IN THE CONTEXT OF CLIMATE DENIAL RESEARCH THE TERMS “CLIMATE DENIAL“, “SCIENCE DENIAL“, AND “CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL” REFER TO DOUBTING HUMAN CAUSE AND OF OF OUR ABILITY TO CONTROL THE CLIMATE.

1. 2018: Krange, Kaltenborn, &Hultman, Cool dudes in Norway: climate change denial among conservative Norwegian men, Environmental Sociology, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1080/23251042.2018.1488516  In their article ‘Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States’ the authors state: ‘Clearly the extent to which the conservative white male effect on climate change denial exists outside the US is a topic deserving investigation.’ Following this recommendation, we report results from a study in Norway. McCright and Dunlap argue that climate change denial can be understood as an expression of protecting group identity and justifying a societal system that provides desired benefits. Our findings resemble those in the US study. A total of 63 per cent of conservative males in Norway do not believe in anthropogenic climate change, as opposed to 36 per cent among the rest of the population who deny climate change and global warming. Expanding on the US study, we investigate whether conservative males more often hold what we term xenosceptic views, and if that adds to the ‘cool dude-effect’.¹ Multivariate logistic regression models reveal strong effects from a variable measuring ‘xenosceptic cool dudes’. Interpreting xenoscepticism as a rough proxy for right leaning views, climate change denial in Norway seems to merge with broader patterns of right-wing nationalism.
2. 2018: Jeffrey A Harvey, etal, Internet Blogs, Polar Bears, and Climate-Change Denial by Proxy, BioScience, Volume 68, Issue 4, April 2018, Pages 281–287. {Increasing surface temperatures, Arctic sea-ice loss, and other evidence of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are acknowledged by every major scientific organization in the world. However, there is a wide gap between this broad scientific consensus and public opinion. Internet blogs have strongly contributed to this consensus gap by fomenting misunderstandings of AGW causes and consequences. Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) have become a “poster species” for AGW, making them a target of those denying AGW evidence. Here, focusing on Arctic sea ice and polar bears, we show that blogs that deny or downplay AGW disregard the overwhelming scientific evidence of Arctic sea-ice loss and polar bear vulnerability. By denying the impacts of AGW on polar bears, bloggers aim to cast doubt on other established ecological consequences of AGW, aggravating the consensus gap. To counter misinformation and reduce this gap, scientists should directly engage the public in the media and blogosphere}
3. 2018: Nevitt, Mark, and Robert V. Percival. “Could Official Climate Denial Revive the Common Law as a Regulatory Backstop?.” (2018). The Trump Administration is rapidly turning the clock back on climate policy and environmental regulation. Despite overwhelming, peer-reviewed scientific evidence, administration officials eager to promote greater use of fossil fuels are disregarding climate science. This Article argues that this massive and historic deregulation may spawn yet another wave of legal innovation as litigants, including states and their political subdivisions, return to the common law to protect the health of the planet. Prior to the emergence of the major federal environmental laws in the 1970s, the common law of nuisance gave rise to the earliest environmental decisions in U.S. history. In some of these cases the Supreme Court issued injunctions to control significant sources of air and water pollution, but the Court later held that the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act displaced the federal common law of nuisance. This Article argues that official climate denial may yet revive the common law as a regulatory backstop. If EPA reverses its earlier endangerment finding for greenhouse gas emissions, the Clean Air Act no longer would displace the federal common law of nuisance. While expert administrative agencies normally are more competent than the judiciary in fashioning regulatory policy, agencies that deny climate science should expect to face judicial intervention. As described in this Article, such action is consistent with the historic role the judiciary has played when other branches of government failed to prevent significant environmental harm.
4. 2018: Tynkkynen, Veli-Pekka, and Nina Tynkkynen. “Climate Denial Revisited:(Re) contextualising Russian Public Discourse on Climate Change during Putin 2.0.” Europe-Asia Studies(2018): 1-18. In this article we examine Russia’s recent public discourse on climate change, with a special focus on the arguments denying anthropogenic climate change. We scrutinise the ways in which denial arguments presented in the media are tied to the changing Russian political and economic context, especially the increasingly authoritarian turn in governance during President Vladimir Putin’s third term in office (Putin 2.0). We conclude that the Russian discourse on climate change emphasises Russia’s Great Power status, identifying its sovereignty and fossil energy as the basis of this status. This discourse refers to key categories, including Russia’s national identity and the spatial–material characteristics of the Russian state.
5. 2018: Carroll, William, et al. “The Corporate Elite and the Architecture of Climate Change Denial: A Network Analysis of Carbon Capital’s Reach into Civil Society.” Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie (2018). This study employs social network analysis to map the Canadian network of carbon‐capital corporations whose boards interlock with key knowledge‐producing civil society organizations, including think tanks, industry associations, business advocacy organizations, universities, and research institutes. We find a pervasive pattern of carbon‐sector reach into these domains of civil society, forming a single, connected network that is centered in Alberta yet linked to the central‐Canadian corporate elite through hegemonic capitalist organizations, including major financial companies. This structure provides the architecture for a “soft” denial regime that acknowledges climate change while protecting the continued flow of profit to fossil fuel and related companies.
6. 2018: Dahlstrom, Michael Field, and Sonny Rosenthal. “Third-Person Perception of Science Narratives: The Case of Climate Change Denial.” Science Communication 40.3 (2018): 340-365. Science communicators are increasingly recognizing the potential of narratives to reach and influence audiences. However, do audiences recognize and consider this tactic when evaluating how such messages influence themselves and others? This study compares third-person perceptions of persuasive narrative and nonnarrative messages in a climate change context. Results suggest that individuals are aware of the influence of narratives and are able to resist this influence, but this is only when they perceive a message as having negative influence. Otherwise, individuals underestimate the influence of narratives on themselves. These findings add an audience-centered perspective to the current discussions on incorporating narratives within science communication.
7. 2018: Haltinner, Kristin, and Dilshani Sarathchandra. “Climate change skepticism as a psychological coping strategy.” Sociology Compass 12.6 (2018): e12586. This article explores current sociological scholarship on climate skepticism and, drawing on recent literature in social psychology and behavioral science, presents an argument for future research on the relationship between emotion, information aversion, and climate denial. We extrapolate and unite these disconnected bodies of scholarship to argue that strong emotions such as fear may drive climate change skepticism and denial among some adherents. By partnering the scholarship outlined above with advances in research on conspiracy ideation, we argue that climate change skepticism and denial is, at least in some cases, a form of an exaggerated ostrich effect, whereby adherents are so driven to avoid learning about a specific problem; they actively seek to construct an alternative, safer, narrative. Given this predisposition, attempting to challenge such skepticism with information is counterproductive. As such, this paper presents alternative possibilities for communicating research findings on climate change.
8. 2018: Rees, Morien, and Walter Leal Filho. “Disseminating Climate Change: The Role of Museums in Activating the Global Public.” Handbook of Climate Change Communication: Vol. 3. Springer, Cham, 2018. 319-328. In the task of ensuring that governments undertake the measures needed to mitigate the impacts of global warming today and in the future, it is necessary to activate the public worldwide to a much greater degree than has been the case over the last 25 years. The IPCC have published five reports providing the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change. Each summarized for policymakers and the press, to facilitate communication to the public. Given the inertia that characterizes the public’s response, it is legitimate to ask if sufficient emphasis has been placed on the means of communication. Whether, in activating the public, where communication takes place and how it is achieved is of equally importance to what is communicated. Museums as institutions have a number of characteristics, individually and collectively, that offer a unique possibility of disseminating both the local impacts of climate change and placing them in the wider context of the international nature of global warming. Examining storytelling as a means of activating local communities, the paper describes a museum project being developed in the Norwegian arctic and a burgeoning international initiative from museum professionals on three continents that aims to bridge the local global gap. The IPCC report for 2018 offers a window of opportunity to activate the global community. The paper concludes by outlining a possible scenario to achieve this, whereby the museum sector, offering both local museums as arenas for dialogue together with an international infrastructure for global communication, could play a significant role.
9. 2017: Jylhä, Kirsti, and Kahl Hellmer. “Populist attitudes and climate change denial: On the roles of conservative values, anti-egalitarianism, xenophobia, and anti-political establishment attitudes.” The 40th Annual Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Political Psychology. 2017 {Despite the extensive scientific evidence for human induced climate change, many still question or deny it. Previous research has shown that individuals who support right-wing populist parties tend to deny climate change to a higher degree than individuals supporting established parties. However, populism combines different views, and from the current state of knowledge it is unclear if these views uniquely correlate with climate change denial. Importantly, both populist discourses and rejection of climate science tend to include anti-establishment arguments, but it has been questioned if the true motivation behind them indeed lies in anti-establishmentarianism. For example, populism seems to be driven by xenophobic and anti-minority attitudes, and climate change denial has been connected to endorsement of group-based dominance. To improve our understanding of the populism-denial relation, the present study (N = 1588) tested the correlations between climate change denial and views commonly held by right-wing populists. Specifically, we investigated the effects of conservative values, anti-egalitarian attitudes (antifeminism and homophobia), xenophobia, and anti-political establishment attitudes on climate change denial. Positive zero-order correlations were found between all variables. Next, stepwise regression analysis revealed that conservative values, antifeminism, homophobia, and xenophobia have unique effects on denial, but anti-political establishment attitudes do not explain any unique variance in denial above the other included variables. Our results provide important insight about the potential motivations to dispute climate change among populist parties and their voters. Rather than reflecting anti-establishmentarianism per se, climate change denial seems to be driven by endorsement of traditional values and power structures}
10. 2013: Dunlap, Riley E., and Peter J. Jacques. “Climate change denial books and conservative think tanks: Exploring the connection.” American Behavioral Scientist 57.6 (2013): 699-731. {The conservative movement and especially its think tanks play a critical role in denying the reality and significance of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), especially by manufacturing uncertainty over climate science. Books denying AGW are a crucial means of attacking climate science and scientists, and we examine the links between conservative think tanks (CTTs) and 108 climate change denial books published through 2010. We find a strong link, albeit noticeably weaker for the growing number of self-published denial books. We also examine the national origins of the books and the academic backgrounds of their authors or editors, finding that with the help of American CTTs climate change denial has spread to several other nations and that an increasing portion of denial books are produced by individuals with no scientific training. It appears that at least 90% of denial books do not undergo peer review, allowing authors or editors to recycle scientifically unfounded claims that are then amplified by the conservative movement, media, and political elites}
11. 2010: Dunlap, Riley E., and Aaron M. McCright. “14 Climate change denial: sources, actors and strategies.” Routledge handbook of climate change and society (2010): 240. {Climate denialism is an outgrowth of the conservative movement’s environmental skepticism during the Reagan years}
12. 2011: McCright, Aaron M., and Riley E. Dunlap. “The politicization of climate change and polarization in the American public’s views of global warming, 2001–2010.” The Sociological Quarterly 52.2 (2011): 155-194. {We examine political polarization over climate change within the American public by analyzing data from 10 nationally representative Gallup Polls between 2001 and 2010. We find that liberals and Democrats are more likely to report beliefs consistent with the scientific consensus and express personal concern about global warming than are conservatives and Republicans. Further, the effects of educational attainment and self‐reported understanding on global warming beliefs and concern are positive for liberals and Democrats, but are weaker or negative for conservatives and Republicans. Last, significant ideological and partisan polarization has occurred on the issue of climate change over the past decade}
13. 2015: Lewandowsky, Stephan, et al. “Seepage: Climate change denial and its effect on the scientific community.” Global Environmental Change 33 (2015): 1-13. {Vested interests and political agents have long opposed political or regulatory action in response to climate change by appealing to scientific uncertainty. Here we examine the effect of such contrarian talking points on the scientific community itself. We show that although scientists are trained in dealing with uncertainty, there are several psychological reasons why scientists may nevertheless be susceptible to uncertainty-based argumentation, even when scientists recognize those arguments as false and are actively rebutting them. Specifically, we show that prolonged stereotype threat, pluralistic ignorance, and a form of projection (the third-person effect) may cause scientists to take positions that they would be less likely to take in the absence of outspoken public opposition. We illustrate the consequences of seepage from public debate into the scientific process with a case study involving the interpretation of temperature trends from the last 15 years. We offer ways in which the scientific community can detect and avoid such inadvertent seepage}
14. 2013: Elsasser, Shaun W., and Riley E. Dunlap. “Leading voices in the denier choir: Conservative columnists’ dismissal of global warming and denigration of climate science.” American Behavioral Scientist 57.6 (2013): 754-776. {The conservative “echo chamber” is a crucial element of the climate change denial machine. Although social scientists have begun to examine the role of conservative media in the denial campaign, this article reports the first examination of conservative newspaper columnists. Syndicated columnists are very influential because they reach a large audience. We analyze 203 opinion editorials (“op-eds”) written by 80 different columnists published from 2007 to 2010, a period that saw a number of crucial events and policy proposals regarding climate change. We focus on the key topics the columnists address and the skeptical arguments they employ. The overall results reveal a highly dismissive view of climate change and critical stance toward climate science among these influential conservative pundits. They play a crucial role in amplifying the denial machine’s messages to a broad segment of the American public}
15. 2016: Boussalis, Constantine, and Travis G. Coan. “Text-mining the signals of climate change doubt.” Global Environmental Change 36 (2016): 89-100. {Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that the Earth is getting warmer and that the rise in average global temperature is predominantly due to human activity. Yet a significant proportion of the American public, as well as a considerable number of legislators in the U.S. Congress, continue to reject the “consensus view.” While the source of the disagreement is varied, one prominent explanation centres on the activities of a coordinated and well-funded countermovement of climate sceptics. This study contributes to the literature on organized climate scepticism by providing the first systematic overview of conservative think tank sceptical discourse in nearly 15 years. Specifically, we (1) compile the largest corpus of contrarian literature to date, collecting over 16,000 documents from 19 organizations over the period 1998–2013; (2) introduce a methodology to measure key themes in the corpus which scales to the substantial increase in content generated by conservative think tanks over the past decade; and (3) leverage this new methodology to shed light on the relative prevalence of science- and policy-related discussion among conservative think tanks. We find little support for the claim that “the era of science denial is over”—instead, discussion of climate science has generally increased over the sample period}
16. 2013: Farmer, G. Thomas, and John Cook. “Understanding climate change denial.” Climate change science: a modern synthesis. Springer Netherlands, 2013. 445-466. {At its heart, climate denial is the rejection of the scientific consensus that humans are disrupting the climate. Denial of a consensus can be identified by five telltale characteristics: fake experts, cherry picking, logical fallacies, impossible expectations and conspiracy theories. These techniques are observed in the tactics and strategies of the climate denial movement, disseminated by ideological think-tanks, some conservative governments and vested interests through a range of media streams. The key to responding to climate misinformation is to provide alternative narratives that are more compelling than the myths they replace}
17. 2007: Hamilton, Clive. Scorcher: The dirty politics of climate change. Black Inc. {Wiki: Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change is a 2007 book by Clive Hamilton which contends that Australia rather than the United States is the major stumbling block to a more effective Kyoto Protocol. In the final chapter of the book Hamilton argues that the Howard Government has been actively working to destroy the Kyoto Protocol. Scorcher is an updated version of Hamilton’s 2001 book, Running from the Storm}
    Shearer, Christine. Kivalina: a climate change story. Haymarket Books, 2011. {This book looks at the struggle of Kivalina, a small Alaska Native village that filed a legal claim against some of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies for damaging their homeland and creating a false debate around climate change. Academic and journalist Christine Shearer explores the history leading up to the lawsuit, and its relationship to past misinformation campaigns involving lead, asbestos, and tobacco. The book also considers the interconnections between fossil fuels, the global political-economy, and disaster management. Kivalina’s struggle for safe relocation, the book argues, is part of our common struggle to acknowledge and address climate change before it is too late}
18. 2010: McKnight, David. “A change in the climate? The journalism of opinion at News Corporation.” Journalism 11.6 (2010): 693-706. {In 2007 the global media company News Corporation announced that it would become ‘carbon neutral’ and generally endorsed scientific warnings about global warming. Its CEO, Rupert Murdoch, signaled not only that the media group held a corporate view toward the issue of climate change but that its editorial coverage would henceforth change. This article examines the period before this change of direction. From 1997 to 2007 newspapers and television stations owned by News Corporation, based on their editorials, columnists and commentators, largely denied the science of climate change and dismissed those who were concerned about it. While the intensity of commentary and editorials about climate change varied between media outlets owned by News Corporation in the USA, Britain and Australia, its corporate view framed the issue as one of political correctness rather than science. Scientific knowledge was portrayed as an orthodoxy and its own stance, and that of ‘climate sceptics’ as one of courageous dissent}
19. 2009: Barnard, Phoebe. “Climate Change Denialism”, Researchgate Barnard Paper, {How can we make sense of this contradictory information? You could be forgiven if you’re a bit confused. The world in the Internet age is awash with information, and anyone with a blog-site can and does post their own views – right, wrong or somewhere in between. Who knows what they’re talking about? Who’s right?}
20. 2011: McCright, Aaron M., and Riley E. Dunlap. “Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States.” Global environmental change 21.4 (2011): 1163-1172. {We examine whether conservative white males are more likely than are other adults in the U.S. general public to endorse climate change denial. We draw theoretical and analytical guidance from the identity-protective cognition thesis explaining the white male effect and from recent political psychology scholarship documenting the heightened system-justification tendencies of political conservatives. We utilize public opinion data from ten Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010, focusing specifically on five indicators of climate change denial. We find that conservative white males are significantly more likely than are other Americans to endorse denialist views on all five items, and that these differences are even greater for those conservative white males who self-report understanding global warming very well. Furthermore, the results of our multivariate logistic regression models reveal that the conservative white male effect remains significant when controlling for the direct effects of political ideology, race, and gender as well as the effects of nine control variables. We thus conclude that the unique views of conservative white males contribute significantly to the high level of climate change denial in the United States}
21. 2013: Boykoff, Maxwell T. “Public enemy no. 1? Understanding media representations of outlier views on climate change.” American behavioral scientist 57.6 (2013): 796-817. {Outlier voices—particularly those views often dubbed climate “skeptics,” “denialists,” or “contrarians”—have gained prominence and traction in mass media over time through a mix of internal workings such as journalistic norms, institutional values and practices, and external political economic, cultural, and social factors. In this context, the article explores how and why these actors—through varied interventions and actions—garner disproportionate visibility in the public arena via mass media. It also examines how media content producers grapple with ways to represent claims makers, as well as their claims, so that they clarify rather than confuse these critical issues. To the extent that mass media misrepresent and/or gratuitously cover these outlier views, they contribute to ongoing illusory, misleading, and counterproductive debates within the public and policy communities, and poorly serve the collective public. Furthermore, working through mass media outlets, these outlier interventions demonstrate themselves to be (at times deliberately) detrimental to efforts seeking to enlarge rather than constrict the spectrum of possibility for varied forms of climate action}
22. 2013: Washington, Haydn. Climate change denial: Heads in the sand. Routledge, 2013. {Wiki: Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand is a non-fiction book about climate change denial, coauthored by Haydn Washington and John Cook, with a foreword by Naomi Oreskes. Washington had a background in environmental science prior to authoring the work, and Cook was educated in physics and founded the website Skeptical Science which compiles peer-reviewed evidence of global warming. The book was first published in hardcover and paperback formats in 2011 by Earthscan, a division of Routledge. The book presents an in-depth analysis and refutation of climate change denial, going over several arguments point-by-point and disproving them with peer-reviewed evidence from the scientific consensus for climate change. The authors assert that those denying climate change engage in tactics including cherry picking data purported to support their specific viewpoints, and attacking the integrity of climate scientists. They use social science theory to examine the phenomenon of climate change denial in the wider public, and call this phenomenon a form of pathology}
23. 2013: Goldenberg, Suzanne. “Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks.” The Guardian 14 (2013): 681-694. {Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned. The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutralscientific fact to a highly polarizing “wedge issue” for hardcore conservatives}
24. 2012: Goeminne, Gert. “Lost in translation: Climate denial and the return of the political.” Global Environmental Politics 12.2 (2012): 1-8. {In this deliberately provocative commentary, I interrogate the relationship between two critical perspectives on the one-sided scientific framing of the climate issue: a constructivist interpretation of climate modeling on the one hand and the debate in political theory on the depoliticization of the public sphere on the other. I argue how they could be tied together in order to provide an enriched understanding of climate denial as a symptom rather than a cause of dysfunctional climate politics. It is my claim that in attempting to translate the universal validity of scientific knowledge into the contours of an inclusive, consensual negotiation model, the constitutive role of exclusion in the emergence of scientific objectivity is overlooked}
25. 2015: Lewandowsky, Stephan, et al. “Recurrent fury: Conspiratorial discourse in the blogosphere triggered by research on the role of conspiracist ideation in climate denial.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology 3.1 (2015): 142-178. {A growing body of evidence has implicated conspiracist ideation in the rejection of scientific propositions. Internet blogs in particular have become the staging ground for conspiracy theories that challenge the link between HIV and AIDS, the benefits of vaccinations, or the reality of climate change. A recent study involving visitors to climate blogs found that conspiracist ideation was associated with the rejection of climate science and other scientific propositions such as the link between lung cancer and smoking, and between HIV and AIDS. That article stimulated considerable discursive activity in the climate blogosphere—i.e., the numerous blogs dedicated to climate “skepticism”—that was critical of the study. The blogosphere discourse was ideally suited for analysis because its focus was clearly circumscribed, it had a well-defined onset, and it largely discontinued after several months. We identify and classify the hypotheses that questioned the validity of the paper’s conclusions using well-established criteria for conspiracist ideation. In two behavioral studies involving naive participants we show that those criteria and classifications were reconstructed in a blind test. Our findings extend a growing body of literature that has examined the important, but not always constructive, role of the blogosphere in public and scientific discourse}
26. 2001: Stoll-Kleemann, Susanne, Tim O’Riordan, and Carlo C. Jaeger. “The psychology of denial concerning climate mitigation measures: evidence from Swiss focus groups.” Global environmental change 11.2 (2001): 107-117. {Various studies of public opinion regarding the causes and consequences of climate change reveal both a deep reservoir of concern, yet also a muddle over causes, consequences and appropriate policy measures for mitigation. The technique adopted here, namely integrated assessment (IA) focus groups, in which groups of randomly selected individuals in Switzerland looked at models of possible consequences of climate change and questioned specialists as to their accuracy and meaning, revealed a rich assembly of reactions. Respondents were alarmed about the consequences of high-energy futures, and mollified by images of low-energy futures. Yet they also erected a series of psychological barriers to justify why they should not act either individually or through collective institutions to mitigate climate change. From the viewpoint of changing their lifestyles of material comfort and high-energy dependence, they regarded the consequences of possible behavioural shift arising from the need to meet mitigation measures as more daunting. To overcome the dissonance created in their minds they created a number of socio-psychological denial mechanisms. Such mechanisms heightened the costs of shifting away from comfortable lifestyles, set blame on the inaction of others, including governments, and emphasised doubts regarding the immediacy of personal action when the effects of climate change seemed uncertain and far away. These findings suggest that more attention needs to be given to the social and psychological motivations as to why individuals erect barriers to their personal commitment to climate change mitigation, even when professing anxiety over climate futures. Prolonged and progressive packages of information tailored to cultural models or organised belief patterns, coupled to greater community based policy incentives may help to widen the basis of personal and moral responsibility}
27. 2013: Lewandowsky, Stephan, Klaus Oberauer, and Gilles E. Gignac. “NASA faked the moon landing—therefore, (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science.” Psychological science 24.5 (2013): 622-633. {Although nearly all domain experts agree that carbon dioxide emissions are altering the world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a platform for denial of climate change, and bloggers have taken a prominent role in questioning climate science. We report a survey of climate-blog visitors to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science. Our findings parallel those of previous work and show that endorsement of free-market economics predicted rejection of climate science. Endorsement of free markets also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that, above and beyond endorsement of free markets, endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the Federal Bureau of Investigation killed Martin Luther King, Jr.) predicted rejection of climate science as well as other scientific findings. Our results provide empirical support for previous suggestions that conspiratorial thinking contributes to the rejection of science. Acceptance of science, by contrast, was strongly associated with the perception of a consensus among scientists}
28. 2011: Gifford, Robert. “The dragons of inaction: psychological barriers that limit climate change mitigation and adaptation.” American Psychologist 66.4 (2011): 290. {Most people think climate change and sustainability are important problems, but too few global citizens engaged in high-greenhouse-gas-emitting behavior are engaged in enough mitigating behavior to stem the increasing flow of greenhouse gases and other environmental problems. Why is that? Structural barriers such as a climate-averse infrastructure are part of the answer, but psychological barriers also impede behavioral choices that would facilitate mitigation, adaptation, and environmental sustainability. Although many individuals are engaged in some ameliorative action, most could do more, but they are hindered by seven categories of psychological barriers, or “dragons of inaction”: limited cognition about the problem, ideological worldviews that tend to preclude pro-environmental attitudes and behavior, comparisons with key other people, sunk costs and behavioral momentum, discredence toward experts and authorities, perceived risks of change, and positive but inadequate behavior change. Structural barriers must be removed wherever possible, but this is unlikely to be sufficient. Psychologists must work with other scientists, technical experts, and policymakers to help citizens overcome these psychological barriers}
29. 2011: Hoffman, Andrew J. “Talking past each other? Cultural framing of skeptical and convinced logics in the climate change debate.” Organization & Environment 24.1 (2011): 3-33. {This article analyzes the extent to which two institutional logics around climate change—the climate change “convinced” and the climate change “skeptical” logics—are truly competing or talking past each other in a way that can be described as a logic schism. Drawing on the concept of framing from social movement theory, it uses qualitative field observations from the largest climate deniers conference in the United States and a data set of almost 800 op-eds from major news outlets over a 2-year period to examine how convinced and skeptical arguments of opposing logics employ frames and issue categories to make arguments about climate change. This article finds that the two logics are engaging in different debates on similar issues with the former focusing on solutions while the latter debates the definition of the problem. It concludes that the debate appears to be reaching a level of polarization where one might begin to question whether meaningful dialogue and problem solving has become unavailable to participants. The implications of such a logic schism is a shift from an integrative debate focused on addressing interests, to a distributive battle over concessionary agreements with each side pursuing its goals by demonizing the other. Avoiding such an outcome requires the activation of, as yet, dormant “broker” categories (technology, religion, and national security), the redefinition of existing ones (science, economics, risk, ideology), and the engagement of effective “climate brokers” to deliver them}
30. 2005: Antilla, Liisa. “Climate of scepticism: US newspaper coverage of the science of climate change.” Global environmental change 15.4 (2005): 338-352. {This two-part study integrates a quantitative review of one year of US newspaper coverage of climate science with a qualitative, comparative analysis of media-created themes and frames using a social constructivist approach. In addition to an examination of newspaper articles, this paper includes a reflexive comparison with attendant wire stories and scientific texts. Special attention is given to articles constructed with and framed by rhetoric emphasising uncertainty, controversy, and climate scepticism}
31. 2007: Boykoff, Maxwell T. “Flogging a dead norm? Newspaper coverage of anthropogenic climate change in the United States and United Kingdom from 2003 to 2006.” Area 39.4 (2007): 470-481. {The journalistic norm of ‘balanced’ reporting (giving roughly equal coverage to both sides in any significant dispute) is recognised as both useful and problematic in communicating emerging scientific consensus on human attribution for global climate change. Analysis of the practice of this norm in United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) newspaper coverage of climate science between 2003 and 2006 shows a significant divergence from scientific consensus in the US in 2003–4, followed by a decline in 2005–6, but no major divergence in UK reporting. These findings inform ongoing considerations about the spatially‐differentiated media terms and conditions through which current and future climate policy is negotiated and implemented}
32. 2012: MacKay, Brad, and Iain Munro. “Information warfare and new organizational landscapes: An inquiry into the ExxonMobil–Greenpeace dispute over climate change.” Organization Studies 33.11 (2012): 1507-1536. {A defining characteristic of the emergence of new organizational landscapes is that information is not just being used as a tool by organizations, as it is more usually understood, but also as a weapon in a ‘war of position’. As organizations seek to influence public perception over emotive issues such as climate change, conflict at the ideational level can give rise to information warfare campaigns. This concerns the creation and deployment of often ideologically infused ideas through information networks to promote an organization’s interests over those of its adversaries. In this article, we analyse the ways in which ExxonMobil and Greenpeace employ distinctive informational tactics against a range of diverse targets in their dispute over the climate change debate. The purpose of this article is to advance the neo-Gramscian perspective on social movement organizations as a framework for understanding such behaviour. We argue that information warfare is likely to become common as corporations and non-governmental organizations are increasingly sensitive to their informational environment as a source of both opportunity and possible conflict}
33. 2002: Van den Hove, Sybille, Marc Le Menestrel, and Henri-Claude De Bettignies. “The oil industry and climate change: strategies and ethical dilemmas.” Climate Policy 2.1 (2002): 3-18. {This paper explores the different climate change strategies chosen by three major multinational oil corporations: ExxonMobil, TotalFinaElf and BP Amoco. They are referred to, as the ‘fight against emission constraints,’ ‘wait and see,’ and ‘proactive’ strategies, respectively. The justifications given to support these strategies are identified. They cover the business, scientific, political, economic, technological and social dimensions. In a business ethics framework, the issue of climate change brings forth an ethical dilemma for the oil industry, in the form of a tension between profits and CO2 emissions. The strategies are analysed as three attitudes towards this dilemma: (i) placing priority on the business consequences while weakening the perception that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are causing climate change; (ii) avoiding responsibility; and (iii) placing priority on the need for a modification of the business process while limiting the negative effect in terms of business consequences. In conclusion, we propose that beyond the ethical issues proper to climate change itself, additional ethical issues are raised if society at large is instrumentalised by an industry in its search for profit. Publicly gauging and valorising the ethical commitment of a corporation appear as ways of inducing more collaborative and proactive attitudes by business actors}
34. 2007: Begley, Sharon, et al. “The truth about denial.” Newsweek 150.7 (2007): 20-27. {Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate’s Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with “the overwhelming science out there, the deniers’ days were numbered.” As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting climate science}
35. 2009: Anderson, Alison. “Media, politics and climate change: Towards a new research agenda.” Sociology compass 3.2 (2009): 166-182. {Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and the media have been demonstrated to play a key role in shaping public perceptions and policy agendas. Journalists are faced with multiple challenges in covering this complex field. This article provides an overview of existing research on the media framing of climate change, highlighting major research themes and assessing future potential research developments. It argues that analysis of the reporting of climate science must be placed in the wider context of the growing concentration and globalization of news media ownership, and an increasingly ‘promotional culture’, highlighted by the rapid rise of the public relations industry in recent years and claims‐makers who employ increasingly sophisticated media strategies. Future research will need to examine in‐depth the targeting of media by a range of actors, as well as unravel complex information flows across countries as media increasingly converge}
36. 2009: Adam, David. “ExxonMobil continuing to fund climate sceptic groups, records show.” The Guardian 1 (2009). {The world’s largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows. Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008. These include the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas, which received $75,000 (£45,500), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC, which received $50,000}
37. 2014: Brulle, Robert J. “Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of US climate change counter-movement organizations.” Climatic Change 122.4 (2014): 681-694. {This paper conducts an analysis of the financial resource mobilization of the organizations that make up the climate change counter-movement (CCCM) in the United States. Utilizing IRS data, total annual income is compiled for a sample of CCCM organizations (including advocacy organizations, think tanks, and trade associations). These data are coupled with IRS data on philanthropic foundation funding of these CCCM organizations contained in the Foundation Center’s data base. This results in a data sample that contains financial information for the time period 2003 to 2010 on the annual income of 91 CCCM organizations funded by 140 different foundations. An examination of these data shows that these 91 CCCM organizations have an annual income of just over $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million in identifiable foundation support. The overwhelming majority of the philanthropic support comes from conservative foundations. Additionally, there is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of CCCM funding through the use of donor directed philanthropies}
38. 2015: Douglas, Karen M., and Robbie M. Sutton. “Climate change: Why the conspiracy theories are dangerous.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 71.2 (2015): 98-106. {Uncertainty surrounds the public understanding of climate change and provides fertile ground for conspiracy theories. Typically, such conspiracy theories assert that climate scientists and politicians are distorting or hijacking the science to suit their own purposes. Climate change conspiracy theories resemble other conspiracy theories in some respects, but in others they appear to be quite different. For example, climate change conspiracy theories appear to be motivated by the desire to deny or minimize an unwelcome and threatening conclusion. They also appear to be more contentious than other types of conspiracy theories. Perhaps to an unparalleled extent, people on both sides of the issue champion climate change conspiracy theories. Finally, more than other conspiracy theories, those concerning climate change appear to be more politically loaded, dividing opinion across the left-right continuum. Some empirical evidence suggests that climate change conspiracy theories may be harmful, steering people away from environmentally friendly initiatives. They therefore present a significant challenge for governments and environmental organizations that are attempting to convince people to take action against global warming}
39. 2012: Hamilton, Clive. “Theories of climate change.” Australian Journal of Political Science 47.4 (2012): 721-729. {On the face of it, the climate crisis lends itself to a Marxist analysis, and Max Koch duly
    interprets it as a stage in the development of capitalism. We see burgeoning greenhouse gas emissions due to relentless accumulation of capital, a powerful lobby protecting its interests at home and exporting its dirty business to poor countries, and governments placing the interests of corporations before those of the vulnerable and powerless. Above all, around the world the response to the existential threat posed by a warming globe has always been to give
    priority to economic growth, the conditio sine qua non for continued capital accumulation. The natural environment becomes no more than the means to the end of capital accumulation}
40. 2011: Norgaard, Kari. “Climate denial: Emotion, psychology, culture and political economy.” Oxford handbook on climate change and society (2011): 399-413. {From Wikipedia: To investigate the lack of response in Western societies to the implications of global warming, Norgaard collected ethnographic data and took interviews in a rural community in west Norway during the winter of 2000–2001 when unusually warm conditions damaged the skiing industry and prevented ice fishing. Both local and national media linked the problems to global warming, and while the public treated this as common knowledge, they failed to demand a political response or change their own fuel usage. She investigated described this form of denial on various levels. The conventional information deficit model explained opposition or indifference by assuming that the public are ill-informed or misinformed, but in Norway a well informed public showed declining interest in the issue. Her interviews revealed that their response to an apparently insuperable problem was comparable to the condition called psychic numbing. Adopting Eviatar Zerubavel’s concept of socially organized denial, she saw this as a collective form of what Stanley Cohen had called implicatory denial}
41. 2015: Stoknes, Per Espen. What we think about when we try not to think about global warming. Toward a new psychology of climate action. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015. {The more facts that pile up about global warming, the greater the resistance to them grows, making it harder to enact measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare communities for the inevitable change ahead. It is a catch-22 that starts, says psychologist and economist Per Espen Stoknes, from an inadequate understanding of the way most humans think, act, and live in the world around them. With dozens of examples—from the private sector to government agencies—Stoknes shows how to retell the story of climate change and, at the same time, create positive, meaningful actions that can be supported even by deniers. In What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming, Stoknes not only masterfully identifies the five main psychological barriers to climate action, but addresses them with five strategies for how to talk about global warming in a way that creates action and solutions, not further inaction and despair.
42. 2001: Marshall, George. “Denial and the psychology of climate apathy.” The Ecologist (2001): 46-68. {Most of us recognize that climate change is real yet we do nothing to stop it. What is the psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall’s search for the answers brings him face to face with Nobel Prize-winning psychologists and Texas Tea Party activists; the world’s leading climate scientists and those who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovers is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake}
43. 2011: Weber, Elke U., and Paul C. Stern. “Public understanding of climate change in the United States.” American Psychologist66.4 (2011): 315. {This article considers scientific and public understandings of climate change and addresses the following question: Why is it that while scientific evidence has accumulated to document global climate change and scientific opinion has solidified about its existence and causes, U.S. public opinion has not and has instead become more polarized? Our review supports a constructivist account of human judgment. Public understanding is affected by the inherent difficulty of understanding climate change, the mismatch between people’s usual modes of understanding and the task, and, particularly in the United States, a continuing societal struggle to shape the frames and mental models people use to understand the phenomena. We conclude by discussing ways in which psychology can help to improve public understanding of climate change and link a better understanding to action}
44. SEE ALSO: [A DENIALISM PANDEMIC]

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