Key Concepts: There exist individuals and organizations who reject all or part of our understanding of climate change science. Often this denialism is the product of an ideology or vested interest which would be challenged or threatened by recognition of the impact of global change. The "echo chamber" nature of modern news media and (especially) the blogosphere allows their inaccurate claims about the nature of climate systems to propagate widely without challenge from empirically-based information. It is important for a scientifically-informed public to be aware of the nature of the climate change denier movement to counteract its influence on modern society and politics.
We can all accept that fair-minded people may have alternative, even contrary opinions about a subject. That is all well and good. However, what those of us in the empirically-centered (i.e., real) world would reject is that people are entitled to their own mutually-contradictory set of facts!
Scientific thinking is in its essence skeptical: that is, new truth claims are subject to scrutiny, and not just accepted outright. There has to be evidence supporting such a claim, and that evidence must be subjected to tests and evaluation to be accepted by the field. Because they fail to meet the tests of evidence sufficient for scientific acceptance, we reject such truth-claims as the reality of ghosts, leprechauns, current claims of UFO abductions, paranormal disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, etc.
Yet not all those who claim to be "skeptical" are actually following the principles of skepticism. Their failure stems from the fact that they do not accept concepts contrary to their cherished notions even if these facts are well-supported by the evidence. We (and a lot of others) will distinguish these people from true skeptics but referring to their thinking as "denialism": rejection of truth-claims even in the light of overwhelming evidentiary support.
We will mostly concern ourselves with climate change denialism here (given the focus of the program), but it is worth exploring issues of denialism in general. And there are (sadly) a LOT of examples to look at.
Often, denialists are associated with a particular ideology: these can be political, religious, economic, philosophical, national/ethnic, etc., ideologies. The denial happens when the evidence (again, sometimes overwhelming evidence) for some truth-claim contradicts a belief or set of beliefs in that ideology. Rather than following the actual skeptical tradition (modifying their beliefs in light of evidence), denialists deny that the facts actually are what they are!
At times, denialism can be quite predictable based on a particular ideology. For instance, people whose ideology is that the Earth and everything in it was created in their modern form by God or gods a few thousands of years ago are predictably deniers of the whole field of natural historical sciences (evolutionary biology, geology, anthropology, etc., etc.). Or in terms of American politics, it is not a surprise that most people who deny (against overwhelming evidence) that Barack Obama was born in America are politically right-leaning, while those who think (again, against the empirical evidence) that G.W. Bush actually lost the 2004 Ohio elections are politically left-leaning. Other denialists tend to sample from the political extremes (e.g., those who deny that Al Quaeda was responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks or those who deny that HIV is responsible for AIDS, who tend to come from either the really far right or the really far left). But there are denialist communities who may be strongly associated with particular parts of the political spectrum, but which are not necessarily predictable a priori: after all, there is no real reason why the anti-vaxxers (opponents of vaccination, who often argue against the evidence by claiming vaccines cause autism) and opponents of GMOs (genetically-modified organisms) should be associated with liberals, or that global warming deniers should necessarily be from the right. (I think one could imagine alternative scenarios reversing this political polarity: indeed, since the first version of this lecture in Fall 2010 there are far right politicians who have championed the anti-vaxxer cause.)
And, to be sure, there are some denial communities which are entirely independent of standard political, economic, religious, or other ideologies: those who deny the Apollo moon landings, for instance!
Denialists have recently become the subject of a number of studies (see the readings, blogs, and videos libraries for the course for some relevant courses; also, this entire course on YouTube!) First, a definition. Following Mark & Chris Hoofnagle's Denialism blog, denialism is the employment of rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of an argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is none. As they point out, this is done when "one has few or no facts to support one's viewpoint against a scientific consensus or against overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They are effective in distracting from actual useful debate using emotionally appealing, but ultimately empty and illogical assertions."
Denialists claims rely heavily on Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" concept (first proposed on Oct. 17, 2005): not those who think with their head but know with their heart. "Truthiness" was defined as the quality of a thing feeling true without any evidence suggesting it actually was.
Some common tactics of denialists (derived from this post) include:
- Claims of conspiracy: since denialists are arguing against a preponderance of the data, they are almost always arguing against the vast vast majority of the professionals in that field of expertise. So how do they justify the existence of this consensus? CONSPIRACY, of course! In some cases they may argue that the mainstream of the field actually are part of big global conspiracies (e.g., the Illuminati; International Communism; etc.). Others suggest a more mundane conspiracy--and indeed one for which there is far more potential for reality: the idea that Science is a community, and thus has its own "old-boys club" attitude ("don't rock the boat"; "tow the party line or you won't get funding"; etc.) This fear is not entirely unreasonable, but is countered by the facts that once-controversial claims which are supported by the evidence can and do get accepted in Science. (Indeed, the acceptance of their once-controversial ideas puts them into the history of science books!) It also misses the fact that Science is self-correcting, and has processes for overhauling the understanding and the literature on the small-scale as well.
- Selectivity (cherry-picking): we've seen this before as a logical fallacy: "counting the hits and ignoring the misses." In some cases it is simply promoting a study that is (or can be portrayed as) supporting the cause, while ignoring vastly more studies against it. But sometimes it is far more specific: finding a few data points from a much larger cloud of data, or a line of text quoted out of context.
- Fake experts: realizing that the public (including the business and political worlds) will generally not be convinced by uncredentialed officials or those unaffiliated with a professional or academic institution (NOTE: in fact, that shouldn't be a factor as such! But the denialists recognize this aspect of human psychology), denialist communities create their own institutions and make their own "experts" (even if these individuals have never studied the particular fields relevant to the subject.)
- Impossible expectations (and moving goalposts): all Science is based on the fact that we sample a set of observations and interpolate/extrapolate around them to generate more complete models. Denialists will use this aspect of Science to suggest to the public that "more study is needed", or that "the subject is not completely known", or that "there are still missing data." They will then argue that until these additional observations are in, we should not accept idea. In other words, they suggest that absence of total knowledge requires rejection of a topic, a level of certainty that is simply impossible in the real Universe. (After all, can you ****really**** be certain that colors don't all disappear from the Universe when you close your eyes? In terms of absolute philosophical certainty, no; in terms of scientific certainty, however, we can be DAMN certain that the colors don't go away!)
- General logical fallacies: refer back to the first semester lecture on the topic.
Three aspects of human psychology help to support denial in the face of evidence:
- Motivated Reasoning: much as we'd like to think that humans are rational agents, observation shows that most people are more concerned with winning an argument than finding out the truth of the case. Hence we look for any bit of "evidence" (no matter how slim) to support our positions (the confirmation bias) and reject any evidence (no matter how strong) which rejects it (the disconfirmation bias). Indeed, it is an act of will to work against motivated reasoning, and many people never learn how or why they should do this.
- Backfire Effect: the observation that in many people, presentation of evidence that contradict their strongly held beliefs actually increases the strength of their convictions rather than weakening it.
- Dunning-Kruger Effect: a cognitive bias in which most people tend to overestimate their knowledge and mastery of a topic. The discrepancy is most pronounced in those who are demonstrably least knowledgable/masterful in the subject. (A less-discussed aspect is that the most knowledgable/masterful individuals often underestimate their own demonstrated abilities: one contributor to the imposter effect
Okay, so let's look at the climate change denial movement in particular. As documented by various researchers, we can see the members of the climate change denial movement fall out into three major subcategories (but the terms for these groups are my own):
- Professional Deniers: As it happens, the main movers-and-shakers behind climate change denialism are primarily a
cadre of retired Cold War-era researchers for whom this is simply the latest in a series of environmental/social/scientific causes which they are
organized against. These individuals have been involved in the denial of (in general chronological order): that smoking cigarettes causes cancer (1950s through 1980s);
that large-scale use of supersonic transports (SSTs) could damage the ozone layer (1970s); that the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or so-called "Star Wars"
missile defense concept) was operationally too cumbersome and strategically too dangerous to serve as an effective protection against the Soviets (1980s);
that a major nuclear war could produce a "nuclear winter" effect (1980s); that industrial pollution (especially from coal-burning plants) could produce
acid rain effects downwind (1980s); that the use of chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) could lead to polar ozone holes (1980s and 1990s); that second-hand smoke
could have harmful health effects (1980s and 1990s); that anthropogenic climate change is real and potentially harmful to society (1960s onward, but most
strenuously since the late 1990s onward); and that some industrial pesticides have detrimental effects on ecosystems and humans (initially in the 1950s and 1960s;
recently resurfaced as a new cause in the late 2000s!). Consider what would be required to be a professional research expert in all these fields! Yet the same set of individuals
were the primary organizers of denialist campaigns against them, most especially:
- Frederick Seitz, solid-state physicist
- S. Fred Singer, physicist and aerospace engineer
- William Nierenberg, marine physics
They were aided in their professional denial work by various institutions and think tanks specially developed to promote denialist causes: the Heritage Foundation (developed directly as a counter to ozone hole debates); the George C. Marshall Institute (developed initially to deny the evidence showing the weaknesses of SDI and to deny nuclear winter models); the Science and Environmental Policy Project (developed to confront claims concerning second-hand smoke); the Heartland Institute (also initially organized around smoking issues). All of these are now organized in the climate change denial movement, which is not terribly a surprise as these have shared one or more of the scientists listed above on their executive boards.
These individuals give a professional gravitas to the denialist movements they support, and certain connections to the highest levels of government and industry. But they are generally not responsible for the particular truth-claims and arguments made by any of the denial movements with which they are affiliated. That task falls on the next group.
- Avocational Deniers: While the professional deniers are the main organizers for the climate change denial movement, this second group are the ones who often provide the primary "evidence" and rhetoric unique to this issue. These people are not necessarily devoted to multiple causes the way the Professional Deniers are: indeed, climate change denial may be the central factor in their professional or public life. This group includes some with a background in relevant sciences, as well as people from outside the field who nonetheless have strong opinions (and sometimes excellent rhetorical skills) to use against the accepted science. Chapter 7 of Craven gives a list of important figures of this group.
- The Rank-and-File: If it were just professional and avocational deniers there might not be much of an issue here. Unfortunately, this particular denialist campaign (unlike others: the Apollo moon landing deniers or the Holocaust deniers, for instance) has actually attracted vast numbers of ordinary citizens, media professionals, politicians, community leaders, and the like. The rank-and-file do not generate new ideas on the subject, nor do they organize conferences and reports. Nevertheless, they do act on their beliefs, and these actions might involve political action: requiring climate change denial be taught alongside climate science in schools; acting against technological changes to energy and transportation systems that promote low-to-neutral carbon emissions; electing officials who themselves are openly deniers and plan on acting that way; etc.
So what IS the ideology that motivates climate change denial? Based on various lines of research (some of which you can do yourself, by talking to climate change deniers, going to their websites, reading their books, etc.), it is laissez-faire capitalism: indeed, specifically a version termed by billionaire investor George Soros "free market fundamentalism". Much like Communism and socialism more generally, the ideology of free market fundamentalism claims to be a scientific view of how markets operate: specifically, that free and competitive markets bring supply and demand into equilibrium and therby ensure the best allocation of resources. Even more so, most free market fundamentalists further think that this method is the only one to maximize social justice and personal political freedom. Unfortunately, just like Communism/socialism, it turns out its truth claims are rejected by actual observation, and also just like those other ideas its proponents fail to accept those rejections and do what should be done (that is, modify their ideology in response.)
(Not to go in to too much detail in this, but for those who are interested here are some of the observations that show that the free market fundamentalist point of view is incorrect: consumers do not always make rational choices, but often emotional ones; advertisement and fads can grossly over-inflate the realized value of products compared to a true objective market value; historically, entirely (or nearly entirely) unregulated economies have led to appalling labor conditions and to inferior (and even unsafe) quality products that nevertheless outswamp higher quality ones; and (of greatest concern to climate change issues) markets as currently configured include many hidden costs (pollution generated during construction, operation, and eventually disposal of a product, for instance: collectively the " negative externalities") which are not accurately figured into market prices. [Note: there are economists who are working on how to implement this last idea so that the market can try and achieve a more fair approximation of total costs and value.] [Also note: one can easily reject "free market fundamentalism" without rejecting capitalism!! The two are not the same by any means! The former is simply one extreme extrapolation of an economic system far beyond what most informed people in the field (economists, political theorists, sociologists, etc.) would regard as the limits of an actual market system.)]
How does this play into climate change denial? As we have seen, the dominant human contribution to the climate system is through the release of greenhouse gases via energy generation and transport. Obviously, industry is based primarily on the use of energy (in order to make things) and transport (to move goods and/or people around to actually buy and use the things). It is then reasonable to assume that addressing the generation of greenhouse gases will require some form of modification of existing industrial systems. Some of this modification might happen as the result of intervention--specifically, government regulations on efficiencies, emission controls, etc. Regulation is considered anathema to laissez fair capitalism; and even further, to free market fundamentalists (who perceive all personal freedoms and social justice as deriving from the market), interference in the marketplace by government is necessarily trying to remove personal freedom. And note particularly: the professional deniers were involved in the early stages of the Cold War, when there definitely was the legitimate fear of an international Communist movement trying to take over other nations: thus, these people fear that ultimately proponents of climate change are advocating a socialist/Communist takeover of western society.
Add to this some additional common concerns (against internationalism in general; against the United Nations in particular; fear of change and the bad side of nostalgia (i.e., the thought that "things were better when I was young, and had always been like that; but now things are falling apart"); recognition that if climate change is real, it really might mean for serious consequences for society and for us individually; etc.) and you have a sufficient level of emotional and philosophical displeasure with the topic to lead people to deny the existence of climate change regardless of the overwhelming evidence for it. And then even more add onto this that the Democratic Party and the American political left in general did not take climate change seriously until the success of the movie An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore (a figure of no small polarizing role in politics!) was seen to support the idea that those who accept anthropogenic climate change as real were politically rather than scientifically motivated. (Quite frankly, it is not unreasonable to think that for a significant number of Americans in the Democratic Party, it really is only accepted because of it being a political issue rather than because of the [vastly more important!] scientific evidence for it.)
There has been an historical pattern in the denial of climate change, with parallels to some other denial movements. This pattern has been expressed both in the denial community as a whole and in the personal belief systems of individual deniers. (You may know people who have gone through this transformation):
- Deny the phenomenon exists, and claim that a conspiracy promoting it was developed to further the (perceived) political agenda of the proponents;
- Accept the phenomenon is real; claim it is either not significant or is actually beneficial
- Accept that it is not beneficial, but claim that it is only part of a natural cycle and that humans have no role
- Accept that humans might have some small role, but that human contributions are too small to be significant
- Accept that humans might have a large role, but claim that trying to deal with the cause would have too great an economic cost to justify acting
- Claim that it is simply too late to do anything about it, so why bother trying, so we should simply go along as if it weren't happening
You will find when examining the majority of people that deny scientific understanding (whether climate change, the germ theory of disease, or basic physics), their ultimate concern is actually not about the science itself. Instead, it has do with membership in a particular identity group which they find important. Indeed, this is by no means limited to science denialism!
Humans have an innate tendency towards tribalism in a broad sense: that is, not just by extended familial groups, but by all sorts of forms of identity. This might be nationality, political party, religion, region, home team, fandom, floor of Centreville, preferred phylogenetic methodology, whatever. Such an identity becomes important to some degree or other. And once you have identified an "in group" (members of that "tribe"), you have also specified those who are the outsiders/others.
As part of human tribalism, we tend to create (consciously and unconsciously) identifiers, specifiers, and shibboleths to recognize who is in the in group and who is an outsider: customs, principles, beliefs, slangs, clothing fashions, etc. Sometimes these specifiers might make some sense to the nature of the in group (e.g., a particular religious symbol or the logo of a team), but sometimes it might be essentially arbitrary (e.g., most slang.)
In the case of science denialism as part of a tribal identifier, it is somewhat in between these levels. The particular science being denied might be associated with the nature of the in group (e.g., evolution denial for religions which believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis; climate change denial for political parties which believe in laissez-faire capitalism; etc.) Or sometimes it might be that the specifier is simply associated with a particular belief or fashion of the leadership of that "tribe", whether it has to do with the philosophy behind it or not.
Psychologist Dan Kahan has coined the phrase identity protective cognition for the observation that for many people membership in a particular group outweighs an intellectual commitment to seeking out empirical truths. As a consequence, "as a way of avoiding dissonance and estrangement from valued groups, individuals subconsciously resist factual information that threatens their defining values." This pattern makes it difficult to convince people committed to a particular group of the truth of realities which contradict their "tribe."
- Lack of a subject expert, or even a journalist with any science background, in many media outlets: thus, the reporter may not be able to judge the
quality of the source.
- Consider the following unthinkable analogy in the news: imagine that the sports reporter for the local news, and even the commentator for major sporting events, had absolutely no understanding of the rules of the game they were talking about! Yet this is exactly what goes on in most media outlets, which do not have dedicated science reporters.
- A tendency (promoted by journalism courses!) to "present both sides of a story", even if in fact there may be multiple sides, or just one with any evidentiary support. This comes out of two different--and honestly worthy in and of themselves--goals: to provide a sense of "fairness" (after all, we wouldn't want to see just one side of an issue on political or legal issues!) and to provide a sense of drama/conflict (so that they story is interesting, and thus people pay attention to it.)
- The fact that reporters do not create their own headlines (these are done by other members of the editorial staff) nor present their reports on television or radio (in all but the rarest of cases, the journalists who investigated or researched a subject are NOT the people who present it on TV or radio!)
- The political or other ideological biases of the media outfit. The FoxNews system, the Wall Street Journal, and the UK Daily Mail are all notoriously affiliated with climate change-denying editorial policies, for instance.
- The fact that news reports today tend to be very brief, and therefore cannot actually dwell on details. Since Science is literally in the details, whereas denying something can be easily packaged as soundbites, it puts Science at a disadvantage.
- The formulaic style of most science reportage.
The "echo chamber" effect, however, finds its greatest expression in the blogosphere: the amateur news/editorial media on the Internet. With thousands upon thousands of blogs to choose from, comment on, link to, etc., many people have found their own communities of like-minded individuals. Again, in terms of personal feelings this isn't a bad thing, but it is not the best approach when trying to understand the world around us. There is only one effective methodology--empiricism--which has yet been found for this. And yet the blogosphere allows for hiding from empirical approaches and surrounding ourselves with others who share our particular opinions.
Individual information packets--that is, sets of related ideas, graphs or sound bites, collectively called "memes"--get traded from blog to blog. The blogosphere has thus been a godsend for denialist causes. There memes can be promoted, transmitted, shared, and reinforced, no matter how far removed from reality they might be, because the vast size of the blogging community and the ease of transmitting information allows people with shared ideologies to maintain connections. And as an additional positive feedback, if enough people are talking about a concept on the blogosphere it might get reported by the mainstream media, whose reports can then be used by the blogosphere as "evidence" that they were right all along.
Another aspect of denialism aided by the Internet (although hardly original to it) are petitions supporting a cause. Ultimate this ignores a basic aspect of Science: reality is independent of how we vote! But in attempts to show that many people (especially many scientists) agree with the denial position, a number of online petitions exist. Most famous is the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine Petition, launched by Dr. Frederick Seitz (see above) and operated by the aforementioned Oregon Institute, a family-owned operation otherwise primarily concerned with nuclear war survival techniques. This position is the source of the meme "over 30,000 scientists who reject global warming" that gets promulgated in the press and the blogosphere.
"Global Cooling": a particularly popular meme in some circles. There are different ways of promoting this. One is by the idea that 1998 was the warmest year on record. (In fact it wasn't, but before 2005 it was). If years following it were lower, then the denialists say that there is a cooling trend. Of course, you can pick any two dots or even short series in a longer trend to find cooling. But by looking at the whole trend, you see the warming:
The Misquoting of Mojib Latif: I can't do a better job at the explaining the first phase of this than the following video:
But it happened AGAIN in January 2010
"Climategate": hacking of the emails of the Climatic Research Unit of the East Anglia University led to a news controversy (or rather, "manufacture-versy") alleging that climate researchers were making up their data for their own reason. Again, I really can't do better than this playlist of videos:
And now, hopefully, climate change deniers will sound like this to you:
