Climate change denial

On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Republican Senator Jim Inhofe displayed a snowball—on 26 February 2015, in winter—as evidence the globe was not warming,[1] in a year that was found to be Earth's warmest on record at the time.[2] The director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies distinguished local weather in a single location in a single week from global climate change.[3]

Climate change denial (also global warming denial) is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none.[4] Climate change denial includes unreasonable doubts about the extent to which climate change is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, and the potential of adaptation to global warming by human actions.[5][6][7]: 170–173  To a lesser extent, climate change denial can also be implicit when people accept the science but fail to reconcile it with their belief or action.[6] Several studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism,[8]: 691–698  pseudoscience,[9] or propaganda.[10]: 351 

Many issues that are settled in the scientific community, such as human responsibility for climate change, remain the subject of politically or economically motivated attempts to downplay, dismiss or deny them—an ideological phenomenon academics and scientists call climate change denial. Climate scientists, especially in the United States, have reported government and oil-industry pressure to censor or suppress their work and hide scientific data, with directives not to discuss the subject publicly. The fossil fuels lobby has been identified as overtly or covertly supporting efforts to undermine or discredit the scientific consensus on climate change.[11][12]

Industrial, political and ideological interests organize activity to undermine public trust in climate science.[13][14][15][8]: 691–698  Climate change denial has been associated with the fossil fuels lobby, the Koch brothers, industry advocates, ultraconservative think tanks, and ultraconservative alternative media, often in the U.S.[10]: 351 [16][8] More than 90% of papers that are skeptical of climate change originate from right-wing think tanks.[17] Climate change denial is undermining efforts to act on or adapt to climate change, and exerts a powerful influence on the politics of climate change.[15][8]: 691–698 

In the 1970s, oil companies published research that broadly concurred with the scientific community's view on climate change. Since then, for several decades, oil companies have been organizing a widespread and systematic climate change denial campaign to seed public disinformation, a strategy that has been compared to the tobacco industry's organized denial of the hazards of tobacco smoking. Some of the campaigns are even carried out by the same people who previously spread the tobacco industry's denialist propaganda.[18][19][20]

  1. ^ Barrett, Ted (27 February 2015). "Inhofe brings snowball on Senate floor as evidence globe is not warming". CNN. Archived from the original on 7 April 2023.
  2. ^ "NASA, NOAA Analyses Reveal Record-Shattering Global Warm Temperatures in 2015". NASA. 20 January 2016. Archived from the original on 29 December 2023.
  3. ^ Woolf, Nicky (26 February 2015). "Republican Senate environment chief uses snowball as prop in climate rant". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 21 October 2023.
  4. ^ Diethelm, P.; McKee, M. (2008). "Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond?". The European Journal of Public Health. 19 (1): 2–4. doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckn139. ISSN 1101-1262. PMID 19158101.
  5. ^ National Center for Science Education (4 June 2010). "Climate change is good science". National Center for Science Education. Archived from the original on 24 April 2016. Retrieved 21 June 2015.
  6. ^ a b National Center for Science Education (15 January 2016). "Why Is It Called Denial?". National Center for Science Education. Archived from the original on 7 December 2022. Retrieved 17 February 2023.
  7. ^ Powell, James Lawrence (2011). The inquisition of climate science. New York: Columbia university press. ISBN 978-0-231-15718-6.
  8. ^ a b c d Dunlap, Riley E. (2013). "Climate Change Skepticism and Denial: An Introduction". American Behavioral Scientist. 57 (6): 691–698. doi:10.1177/0002764213477097. ISSN 0002-7642. S2CID 147126996.
  9. ^ Ove Hansson, Sven (2017). "Science denial as a form of pseudoscience". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. 63: 39–47. Bibcode:2017SHPSA..63...39H. doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2017.05.002. PMID 28629651.
  10. ^ a b Jacques, Peter J.; Dunlap, Riley E.; Freeman, Mark (2008). "The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism". Environmental Politics. 17 (3): 349–385. Bibcode:2008EnvPo..17..349J. doi:10.1080/09644010802055576. ISSN 0964-4016. S2CID 144975102.
  11. ^ Stoddard, Isak; Anderson, Kevin; Capstick, Stuart; Carton, Wim; Depledge, Joanna; Facer, Keri; Gough, Clair; Hache, Frederic; Hoolohan, Claire; Hultman, Martin; Hällström, Niclas; Kartha, Sivan; Klinsky, Sonja; Kuchler, Magdalena; Lövbrand, Eva; Nasiritousi, Naghmeh; Newell, Peter; Peters, Glen P.; Sokona, Youba; Stirling, Andy; Stilwell, Matthew; Spash, Clive L.; Williams, Mariama; et al. (18 October 2021). "Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven't We Bent the Global Emissions Curve?". Annual Review of Environment and Resources. 46 (1): 653–689. doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104. hdl:1983/93c742bc-4895-42ac-be81-535f36c5039d. ISSN 1543-5938. S2CID 233815004. Retrieved 31 August 2022.
  12. ^ Vidal, John (27 June 2011). "Climate sceptic Willie Soon received $1m from oil companies, papers show". The Guardian. London.
  13. ^ ClimateWire, Gayathri Vaidyanathan. "What Have Climate Scientists Learned from 20-Year Fight with Deniers?". Scientific American. Retrieved 5 February 2024.
  14. ^ Begley, Sharon (13 August 2007). "The Truth About Denial". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 21 October 2007. (MSNBC single page version, archived 20 August 2007)
  15. ^ a b Painter, James; Ashe, Teresa (2012). "Cross-national comparison of the presence of climate scepticism in the print media in six countries, 2007–10". Environmental Research Letters. 7 (4): 044005. Bibcode:2012ERL.....7d4005P. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044005. ISSN 1748-9326.
  16. ^ Hoggan, James; Littlemore, Richard (2009). Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. Vancouver: Greystone Books. ISBN 978-1-55365-485-8. Archived from the original on 30 June 2021. Retrieved 19 March 2010. 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.
  17. ^ Xifra, Jordi (2016). "Climate Change Deniers and Advocacy: A Situational Theory of Publics Approach". American Behavioral Scientist. 60 (3): 276–287. doi:10.1177/0002764215613403. hdl:10230/32970. S2CID 58914584.
  18. ^ Egan, Timothy (5 November 2015). "Exxon Mobil and the G.O.P.: Fossil Fools". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 15 August 2021. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  19. ^ Goldenberg, Suzanne (8 July 2015). "Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 16 November 2015. Retrieved 9 November 2015.
  20. ^ 'Shell knew': oil giant's 1991 film warned of climate change danger Archived 24 April 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian

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