From:
Wiki
Climate change denial, or
global warming denial, is part of
global warming controversy. It involves
denial, dismissal,
unwarranted doubt or
contrarian views about
facts and science about climate change, including the extent to which it is
caused by humans, its
impacts on
nature and
human society, or the potential of
adaptation to global warming by human actions.
[2][3][4] In the global warming controversy, some
deniers do endorse the term, but other often prefer the term
climate change skepticism[3]
whereas scientists think it "inappropriate to allow those who deny
[anthropogenic global warming] to don the mantle of skeptics"; in
effect, the two terms form a continuous, overlapping range of views, and
generally have the same characteristics: both reject, to a greater or
lesser extent, mainstream scientific opinion on climate change.
[5][6]
Climate change 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.
[7] Several
social science studies have analyzed these positions as forms of
denialism.
[5][6]
Campaigning to undermine public trust in climate science has been
described as a "denial machine" of industrial, political and ideological
interests, supported by conservative media and skeptical bloggers in
manufacturing uncertainty about global warming.
[9][10] In the public debate, phrases such as
climate skepticism have frequently been used with the same meaning as
climate denialism.
[11]
The labels are contested: those actively challenging climate science
commonly describe themselves as "skeptics", but many do not comply with
common standards of
scientific skepticism and, regardless of evidence, persistently deny the validity of human caused global warming.
[5]
Although
scientific opinion on climate change is that human activity is extremely likely to be the primary driver of climate change,
[12][13] the
politics of global warming have been affected by climate change denial, hindering efforts to
prevent climate change and
adapt to the warming climate.
[14][15][16] Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where there is none.
[17][18]
The climate change denial industry is most widespread in the
United States, where the official
Senate Environmental Committee is chaired by
James Inhofe,
who famously called climate change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated
on the American people” and claimed to have debunked it in 2015 when he
took a snowball with him and threw it on the Senate floor.
[19] Organised campaigning to undermine public trust in climate science is associated with
conservative economic policies and backed by industrial interests opposed to the regulation of CO
2 emissions.
[20] Climate change denial has been associated with the
fossil fuels lobby, the
Koch brothers, industry advocates and
libertarian think tanks, often in the United States.
[15][21][22][23] More than 90% of papers sceptical on climate change originate from right-wing think tanks.
[24] The total annual income of these climate change counter-movement-organizations is roughly $900 million.
[25] Between 2002 and 2010, nearly $120 million (£77 million) was anonymously donated via the
Donors Trust and
Donors Capital Fund to more than 100 organisations seeking to undermine the public perception of the science on climate change.
[26] 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.
[27] Investigative journalists have revealed internal documents showing that since the late 1970s,
oil companies were aware that
burning oil and gas
could cause climate change and global warming. Despite this evidence,
oil companies organized a climate change denial campaign to disseminate
public disinformation for several decades, leading to comparisons of
this strategy to the organized denial of the hazards of tobacco smoking
by tobacco companies.
[28][29] MORE
