophic" consequences. The Reagan administration reacted by calling the report "alarmist", and the dispute got wide news coverage. Public attention turned to other issues, then the 1985 finding of a polar
ozone hole brought a swift international response. To the public,
this was related to climate change and the possibility of effective action, but news interest faded.
Public attention was renewed amidst summer droughts and heat waves when
James Hansen
James Edward Hansen (born March 29, 1942) is an American adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is best known for his research in climatology, his 1 ...
testified to a Congressional hearing on 23 June 1988,
stating with high confidence that long-term warming was underway with severe warming likely within the next 50 years, and warning of likely storms and floods. There was increasing media attention: the scientific community had reached a broad consensus that the climate was warming, human activity was very likely the primary cause, and there would be significant consequences if the warming trend was not curbed.
[The Summer of 1988]
: "A new breed of interdisciplinary studies was showing that even a few degrees of warming might have harsh consequences, both for fragile natural ecosystems and for certain agricultural systems and other human endeavours ... The timing was right, and the media leaped on the story. Hansen's statements, especially that severe warming was likely within the next 50 years, got on the front pages of newspapers and were featured in television news and radio talk shows ... The story grew as the summer of 1988 wore on. Reporters descended unexpectedly upon an international conference of scientists held in Toronto at the end of June. Their stories prominently reported how the world's leading climate scientists declared that atmospheric changes were already causing harm, and might cause much more; the scientists called for vigorous government action to restrict greenhouse gases." These facts encouraged discussion about new laws concerning environmental regulation, which was opposed by the fossil fuel industry.
From 1989 onwards industry-funded organizations including the
Global Climate Coalition
The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) (1989–2001) was an international lobbyist group of businesses that opposed action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and publicly challenged the science behind global warming. The GCC was the largest industry g ...
and the
George C. Marshall Institute
The George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) was a nonprofit conservative think tank in the United States. It was established in 1984 with a focus on science and public policy issues and had an initial focus in defense policy. Starting in the late 198 ...
sought to spread doubt among the public, in a strategy already developed by the tobacco industry.
[: "The technical criticism most widely noted in the press came in several brief 'reports'—not scientific papers in the usual sense—published between 1989 and 1992 by the conservative George C. Marshall Institute. The anonymously authored pamphlets ... laimedthat proposed government regulation would be 'extraordinarily costly to the U.S. economy,' they insisted it would be unwise to act on the basis of the existing global warming theories ... In 1989 some of the biggest corporations in the petroleum, automotive, and other industries created a Global Climate Coalition, whose mission was to disparage every call for action against global warming."][: "Millions of pages of documents released during tobacco litigation ... show the crucial role that scientists played in sowing doubt about the links between smoking and health risks. These documents ... also show that the same strategy was applied not only to global warming, but to a laundry list of environmental and health concerns, including asbestos, secondhand smoke, acid rain, and the ozone hole."] A small group of scientists opposed to the consensus on global warming became politically involved, and with support from conservative political interests, began publishing in books and the press rather than in scientific journals. This small group of scientists included some of the same people that were part of the strategy already tried by the tobacco industry.
Spencer Weart
Spencer R. Weart (born 1942) is the former director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) from 1971 until his retirement in 2009.
Life
Originally trained as a physicist, he is now a historian of scienc ...
identifies this period as the point where legitimate skepticism about basic aspects of climate science was no longer justified, and those spreading mistrust about these issues became deniers.
[: "Scientists continually test their beliefs, seeking out all possible contrary arguments and evidence, and finally publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, where further attempts at refutation are encouraged. But the small group of scientists who opposed the consensus on warming proceeded in the manner of lawyers, considering nothing that would not bolster their case, and publishing mostly in pamphlets, books, and newspapers supported by conservative interests. At some point they were no longer skeptics—people who would try to see every side of a case—but deniers, that is, people whose only interest was in casting doubt upon what other scientists agreed was true."] As their arguments were increasingly refuted by the scientific community and new data, deniers turned to political arguments, making personal attacks on the reputation of scientists, and promoting ideas of a
global warming conspiracy.
With the
1989 fall of communism and the
environmental movement
The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement), also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists a ...
's international reach at the
1992 Rio Earth Summit, the attention of
U.S. conservative think tanks, which had been organized in the 1970s as an intellectual counter-movement to socialism, turned from the "red scare" to the "green scare" which they saw as a threat to their aims of private property, free trade market economies and global capitalism. As a counter-movement, they used
environmental skepticism to promote denial of the reality of problems such as loss of
biodiversity
Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...
and climate change.
In 1992, an EPA report linked
second-hand smoke
Passive smoking is the inhalation of tobacco smoke, called secondhand smoke (SHS), or environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), by persons other than the intended "active" smoker. It occurs when tobacco smoke enters an environment, causing its inhalat ...
with lung cancer. The tobacco industry engaged the
APCO Worldwide
APCO Worldwide is a independent global public affairs and strategic communications consultancy. With 680 employees in 35 worldwide locations, it is also the fifth largest independently owned PR firm in the United States. Headquartered in Wa ...
public relations company, which set out a strategy of
astroturfing
Astroturfing is the practice of masking the sponsors of a message or organization (e.g., political, advertising, religious or public relations) to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants. It is a p ...
campaigns to cast doubt on the science by linking smoking anxieties with other issues, including global warming, in order to turn public opinion against calls for government intervention. The campaign depicted public concerns as "unfounded fears" supposedly based only on "junk science" in contrast to their "sound science", and operated through
front groups
A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, terrorist organizations, secret societies, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy gro ...
, primarily the
Advancement of Sound Science Center
The Advancement of Sound Science Center (TASSC), formerly The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, was an industry-funded lobby group and crisis management vehicle, and was created in 1993 by Phillip Morris and APCO in response to a 1992 Unit ...
(TASSC) and its Junk Science website, run by
Steven Milloy
Steven J. Milloy is a lawyer, lobbyist, author and Fox News commentator. His close financial and organizational ties to tobacco and oil companies have been the subject of criticism, as Milloy has consistently disputed the scientific consensus on ...
. A tobacco company memo commented "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy." During the 1990s, the tobacco campaign died away, and TASSC began taking funding from oil companies including Exxon. Its website became central in distributing "almost every kind of climate-change denial that has found its way into the popular press."
[: "the tactics, personnel, and organisations mobilised to serve the interests of the tobacco lobby in the 1980s were seamlessly transferred to serve the interests of the fossil-fuel lobby in the 1990s. ]Frederick Seitz
Frederick Seitz (July 4, 1911 – March 2, 2008) was an American physicist and a pioneer of solid state physics and lobbyist.
Seitz was the 4th president of Rockefeller University from 1968–1978, and the 17th president of the United States Nat ...
... the task of the climate sceptics in the think tanks and PR companies hired by fossil fuel companies was to engage in 'consciousness lowering activities', to 'de-problematise' global warming by describing it as a form of politically driven panicmongering." For the tobacco company memo, see
In the 1990s, the Marshall Institute began campaigning against increased regulations on environmental issues such as
acid rain
Acid rain is rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, meaning that it has elevated levels of hydrogen ions (low pH). Most water, including drinking water, has a neutral pH that exists between 6.5 and 8.5, but acid ...
,
ozone depletion
Ozone depletion consists of two related events observed since the late 1970s: a steady lowering of about four percent in the total amount of ozone in Earth's atmosphere, and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone (the ozone l ...
, second-hand smoke, and the dangers of
DDT
Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochloride. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. ...
.
In each case their argument was that the science was too uncertain to justify any government intervention, a strategy it borrowed from earlier efforts to downplay the health effects of tobacco in the 1980s.
This campaign would continue for the next two decades.
These efforts succeeded in influencing public perception of climate science. Between 1988 and the 1990s, public discourse shifted from the science and data of climate change to discussion of politics and surrounding controversy.
The campaign to spread doubt continued into the 1990s, including an advertising campaign funded by
coal industry
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when de ...
advocates intended to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact", and a 1998 proposal written by the
American Petroleum Institute
The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. It claims to represent nearly 600 corporations involved in production, refinement, distribution, and many other aspects of the pet ...
intending to recruit scientists to convince politicians, the media and the public that climate science was too uncertain to warrant environmental regulation. The proposal included a
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
5,000,000 multi-point strategy to "maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of a ...
, the media and other key audiences", with a goal of "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom'".
In 1998, Gelbspan noted that his fellow journalists accepted that global warming was occurring, but said they were in "'stage-two' denial of the
climate crisis", unable to accept the feasibility of answers to the problem. A subsequent book by Milburn and Conrad on ''The Politics of Denial'' described "economic and psychological forces" producing denial of the consensus on global warming issues.
These efforts by climate change denial groups were recognized as an organized campaign beginning in the 2000s. The sociologists
Riley Dunlap Riley may refer to:
Names
* Riley (given name)
* Riley (surname)
Places
* Riley Park–Little Mountain, a neighborhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
* Riley Creek (Ontario), a tributary of the Black River in Central Ontario, Canada
* Ri ...
and
Aaron McCright played a significant role in this shift when they published an article in 2000 exploring the connection between
conservative think tanks and climate change denial. Later work would continue the argument specific groups were marshaling skepticism against climate changea study in 2008 from the University of Central Florida analyzed the sources of "environmentally skeptical" literature published in the United States. The analysis demonstrated that 92% of the literature was partly or wholly affiliated with a self-proclaimed conservative think tanks. A later piece of research from 2015 identified 4,556 individuals with overlapping network ties to 164 organizations which are responsible for the most efforts to downplay the threat of climate change in the U.S.
Gelbspan's ''Boiling Point'', published in 2004, detailed the fossil-fuel industry's campaign to deny climate change and undermine public confidence in climate science.
In ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'' August 2007 cover story "The Truth About Denial",
Sharon Begley reported that "the denial machine is running at full throttle", and said that this "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign" by contrarian scientists,
free-market think tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...
s, and
industry had "created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change."
[: "If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. ... outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion. Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. 'They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry,' says former senator Tim Wirth"]
Referencing work of sociologists Robert Antonio and
Robert Brulle
Robert J. Brulle is an American environmental sociologist and professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University. He is also an associate professor of public health at the Drexel University School of Public Health. He advocates ...
, Wayne A. White has written that climate change denial has become the top priority in a broader anti-environmental regulation agenda being pursued by
neoliberals
Neoliberalism (also neo-liberalism) is a term used to signify the late 20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism after it fell into decline following the Second World War. A prominent fa ...
.
Today, climate change skepticism is most prominently seen in the United States, where the media disproportionately features views of the climate change denial community. In addition to the media, the contrarian movement has also been sustained by the growth of the internet, having gained some of its support from internet bloggers, talk radio hosts and newspaper columnists.
''The New York Times'' and others reported in 2015 that
oil companies knew that
burning oil and gas could cause climate change and global warming since the 1970s but nonetheless funded deniers for years.
Dana Nuccitelli wrote in ''The Guardian'' that a small fringe group of climate deniers were no longer taken seriously at the
2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference
The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21 or CMP 11 was held in Paris, France, from 30 November to 12 December 2015. It was the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the 1992 United Nations Framework Conve ...
, in an agreement that "we need to stop delaying and start getting serious about preventing a climate crisis." However, ''The New York Times'' says any implementation is voluntary and will depend on any future world leaders—and every Republican U.S. presidential candidate in 2016 questioned or denied the science of climate change.
Ernesto Araújo
Ernesto Henrique Fraga Araújo (born 15 May 1967) is a Brazilian diplomat and Brazil's former Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Brazil), Minister of Foreign Affairs. Chosen by Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro in January 2019 following a suggestion ma ...
, the new Minister of Foreign Affairs appointed by the newly elected president
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
's president
Jair Bolsonaro
Jair Messias Bolsonaro (; born 21 March 1955) is a Brazilian politician and retired military officer who has been the 38th president of Brazil since 1 January 2019. He was elected in 2018 as a member of the Social Liberal Party, which he turn ...
has called global warming a plot by "
cultural Marxists
The term "Cultural Marxism" refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture. The conspiracy theory misrepresents the ...
" and has eliminated the Climate Change Division of the ministry.
Denial networks
United States
The climate change denial industry is most powerful in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
.
In the 2016 United States election cycle, every
Republican presidential candidate questioned or denied climate change, and opposed U.S. government steps to address climate change as has the Republican leader in the
U.S. Senate
The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States.
The composition and powe ...
.
A Pentagon report has pointed out how climate change denial threatens
national security
National security, or national defence, is the security and defence of a sovereign state, including its citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of government. Originally conceived as protection against military atta ...
. A study from 2015 identified 4,556 individuals with overlapping network ties to 164 organizations which are responsible for the most efforts to downplay the threat of climate change in the U.S.
In 2013, the
Center for Media and Democracy reported that the
State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella group of 64 U.S. think tanks, had been lobbying on behalf of major corporations and conservative donors to oppose climate change regulation.
According to an investigative report in the ''Chronicle of Higher Education'', influential academic papers used to support climate change denialism were written by authors affiliated with Harvard, MIT, and Georgetown University who had undisclosed conflict of interest.
International
The Clexit Coalition claims to be: "A new international organisation (which) aims to prevent ratification of the costly and dangerous Paris global warming treaty". It has members in 26 countries. According to The Guardian newspaper: "Clexit leaders are heavily involved in tobacco and fossil fuel-funded organizations".
Publishers, websites
In November 2021, a study by the
Center for Countering Digital Hate identified "ten fringe publishers" that together were responsible for nearly 70 percent of Facebook user interactions with content that denied climate change. Facebook said the percentage was overstated and called the study misleading.
The "toxic ten" publishers: ''
Breitbart News'', ''
The Western Journal
''The Western Journal'', previously known as ''Western Journalism'', is an American conservative news and politics website based in Phoenix, Arizona. It was founded by political consultant Floyd Brown in 2008.
History
''Western Journalism'' fo ...
'',
Newsmax
Newsmax (Newsmax Media, Inc. or Newsmax.com, previously styled NewsMax) is an American right-wing to far-right cable news and digital media company founded by Christopher Ruddy on September 16, 1998. Newsmax Media divisions include its cable ...
,
Townhall,
Media Research Center, ''
The Washington Times
''The Washington Times'' is an American conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughout ...
'', ''
The Federalist
''The Federalist Papers'' is a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the collective pseudonym "Publius" to promote the ratification of the Constitution of the United States. The co ...
'', ''
The Daily Wire
''The Daily Wire'' is an American conservative news website and media company founded in 2015 by political commentator Ben Shapiro and film director Jeremy Boreing. The company is a major publisher on Facebook, and produces podcasts such as ' ...
'',
RT (TV network)
RT (formerly Russia Today or Rossiya Segodnya (russian: Россия Сегодня) is a Russian state-controlled international news television network funded by the Russian government. It operates pay television and free-to-air channels d ...
, and ''The Patriot Post''.
''
The Rebel Media
''Rebel News'' (also known as ''The Rebel Media'' and ''The Rebel'') is a Canadian right-wing to far-right political and social commentary media website operated by Rebel News Network Ltd. It has been described as a "global platform" for the ...
'' and its director,
Ezra Levant, have promoted climate change denial and
oil sands
Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and wate ...
extraction in
Alberta
Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...
.
Arguments and positions on global warming
Some climate change denial groups say that because is only a trace gas in the atmosphere (roughly 400ppm, or 0.04%, 4 parts per 10,000) it can only have a minor effect on the climate. Scientists have known for over a century that even this small proportion has a significant warming effect, and doubling the proportion leads to a large temperature increase.
[: "Claim 1: Anthropogenic can't be changing climate, because is only a trace gas in the atmosphere and the amount produced by humans is dwarfed by the amount from volcanoes and other natural sources. Water vapor is by far the most important greenhouse gas, so changes in are irrelevant."] The scientific consensus, as summarized by the
IPCC fourth assessment report
''Climate Change 2007'', the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published in 2007 and is the fourth in a series of reports intended to assess scientific, technical and socio ...
, the U.S. Geological Survey, and other reports, is that human activity is the leading cause of climate change. The burning of fossil fuels accounts for around 30 billion tons of each year, which is 130 times the amount produced by volcanoes. Some groups allege that water vapor is a more significant greenhouse gas, and is left out of many climate models.
While water vapor is a
greenhouse gas
A greenhouse gas (GHG or GhG) is a gas that Absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorbs and Emission (electromagnetic radiation), emits radiant energy within the thermal infrared range, causing the greenhouse effect. The primary greenhouse ...
, the very short atmospheric lifetime of water vapor (about 10 days) compared to that of (hundreds of years) means that is the primary driver of increasing temperatures; water vapour acts as a feedback, not
a forcing, mechanism. Water vapor has been incorporated into climate models since their inception in the late 1800s.
Climate denial groups may also argue that global warming stopped recently, a
global warming hiatus
A global warming hiatus, also sometimes referred to as a global warming pause or a global warming slowdown, is a period of relatively little change in globally averaged surface temperatures. In the current episode of global warming many such 15 ...
, or that global temperatures are actually decreasing, leading to
global cooling. These arguments are based on short term fluctuations, and ignore the long term pattern of warming.
These groups often point to natural variability, such as sunspots and cosmic rays, to explain the warming trend. According to these groups, there is natural variability that will abate over time, and human influences have little to do with it. These factors are already taken into account when developing climate models, and the scientific consensus is that they cannot explain the observed warming trend.
At a May 2018 meeting of the
, Alabama's Representative
Mo Brooks claimed that sea level rise is caused not by melting glaciers but rather by coastal erosion and silt that flows from rivers into the ocean.
Climate change denial literature often features the suggestion that we should wait for better technologies before addressing climate change, when they will be more affordable and effective.
Conspiracy theories
Global warming conspiracy theories have been posited which allege that the scientific consensus is illusory, or that climatologists are acting on their own financial interests by causing undue alarm about a changing climate.
Despite leaked emails during the
Climatic Research Unit email controversy
The Climatic Research Unit email controversy (also known as "Climategate") began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker, copying thousa ...
, as well as multinational, independent research on the topic, no evidence of such a conspiracy has been presented, and strong consensus exists among scientists from a multitude of political, social, organizational and national backgrounds about the extent and cause of climate change.
[Eight major investigations on the leaked emails include]
House of Commons Science and Technology Committee
(UK)
(UK); International Science Assessment Panel ("Oxburgh panel") (UK)
first panel and second panel (US)
United States Environmental Protection Agency
(US)
(US)
(US) Several researchers have concluded that around 97% of climate scientists agree with this consensus. As well, much of the data used in climate science is publicly available to be viewed and interpreted by competing researchers as well as the public.
In 2012, research by
Stephan Lewandowsky
Stephan Lewandowsky (born 3 June 1958) is an Australian psychologist. He has worked in both the United States and Australia, and is currently based at the University of Bristol, UK, where he is the chair of cognitive psychology at the School of ...
(then of the
University of Western Australia
The University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Perth, the state capital, with a secondary campus in Albany, Western Australia, Albany an ...
) concluded that belief in other conspiracy theories, such as that the FBI was responsible for the
assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7 ...
, was associated with being more likely to endorse climate change denial.
![Inhofe holding snowball](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Inhofe_holding_snowball.jpg)
In February 2015, climate change denier
Jim Inhofe, who had previously called climate change "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated against the American people", claimed to have debunked the alleged hoax when he brought a snowball with him in the U.S. Senate chamber and tossed it across the floor. He was succeeded in 2017 by
John Barrasso, who similarly said: "The climate is constantly changing. The role human activity plays is not known."
Donald Trump tweeted in 2012 that the Chinese invented "the concept of global warming" because they believed it would somehow hurt U.S. manufacturing. In late 2015, he called global warming a "hoax."
Taxonomy of climate change denial
![5 characteristics of science denial](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/5_characteristics_of_science_denial.svg)
In 2004,
Stefan Rahmstorf
Stefan Rahmstorf (born 22 February 1960) is a German oceanographer and climatologist. Since 2000, he has been a Professor of Physics of the Oceans at Potsdam University. He studied physical oceanography at Bangor University and received his Ph. ...
described how the media give the misleading impression that climate change was still disputed within the scientific community, attributing this impression to PR efforts of climate change skeptics. He identified different positions argued by climate skeptics, which he used as a
taxonomy
Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification.
A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...
of climate change skepticism:
[Rahmstorf, S., 2004]
The climate sceptics: Weather Catastrophes and Climate Change—Is There Still Hope For Us?
(Munich: PG Verlag) pp. 76–83 ote: numbering not shown in original/ref> Later the model was also applied on denial.
This taxonomy has been used in social science
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...
for analysis of publications, and to categorize climate change skepticism and climate change denial.[: "These books reject evidence that global warming is occurring, that human actions are the predominant cause of global warming, and/or that global warming will have negative impacts on human and natural systems. These arguments have been labelled trend, attribution, and impact denial (Rahmstorf, 2004). ... We located 108 books espousing one or more of these versions of climate change denial published through 2010"] Sometimes, a fourth category called "consensus denial" is added, which describes people who question the existence of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming.
The National Center for Science Education describes climate change denial as disputing differing points in the scientific consensus, a sequential range of arguments from denying the occurrence of climate change, accepting that but denying any significant human contribution, accepting these but denying scientific findings on how this would affect nature and human society, to accepting all these but denying that humans can mitigate or reduce the problems.[: "The first pillar of climate change denial—that climate change is bad science—attacks various aspects of the scientific consensus about climate change ... there are climate change deniers:
* who deny that significant climate change is occurring
* who ... deny that human activity is significantly responsible
* who ... deny the scientific evidence about its significant effects on the world and our society ...
* who ... deny that humans can take significant actions to reduce or mitigate its impact.
Of these varieties of climate change denial, the most visible are the first and the second."] James L. Powell
James Lawrence Powell (born July 17, 1936 in Berea, Kentucky) is an American geologist, writer, former college president and museum director. He chaired the geology department at Oberlin College later serving as its provost and president. Powell ...
provides a more extended list,[: "Anatomy of Denial—Global warming deniers ... . throw up a succession of claims, and fall back from one line of defense to the next as scientists refute each one in turn. Then they start over:]
'The earth is not warming.'
'All right, it is warming but the Sun is the cause.'
'Well then, humans are the cause, but it doesn't matter, because it warming will do no harm. More carbon dioxide will actually be beneficial. More crops will grow.'
'Admittedly, global warming could turn out to be harmful, but we can do nothing about it.'
'Sure, we could do something about global warming, but the cost would be too great. We have more pressing problems here and now, like AIDS and poverty.'
'We might be able to afford to do something to address global warming some-day, but we need to wait for sound science, new technologies, and geoengineering.'
'The earth is not warming. Global warming ended in 1998; it was never a crisis.' as does climatologist Michael E. Mann
Michael Evan Mann (born 1965) is an American climatologist and geophysicist. He is the director of the Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. Mann has contributed to the scientific understanding of his ...
in "six stages of denial", a ladder model whereby deniers have over time conceded acceptance of points, while retreating to a position which still rejects the mainstream consensus:
Journalists and newspaper columnists including George Monbiot
George Joshua Richard Monbiot ( ; born 27 January 1963) is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a regular column for ''The Guardian'' and is the author of a number of books.
Monbiot grew up in Oxfordsh ...
and Ellen Goodman, among others, have described climate change denial as a form of denialism.
Denialism in this context has been defined by Chris and Mark Hoofnagle as the use of rhetorical device
In rhetoric, a rhetorical device, persuasive device, or stylistic device is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading them towards considering a topic from a perspective, ...
s "to give the appearance of legitimate debate where there is none, an approach that has the ultimate goal of rejecting a proposition on which a scientific consensus exists." This process characteristically uses one or more of the following tactics:
# Allegations that scientific consensus involves conspiring to fake data or suppress the truth: a global warming conspiracy theory.
# Fake experts, or individuals with views at odds with established knowledge, at the same time marginalising or denigrating published topic experts. Like the manufactured doubt over smoking and health, a few contrarian scientists oppose the climate consensus, some of them the same individuals.
# Selectivity, such as cherry picking
Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position while ignoring a significant portion of related and similar cases or data th ...
atypical or even obsolete papers, in the same way that the MMR vaccine controversy
Claims of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism have been extensively investigated and found to be false. The link was first suggested in the early 1990s and came to public notice largely as a result of the 1998 ''Lancet'' MMR autism fraud ...
was based on one paper: examples include discredited ideas of the medieval warm period
The Medieval Warm Period (MWP), also known as the Medieval Climate Optimum or the Medieval Climatic Anomaly, was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic region that lasted from to . Proxy (climate), Climate proxy records show peak warmth oc ...
.
# Unworkable demands of research, claiming that any uncertainty invalidates the field or exaggerating uncertainty while rejecting probabilities and mathematical models.
# Logical fallacies.
In 2015, environmentalist Bill McKibben
William Ernest McKibben (born December 8, 1960)"Bill Ernest McKibben." ''Environmental Encyclopedia''. Edited by Deirdre S. Blanchfield. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database, December 31, 2017. is a ...
accused President Obama (widely regarded as strongly in favour of action on climate change) of "Catastrophic Climate-Change Denial", for his approval of oil-drilling permits in offshore Alaska. According to McKibben, the President has also "opened huge swaths of the Powder River basin to new coal mining." McKibben calls this "climate denial of the status quo sort", where the President denies "the meaning of the science, which is that we must keep carbon in the ground."
A study assessed the public perception and actions to climate change, on grounds of belief systems, and identified seven psychological barriers affecting the behavior that otherwise would facilitate mitigation, adaptation, and environmental stewardship. The author found the following barriers: cognition, ideological world views, comparisons to key people, costs and momentum, discredence toward experts and authorities, perceived risks of change, and inadequate behavioral changes.
Pseudoscience
Various groups, including the National Center for Science Education, have described climate change denial as a form of pseudoscience
Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or falsifiability, unfa ...
.[Brown, Michael]
Adversaries, zombies and NIPCC climate pseudoscience
, ''Phys.org
Phys.org is an online science, research and technology news aggregator offering briefs from press releases and reports from news agencies (a form of journalism sometimes pejoratively called churnalism). The website also produces its own science jo ...
'', 26 September 2013 Climate change skepticism, while in some cases professing to do research on climate change, has focused instead on influencing the opinion of the public, legislators and the media, in contrast to legitimate science.
In a review of the book ''The Pseudoscience Wars: Immanuel Velikovsky and the Birth of the Modern Fringe'' by Michael D. Gordin, David Morrison wrote:
False beliefs
Explaining the techniques of science denial and misinformation, by presenting "examples of people using cherrypicking or fake experts or false balance to mislead the public", has been shown to inoculate people somewhat against misinformation.
Dialogue focused on the question of how belief differs from scientific theory may provide useful insights into how the scientific method works, and how beliefs may have strong or minimal supporting evidence. Wong-Parodi's survey of the literature shows four effective approaches to dialogue, including " ncouragingpeople to openly share their values and stance on climate change before introducing actual scientific climate information into the discussion."
Emotional and psychological aspects
Florida State Senator Tom Lee has described the emotional impact and reactions of individuals to climate change. Lee says, "If these predictions do bear out, that it's just economically daunting. I mean, you have to be the Grim Reaper of reality in a world that isn't real fond of the Grim Reaper. That's why I use the term emotionally shut down, because I think you lose people at hello a lot of times in the Republican conversation over this." Emotional reactions to climate change may include guilt, fear, anger, and apathy. Psychology Today, in an article titled "The Existential Dread of Climate Change, has suggested that "despair about our changing climate may get in the way of fixing it." The American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association (APA) is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States, with over 133,000 members, including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants, and students. It ha ...
has urged psychologists and other social scientists to work on psychological barriers to taking action on climate change.
Responding to climate denial – the role of emotions and persuasive argument
An ''Irish Times'' article notes that climate denial "is not simply overcome by reasoned argument", because it is not a rational response. Attempting to overcome denial using techniques of persuasive argument, such as supplying a missing piece of information, or providing general scientific education may be ineffective. A person who is in denial about climate is most likely taking a position based on their feelings, especially their feelings about things they fear.
Lewandowsky has stated that "It is pretty clear that fear of the solutions drives much opposition to the science."
It can be useful to respond to emotions, including with the statement "It can be painful to realise that our own lifestyles are responsible", in order to help move "from denial to acceptance to constructive action."
Farmers and climate denial
Seeing positive economic results from efforts at climate-friendly agricultural practices, or becoming involved in intergenerational stewardship of a farm may play a role in turning farmers away from denial. One study of climate change denial among farmers in Australia found that farmers were less likely to take a position of climate denial if they had experienced improved production from climate-friendly practices, or identified a younger person as a successor for their farm.
In the United States, rural climate dialogues sponsored by the Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...
have helped neighbors overcome their fears of political polarization and exclusion, and come together to address shared concerns about climate impacts in their communities. Some participants who start out with attitudes of anthropogenic climate change denial have shifted to identifying concerns which they would like to see addressed by local officials.
People who have changed their position
"I used to be a climate-change skeptic", conservative columnist Max Boot admitted in 2018, one who believed that "the science was inconclusive" and that worry was "overblown". Now, he says, referencing the Fourth National Climate Assessment Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) 2017/2018 is a 1,500 page two-part congressionally mandated report by the United States Global Change Research Program, U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)—the first of its kind by the Presidency ...
, "the scientific consensus is so clear and convincing."
Climate change doubter Bob Inglis, a former US representative for South Carolina, changed his mind after appeals from his son on his environmental positions, and after spending time with climate scientist Scott Heron studying coral bleaching
Coral bleaching is the process when corals become white due to various stressors, such as changes in temperature, light, or nutrients. Bleaching occurs when coral polyps expel the zooxanthellae (dinoflagellates that are commonly referred to as alg ...
in the Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...
. Inglis lost his House race in 2010, and went on to found republicEn, a nonprofit promoting conservative voices and solutions on climate change.
Jerry Taylor
Jerome Cogburn Taylor (born August 2, 1963) is an American environmental activist, policy analyst, and game designer. Taylor cofounded the Niskanen Center, a Washington, D.C. based think tank that, among other things, advocates for market enviro ...
promoted climate denialism for 20 years as former staff director for the energy and environment task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and former vice president of the Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch Indust ...
. Taylor began to change his mind after climate scientist James Hansen
James Edward Hansen (born March 29, 1942) is an American adjunct professor directing the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is best known for his research in climatology, his 1 ...
challenged him to reread some Senate testimony. He became President of the Niskanen Center
The Niskanen Center is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that advocates environmentalism, immigration reform, civil liberties, and strengthening social insurance around market-oriented principles. The center is named after William A. Niskanen, ...
in 2014, where he is involved in turning climate skeptics into climate activists, and making the business case for climate action.
In 2009, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev expressed his opinion that climate change was "some kind of tricky campaign made up by some commercial structures to promote their business projects." After the devastating 2010 Russian wildfires
The 2010 Russian wildfires were several hundred wildfires that broke out across Russia, primarily in European Russia, the west in summer 2010. They started burning in late July and lasted until early September 2010. The fires were associated w ...
damaged agriculture and left Moscow choking in smoke, Medvedev commented, "Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change."
Michael Shermer, the publisher of ''Skeptic
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the pe ...
'' magazine, reached a tipping point in 2006 as a result of his increasing familiarity with scientific evidence, and decided there was "overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic global warming." Journalist Gregg Easterbrook
Gregg Edmund Easterbrook (born March 3, 1953) is an American writer and a contributing editor of both ''The New Republic'' and ''The Atlantic Monthly''. He has authored ten books (six nonfiction, one of humor, and three literary novels), and wr ...
, an early skeptic of climate change who authored the influential book ''A Moment on the Earth'', also changed his mind in 2006, and wrote an essay titled "Case Closed: The Debate About Global Warming is Over."
Weather Channel senior meteorologist Stu Ostro expressed skepticism or cynicism about anthropogenic global warming for some years, but by 2010, he had become involved in explaining the connections between man-made climate change and extreme weather.
Richard A. Muller
Richard A. Muller (born January 6, 1944) is an American physicist and emeritus professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He was also a faculty senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In early 2010, M ...
, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-founder of the Berkeley Earth
Berkeley Earth is a Berkeley, California-based independent 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on land temperature data analysis for climate science. Berkeley Earth was founded in early 2010 (originally called the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature pro ...
Surface Temperature project, funded by Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, has been a prominent critic of prevailing climate science. In 2011, he stated that "following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause."
Funding
Between 2002 and 2010, the combined annual income of 91 climate change counter-movement organizations—think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations—was roughly $900 million. During the same period, billionaires secretively donated nearly $120 million (£77 million) via the Donors Trust
Donors Trust is an American nonprofit donor-advised fund. It was founded in 1999 with the goal of "safeguarding the intent of libertarian and conservative donors". As a donor advised fund, Donors Trust is not legally required to disclose the id ...
and Donors Capital Fund to more than 100 organizations seeking to undermine the public perception of the science on climate change.
As of the end of 2019, in the United States, 97 percent of the coal industry's political contributions and 88 percent of the oil and gas industries' contributions had gone to Republicans, leading economist Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was th ...
to call the Republicans "the world's only major climate-denialist party."
Public opinion
Public opinion on climate change is significantly affected by media coverage of climate change, and the effects of climate change denial campaigns. Campaigns to undermine public confidence in climate science have decreased public belief in climate change, which in turn have affected legislative efforts to curb emissions. Another reason why the public is skeptical about climate change is their lack of knowledge.
United States
In a 2006 ABC News/Time/Stanford Poll, 56% of Americans correctly answered that average global temperatures had risen over the previous three years. However, in the same poll, two-thirds said they believed that scientists had "a lot of disagreement" about "whether or not global warming is happening."
From 2001 to 2012, the number of Americans who said they believe in anthropogenic global warming decreased from 75 percent to 44 percent. (Scientists believe it is happening.)
A study found that public climate change policy support and behavior are significantly influenced by public beliefs, attitudes and risk perceptions. As of March 2018 the rate of acceptance among U.S. TV forecasters that the climate is changing has increased to ninety-five percent. The number of local television stories about global warming has also increased, by fifteen-fold. Climate Central has received some of the credit for this because they provide classes for meteorologists and graphics for television stations.
The popular media in the U.S. gives greater attention to climate change skeptics than the scientific community as a whole, and the level of agreement within the scientific community has not been accurately communicated. In some cases, news outlets have allowed climate change skeptics to explain the science of climate change instead of experts in climatology. US and UK media coverage differ from that presented in other countries, where reporting is more consistent with the scientific literature. Some journalists attribute the difference to climate change denial being propagated, mainly in the US, by business-centered organizations employing tactics worked out previously by the US tobacco lobby.[: "Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming ... Then they claimed that any warming is natural ... Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. 'They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry,' says former senator Tim Wirth ... 'Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress.'"] In France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
, the US and the UK, the opinions of climate change skeptics appear much more frequently in conservative news outlets than other news, and in many cases those opinions are left uncontested.
The efforts of Al Gore
Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic Part ...
and other environmental campaigns have focused on the effects of global warming and have managed to increase awareness and concern, but despite these efforts, the number of Americans believing humans are the cause of global warming was holding steady at 61% in 2007, and those believing the popular media was understating the issue remained about 35%. A recent poll from 2015 suggests that while Americans are growing more aware of the dangers and implications of climate change for future generations, the majority are not worried about it. From a survey conducted in 2004, it was found that more than 30% of news presented in the previous decade showed equal attention to both human and non human contributions to global warming.
In 2018, the National Science Teachers Association urged teachers to "emphasize to students that no scientific controversy exists regarding the basic facts of climate change."
Europe
Climate change denial has been promoted by several far-right European parties, including Spain's Vox, Finland's far-right Finns Party, Austria's far-right Freedom Party, and Germany's anti-immigration Alternative for Deutschland (AfD).
Nationalism
It has been suggested that climate change can conflict with a nationalistic view because it is "unsolvable" at the national level and requires collective action between nations or between local communities, and that therefore populist nationalism tends to reject the science of climate change.
In a TED talk Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Noah Harari ( he, יובל נח הררי ; born 1976) is an Israeli historian and professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of the popular science bestsellers '' Sapiens: A Brief History ...
notes:
In 2019, U.S. Undersecretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes said that the Freeport LNG project's exports would be "spreading freedom gas throughout the world", while Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg
Steven E. Winberg is an American businessman and government official who served as the Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy from November 2017 to January 2021.
Career
Winberg previously served as vice president for research and development a ...
echoed the call to internationally export "molecules of US freedom."
On the other hand, it has been argued that effective climate action is polycentric rather than international, and national interest in multilateral groups can be furthered by overcoming climate change denial. Climate change contrarians may believe in a "caricature" of internationalist state intervention that is perceived as threatening national sovereignty, and may re-attribute risks such as flooding to international institutions. UK Independence Party
The UK Independence Party (UKIP; ) is a Eurosceptic, right-wing populist political party in the United Kingdom. The party reached its greatest level of success in the mid-2010s, when it gained two members of Parliament and was the largest par ...
policy on climate change has been influenced by noted contrarian Christopher Monckton
Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley (born 14 February 1952) is a British public speaker and hereditary peer. He is known for his work as a journalist, Conservative political advisor, UKIP political candidate, and fo ...
and then by its energy spokesman Roger Helmer
Roger Helmer (born 25 January 1944) is a British politician and businessman. He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the East Midlands (European Parliament constituency), East Midlands regions of England, region from 1999 to 2017. B ...
MEP who stated in a speech "It is not clear that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic".
Jerry Taylor of the Niskanen Center posits that climate change denial is an important component of Trumpian
Trumpism is a term for the political ideologies, social emotions, style of governance, political movement, and set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping control of power associated with Donald Trump and his political base. '' Trumpists'' ...
historical consciousness, and "plays a significant role in the architecture of Trumpism as a developing philosophical system."
Though climate change denial was apparently waning ''circa'' 2021, some right-wing nationalist organizations have adopted a theory of "environmental populism" advocating that natural resources should be preserved for a nation's existing residents, to the exclusion of immigrants.[ Other such right-wing organizations have contrived new "green wings" that falsely assert it is refugees from poor nations who are the cause of environmental pollution and climate change, and should therefore be excluded.]
Lobbying
Efforts to lobby against environmental regulation have included campaigns to manufacture doubt about the science behind climate change, and to obscure the scientific consensus and data. These efforts have undermined public confidence in climate science, and impacted climate change lobbying.[: "Conservative think tanks ... and their backers launched a full-scale counter-movement ... We suggest that this counter-movement has been central to the reversal of US support for environmental protection, both domestically and internationally. Its major tactic has been disputing the seriousness of environmental problems and undermining environmental science by promoting what we term 'environmental scepticism.'"][: "From the outset, there has been an organized 'disinformation' campaign ... to 'manufacture uncertainty' over AGW, especially by attacking climate science and scientists. This appears an effective strategy given that confidence in climate science and trust in climate scientists are key factors influencing the public's views of AGW."]
The political advocacy organizations FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, funded by brothers David and Charles Koch of Koch Industries, were important in supporting the Tea Party movement
The Tea Party movement was an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party that began in 2009. Members of the movement called for lower taxes and for a reduction of the national debt and federal budget defic ...
and in encouraging the movement to focus on climate change. Other conservative organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, Marshall Institute, Cato Institute
The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard, and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Koch Industries.Koch Indust ...
and the American Enterprise Institute were significant participants in these lobbying attempts, seeking to halt or eliminate environmental regulations.
This approach to downplay the significance of climate change was copied from tobacco lobbyists; in the face of scientific evidence linking tobacco to lung cancer
Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissue (biology), tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from tran ...
, to prevent or delay the introduction of regulation. Lobbyists attempted to discredit
A smear campaign, also referred to as a smear tactic or simply a smear, is an effort to damage or call into question someone's reputation, by propounding negative propaganda. It makes use of discrediting tactics.
It can be applied to individual ...
the scientific research by creating doubt and manipulating debate. They worked to discredit the scientists involved, to dispute their findings, and to create and maintain an apparent controversy by promoting claims that contradicted scientific research. "'Doubt is our product,' boasted a now infamous 1969 industry memo. Doubt would shield the tobacco industry from litigation and regulation for decades to come." In 2006, George Monbiot
George Joshua Richard Monbiot ( ; born 27 January 1963) is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a regular column for ''The Guardian'' and is the author of a number of books.
Monbiot grew up in Oxfordsh ...
wrote in ''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' about similarities between the methods of groups funded by Exxon
ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...
, and those of the tobacco giant Philip Morris Phil(l)ip or Phil Morris may refer to:
Companies
*Altria, a conglomerate company previously known as Philip Morris Companies Inc., named after the tobacconist
**Philip Morris USA, a tobacco company wholly owned by Altria Group
**Philip Morris Inter ...
, including direct attacks on peer-reviewed
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work (peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
science, and attempts to create public controversy and doubt.
Former National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
president Frederick Seitz
Frederick Seitz (July 4, 1911 – March 2, 2008) was an American physicist and a pioneer of solid state physics and lobbyist.
Seitz was the 4th president of Rockefeller University from 1968–1978, and the 17th president of the United States Nat ...
, who, according to an article by Mark Hertsgaard in '' Vanity Fair'', earned about US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
585,000 in the 1970s and 1980s as a consultant to R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company
The R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) is an American tobacco manufacturing company based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and headquartered at the RJR Plaza Building. Founded by R. J. Reynolds in 1875, it is the second-largest tobacco compan ...
, went on to chair groups such as the Science and Environmental Policy Project and the George C. Marshall Institute alleged to have made efforts to "downplay" global warming. Seitz stated in the 1980s that "Global warming is far more a matter of politics than of climate." Seitz authored the Oregon Petition, a document published jointly by the Marshall Institute and Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine in opposition to the Kyoto protocol
The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part ...
. The petition and accompanying "Research Review of Global Warming Evidence" claimed:
The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. ... We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life than that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.
George Monbiot wrote in ''The Guardian'' that this petition, which he criticizes as misleading and tied to industry funding, "has been cited by almost every journalist who claims that climate change is a myth." Efforts by climate change denial groups played a significant role in the eventual rejection of the Kyoto protocol in the US.
Monbiot has written about another group founded by the tobacco lobby, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC), that now campaigns against measures to combat global warming. In again trying to manufacture the appearance of a grass-roots movement against "unfounded fear" and "over-regulation", Monbiot states that TASSC "has done more damage to the campaign to halt limate changethan any other body."
Drexel University
Drexel University is a private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony J. Drexel, a financier and philanthropist. Founded as Drexel Institute of Art, S ...
environmental sociologist Robert Brulle
Robert J. Brulle is an American environmental sociologist and professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University. He is also an associate professor of public health at the Drexel University School of Public Health. He advocates ...
analysed the funding of 91 organizations opposed to restrictions on carbon emissions, which he termed the "climate change counter-movement." Between 2003 and 2013, the donor-advised fund
In the United States, a donor-advised fund (commonly called a DAF) is a charitable giving vehicle administered by a public charity created to manage charitable donations on behalf of organizations, families, or individuals. To participate in a don ...
s Donors Trust
Donors Trust is an American nonprofit donor-advised fund. It was founded in 1999 with the goal of "safeguarding the intent of libertarian and conservative donors". As a donor advised fund, Donors Trust is not legally required to disclose the id ...
and Donors Capital Fund, combined, were the largest funders, accounting for about one quarter of the total funds, and the American Enterprise Institute was the largest recipient, 16% of the total funds. The study also found that the amount of money donated to these organizations by means of foundations whose funding sources cannot be traced had risen.
The work of economic consultancy Charles River Associates
Charles River Associates (legally CRA International, Inc.) is a global consulting firm headquartered in Boston.
Practice areas
Their practices include: aerospace & defense, antitrust & competition economics, auctions & competitive bidding, climat ...
forecasting the impact on employment of the 2003 Climate Stewardship Act was criticized by the Natural Resources Defense Council in 2005 for using unrealistic economic assumptions and producing directionally incorrect estimates. A 2021 study concluded their work from the 1990s to the 2010s overestimated predicted costs and ignored potential policy benefits, and was often presented by politicians and lobbyists as independent rather than sponsored by the fossil fuel industry. Other papers published during that time by economists at MIT and Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates
Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, Inc (WEFA Inc) was an economics forecasting and consulting organization founded by Nobel Prize winner Lawrence Klein.
WEFA Inc was a spinoff of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, wher ...
, also with funding from the fossil fuel industry, produced similar conclusions.
Private sector
Several large corporations within the fossil fuel industry provide significant funding for attempts to mislead the public about the trustworthiness of climate science. ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil Corporation (commonly shortened to Exxon) is an American multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, and was formed on November 30, ...
and the Koch family foundations
The Koch family foundations are a group of charitable foundations in the United States associated with the family of Fred C. Koch. The most prominent of these are the Charles Koch Foundation and the David H. Koch Charitable Foundation, created ...
have been identified as especially influential funders of climate change contrarianism. The bankruptcy of the coal company Cloud Peak Energy
Cloud Peak Energy Inc. is a company headquartered in Gillette, Wyoming which mines coal in the Powder River Basin. The company was formed as a corporate spin-off from Rio Tinto Energy America in 2009. In its 2009 Annual Report Rio Tinto stated ...
revealed it funded the Institute for Energy Research
The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization that, according to itself, conducts research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER maintains ...
, a climate denial think tank, as well as several other policy influencers.
After the IPCC released its February 2007 report, the American Enterprise Institute offered British, American and other scientists $10,000 plus travel expenses to publish articles critical of the assessment. The institute had received more than US$1.6 million from Exxon, and its vice-chairman of trustees was former head of Exxon Lee Raymond
Lee R. Raymond (born August 13, 1938) is an American businessman and was the chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of ExxonMobil from 1999 to 2005. He had previously been the CEO of Exxon since 1993. He joined the company in 1963 and served ...
. Raymond sent letters that alleged the IPCC report was not "supported by the analytical work." More than 20 AEI employees worked as consultants to the George W. Bush administration
George W. Bush's tenure as the 43rd president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 2001, and ended on January 20, 2009. Bush, a Republican from Texas, took office following a narrow victory over Democratic in ...
. Despite her initial conviction that climate change denial would abate with time, Senator Barbara Boxer
Barbara Sue Boxer (née Levy; born November 11, 1940) is an American politician and lobbyist who served in the United States Senate, representing California from 1993 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the U.S. ...
said that when she learned of the AEI's offer, she "realized there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."
The Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
conducted a survey that found ExxonMobil had given US$2.9 million to American groups that "misinformed the public about climate change", 39 of which "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence". In 2006, the Royal Society issued a demand that ExxonMobil withdraw funding for climate change denial. The letter drew criticism, notably from Timothy Ball
Timothy Francis Ball (November 5, 1938 – September 24, 2022) was a British-born Canadian public speaker and writer who was a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Winnipeg from 1971 until his retirement in 1996. Ball th ...
who argued the society attempted to "politicize the private funding of science and to censor scientific debate."
ExxonMobil denied that it has been trying to mislead the public about global warming. A spokesman, Gantt Walton, said that ExxonMobil's funding of research does not mean that it acts to influence the research, and that ExxonMobil supports taking action to curb the output of greenhouse gasses. Research conducted at an Exxon archival collection at the University of Texas and interviews with former employees by journalists indicate the scientific opinion within the company and their public posture towards climate change was contradictory.
Between 1989 and 2002, the Global Climate Coalition
The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) (1989–2001) was an international lobbyist group of businesses that opposed action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and publicly challenged the science behind global warming. The GCC was the largest industry g ...
, a group of mainly United States businesses, used aggressive lobbying and public relations tactics to oppose action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and lar ...
and fight the Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part ...
. The coalition was financed by large corporations and trade groups from the oil, coal and auto industries. ''The New York Times'' reported that "even as the coalition worked to sway opinion owards skepticism its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted." In 2000, Ford Motor Company was the first company to leave the coalition as a result of pressure from environmentalists, followed by Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, the Southern Company
Southern Company is an American gas and electric utility holding company based in the southern United States. It is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with executive offices also located in Birmingham, Alabama. The company is the second largest ...
and General Motors subsequently left to GCC. The organization closed in 2002.
From January 2009 through June 2010, the oil, coal and utility industries spent $500 million in lobby expenditures in opposition to legislation to address climate change.
In early 2015, several media reports emerged saying that Willie Soon
Willie Wei-Hock Soon (born September 30, 1965) is a Malaysian astrophysicist and aerospace engineer who was long employed as a part-time externally funded researcher at the Solar and Stellar Physics (SSP) Division of the Center for Astrophysics ...
, a popular scientist among climate change deniers, had failed to disclose conflicts of interest in at least 11 scientific papers published since 2008. They reported that he received a total of $1.25m from ExxonMobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute and a foundation run by the Koch brothers. Charles R. Alcock
Charles Roger Alcock (born 15 June 1951) is a British New Zealander astronomer. He was the director of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 2004–2022.
Career
Born in Windsor, Berkshire, England, ...
, director of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
The Center for Astrophysics , Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA), alternatively called the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is an astrophysics research institute jointly operated by the Harvard College Observatory and Smithsonian Astrop ...
, where Soon was based, said that allowing funders of Soon's work to prohibit disclosure of funding sources was a mistake, which will not be permitted in future grant agreements.
Lewandowsky reports that by asking four questions about the free market
In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any o ...
he is able to predict with "67% "confidence" (that is, variance)" an individual's attitudes towards climate change.
Public sector
The Republican Party in the United States is unique in denying anthropogenic climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
among conservative political parties across the Western world. In 1994, according to a leaked memo, the Republican strategist Frank Luntz
Frank Ian Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American political and communications consultant and pollster, best known for developing talking points and other messaging for
Republican causes. His work has included assistance with messagin ...
advised members of the Republican Party, with regard to climate change, that "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue" and "challenge the science" by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view." (In 2006, Luntz said he still believes "back n'97, '98, the science was uncertain", but he now agrees with the scientific consensus.) From 2008 to 2017, the Republican Party went from "debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist", according to ''The New York Times''. In 2011, "more than half of the Republicans in the House and three-quarters of Republican senators" said "that the threat of global warming, as a human-made and highly threatening phenomenon, is at best an exaggeration and at worst an utter "hoax"" according to Judith Warner
Judith Warner (born July 4, 1965) is an American writer.
Warner is a senior fellow at American Progress, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Time.com as well as the author of a range of nonfiction books, amon ...
writing in ''The New York Times Magazine
''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine Supplement (publishing), supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted man ...
''. In 2014, more than 55% of congressional Republicans were climate change deniers, according to NBC News
NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...
.
According to PolitiFact
PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' (then the ''St. Petersburg Times'' ...
in May 2014, Jerry Brown
Edmund Gerald Brown Jr. (born April 7, 1938) is an American lawyer, author, and politician who served as the 34th and 39th governor of California from 1975 to 1983 and 2011 to 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected Secretary of S ...
's statement that "virtually no Republican" in Washington accepts climate change science, was "mostly true"; PolitiFact counted "eight out of 278, or about 3 percent" of Republican members of Congress who "accept the prevailing scientific conclusion that global warming is both real and man-made."
In 2005, ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' reported that Philip Cooney, former fossil fuel lobbyist and "climate team leader" at the American Petroleum Institute and President George W. Bush's chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality
The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is a division of the Executive Office of the President that coordinates federal environmental efforts in the United States and works closely with agencies and other White House offices on the developmen ...
, had "repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents." Sharon Begley reported in ''Newsweek'' that Cooney "edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as 'lack of understanding' and 'considerable uncertainty.'" Cooney reportedly removed an entire section on climate in one report, whereupon another lobbyist sent him a fax saying "You are doing a great job." Cooney announced his resignation two days after the story of his tampering with scientific reports broke, but a few days later it was announced that Cooney would take up a position with ExxonMobil.
United States Secretary of Energy
The United States secretary of energy is the head of the United States Department of Energy, a member of the Cabinet of the United States, and fifteenth in the United States presidential line of succession, presidential line of succession. The po ...
Rick Perry
James Richard Perry (born March 4, 1950) is an American politician who served as the 14th United States secretary of energy from 2017 to 2019 and as the 47th governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015. Perry also ran unsuccessfully for the Republica ...
, in a June 2017 interview with CNBC
CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sho ...
, acknowledged the existence of climate change and impact from humans, but said that he did not agree with the idea that carbon dioxide was the primary driver of global warming pointing instead to "the ocean waters and this environment that we live in". The American Meteorological Society
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) is the premier scientific and professional organization in the United States promoting and disseminating information about the Atmospheric sciences, atmospheric, Oceanography, oceanic, and Hydrology, hydr ...
responded in a letter to Perry saying that it is "critically important that you understand that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the primary cause", pointing to conclusions of scientists worldwide.
Republican Jim Bridenstine
James Frederick Bridenstine (born June 15, 1975) is an American military officer and politician who served as the 13th administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Bridenstine was the United States representative fo ...
, the first elected politician to serve as NASA administrator, had previously stated that global temperatures were not rising. A month after the Senate confirmed his NASA position in April 2018, he acknowledged that human emissions of greenhouse gases are raising global temperatures.
Although climate denial have started to decrease among the Republican Party leadership towards an acknowledgement that "the climate is changing", a 2019 study from several major think tanks describes the climate right as "fragmented and underfunded."
Acknowledgement of climate change by politicians, while expressing uncertainty as to how much climate change can be attributed to human activity, has been described as a new form of climate denial, and "a reliable tool to manipulate public perception of climate change and stall political action."
Schools
According to documents leaked in February 2012, The Heartland Institute
The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.
Founded in 1984, it worked wit ...
is developing a curriculum
In education, a curriculum (; : curricula or curriculums) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view ...
for use in schools which frames climate change as a scientific controversy. In 2017, Glenn Branch
Glenn Branch is the deputy director of the National Center for Science Education. He is a prominent critic of creationism and intelligent design and an activist against campaigns of suppressing teaching of evolution and climate change in school ed ...
, Deputy Director of the National Center for Science Education
The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit membership organization in the United States whose stated mission is to educate the press and the public on the scientific and educational aspects of controversies surrounding t ...
(NCSE), wrote that "the Heartland Institute is continuing to inflict its climate change denial literature on science teachers across the country". He also described how some science teachers were reacting to Heartland's mailings: "Fortunately, the Heartland mailing continues to be greeted with skepticism and dismissed with scorn." The NCSE has prepared Classroom Resources in response to Heartland and other anti-science threats.
Branch also referred to an article by ClimateFeedback.org which reviewed an unsolicited Heartland booklet, entitled "Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming", which was sent to science teachers in the United States. Their intention was to send it to "more than 200,000 K–12 teachers". Each significant claim was rated for accuracy by scientists who were experts on that topic. Overall, they scored the accuracy of the booklet with an "F": "it could hardly score lower", and "the "Key Findings" section are incorrect, misleading, based on flawed logic, or simply factually inaccurate."
Effect
Manufactured uncertainty over climate change, the fundamental strategy of climate change denial, has been very effective, particularly in the US. It has contributed to low levels of public concern and to government inaction worldwide. An Angus Reid poll released in 2010 indicates that global warming skepticism in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom has been rising. There may be multiple causes of this trend, including a focus on economic rather than environmental issues, and a negative perception of the United Nations and its role in discussing climate change.
Another cause may be weariness from overexposure to the topic: secondary polls suggest that the public may have been discouraged by extremism when discussing the topic, while other polls show 54% of U.S. voters believe that "the news media make global warming appear worse than it really is." A poll in 2009 regarding the issue of whether "some scientists have falsified research data to support their own theories and beliefs about global warming" showed that 59% of Americans believed it "at least somewhat likely", with 35% believing it was "very likely".
According to Tim Wirth, "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry. ... Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress." This approach has been propagated by the US media, presenting a false balance between climate science and climate skeptics. ''Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'' reports that the majority of Europe and Japan accept the consensus on scientific climate change, but only one third of Americans considered human activity to play a major role in climate change in 2006; 64% believed that scientists disagreed about it "a lot." A 2007 ''Newsweek'' poll found these numbers were declining, although majorities of Americans still believed that scientists were uncertain about climate change and its causes. Rush Holt wrote a piece for ''Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
'', which appeared in ''Newsweek'':
Deliberate attempts by the Western Fuels Association "to confuse the public" have succeeded in their objectives. This has been "exacerbated by media treatment of the climate issue". According to a Pew poll in 2012, 57% of the US public are unaware of, or outright reject, the scientific consensus on climate change. Some organizations promoting climate change denial have asserted that scientists are increasingly rejecting climate change, but this notion is contradicted by research showing that 97% of published papers endorse the scientific consensus, and that percentage is increasing with time.
Social psychologist Craig Foster compares climate change denialists to flat-earth believers and the reaction to the latter by the scientific community. Foster states, "the potential and kinetic energy devoted to counter the flat-earth movement is wasteful and misguided ... I don't understand why anybody would worry about the flat-earth gnat while facing the climate change mammoth ... Climate change denial does not require belief. It only requires neglect."
In 2016, Aaron McCright argued that anti-environmentalism
Anti-environmentalism is a movement that favors loose environmental regulation in favor of economic benefits and opposes strict environmental regulation aimed at preserving nature and the planet. Anti-environmentalists seek to persuade the public ...
—and climate change denial specifically—has expanded to a point in the US where it has now become "a central tenet of the current conservative and Republican identity."
On the other hand, global oil companies have begun to acknowledge the existence of climate change and its risks. Still top oil firms are spending millions lobbying to delay, weaken or block policies to tackle climate change.
Manufactured climate change denial is also influencing how scientific knowledge is communicated to the public. According to climate scientist Michael E. Mann
Michael Evan Mann (born 1965) is an American climatologist and geophysicist. He is the director of the Center for Science, Sustainability & the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. Mann has contributed to the scientific understanding of his ...
, "universities and scientific societies and organizations, publishers, etc.—are too often risk averse when it comes to defending and communicating science that is perceived as threatening by powerful interests".
See also
* Climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
* Tobacco industry playbook
The tobacco industry playbook, tobacco strategy or simply disinformation playbook describes a strategy devised by the tobacco industry in the 1950s to protect revenues in the face of mounting evidence of links between tobacco smoke and serious ill ...
* Agnotology
Within the sociology of knowledge, agnotology (formerly agnatology) is the study of deliberate, culturally-induced ignorance or doubt, typically to sell a product, influence opinion, or win favour, particularly through the publication of inaccur ...
* Anti-environmentalism
Anti-environmentalism is a movement that favors loose environmental regulation in favor of economic benefits and opposes strict environmental regulation aimed at preserving nature and the planet. Anti-environmentalists seek to persuade the public ...
* Carbon bubble
The carbon bubble is a hypothesized bubble in the valuation of companies dependent on fossil-fuel-based energy production, resulting from future decreases in value of fossil fuel reserves as they become unusable in order to meet carbon budget ...
* Effects of global warming
* Environmental skepticism
* Information Council on the Environment
The Information Council for the Environment (ICE) was an American climate change denial organization created by the National Coal Association, the Western Fuels Association, and Edison Electrical Institute.
History
In the 1980s, the scientifi ...
* International Conference on Climate Change
The International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC) is a conference series organized and sponsored by The Heartland Institute which aims to bring together those who "dispute that the science is settled on the causes, consequences, and policy ...
* Climate alarmist
* Motivated reasoning
Motivated reasoning is the phenomenon in cognitive science and social psychology in which emotional biases lead to justifications or decisions based on their desirability rather than an accurate reflection of the evidence. It is the "tendency to ...
* Renewable energy commercialization: Non-technical barriers to acceptance
* Semmelweis reflex
The Semmelweis reflex or "Semmelweis effect" is a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs, or paradigms.
The term derives from the name of Ignaz Semmelweis, a ...
* Films:
** ''Climate Change Denial Disorder
''Climate Change Denial Disorder'' (CCDD) is a satirical short film which parodies climate change denial and perspectives on climate change through discussion of a fictional disease. The film stars actors Ed Begley Jr., Timothy Brennan, and S ...
'', satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...
parody
A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its subj ...
film about a fictional disease
Diseases, Disorder (medicine), disorders, infections, and pathogens have appeared in fiction as part of a major plot or thematic importance. They may be fictional psychological disorders, Magic (paranormal), magical, from mythological or fantasy ...
** '' Before the Flood'', documenting climate change denial and lobbying processes
References
Bibliography
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Further reading
* Kathy Mulvey (January 2017).
Tillerson Refuses to Acknowledge ExxonMobil's Efforts to Deceive the Public on Climate Change
* Hausfather, Zeke (January 2017)
No 'Pause' in Global Warming: Oceans Heating Up and Sea Levels Rising at Alarming Pace
"Details the findings of a new report that confirms NOAA
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...
data about climate change."
* David Kaiser
David I. Kaiser is an American physicist and historian of science. He is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), head of its Science, Technology, and Society program, and a full profess ...
and Lee Wasserman (December 2016).
Part 1
and
Part 2
, ''New York Review of Books''
"Frontline: Climate of Doubt"
PBS. 23 October 2012. Retrieved 25 October 2012.
*
* Bowen, Mark (2008). ''Censoring Science: Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming''. Plume.
*
* Shearer, Christine (2011)
"Kivalina: A Climate Change Story"
Haymarket Books.
* Montlake, Simon (2019
What does climate change have to do with socialism
''The Christian Science Monitor
''The Christian Science Monitor'' (''CSM''), commonly known as ''The Monitor'', is a nonprofit news organization that publishes daily articles in electronic format as well as a weekly print edition. It was founded in 1908 as a daily newspaper ...
''
* Oreskes, Naomi, "History Matters to Science: It helps to explain how cynical actors undermine the truth", ''Scientific American
''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it i ...
'', vol. 323, no. 6 (December 2020), p. 81. "In our 2010 book, ''Merchants of Doubt
''Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming'' is a 2010 non-fiction book by American historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. It identifies parallels betwe ...
'', Erik M. Conway
Erik M. Conway (born 1965) is the historian at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He is the author of several books. He previously completed a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1998, wit ...
and I showed how the same arguments s those used to cast doubt on the link between tobacco use and lung cancer
Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissue (biology), tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from tran ...
] were used to delay action on acid rain
Acid rain is rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, meaning that it has elevated levels of hydrogen ions (low pH). Most water, including drinking water, has a neutral pH that exists between 6.5 and 8.5, but acid ...
, the ozone hole and climate change
In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...
—and this year 020
020 is the national dialling code for London in the United Kingdom. All subscriber numbers within the area code consist of eight digits and it has capacity for approaching 100 million telephone numbers. The code is used at 170 telephone exch ...
we saw the spurious 'freedom' argument being used to disparage mask wearing uring the COVID-19 pandemic">COVID-19_pandemic.html" ;"title="uring the COVID-19 pandemic">uring the COVID-19 pandemic"
*
"Climate fight 'is undermined by social media's toxic reports'"
''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
''. 21 March 2021.
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