Climate Change Denial

• The Conversation

  • Binaries are easy to handle because there are only two possibilities to consider. 
  • When people are faced with a spectrum of possibility and nuance, they have to exert mental effort. 
  • Climate change deniers simplify the spectrum of possible scientific consensus: 100% agreement or no consensus at all. 
  • Deniers argue that if global temperatures are not increasing at a perfectly consistent rate, there is no such thing as global warming, despite the fact that most trends see fluctuations. 
• The United States (University of Michigan)

  • Nearly 15% of Americans deny climate change is real. 
  • Public figures such as Trump play outsized roles in influencing beliefs, spreading and cementing misinformation about climate change by levering world and weather events. 
  • The findings show that political affiliation plays the most influential role in determining whether or not a person believes in climate change, with a higher percentage of Republican voters having a strong correlation with climate denial. 
• “During the 2017-2019 study period, the most heavily retweeted post includes one by Trump that questions climate change due to unusually cold weather in the U.S., and another where he casts doubt on a U.N. climate report”