No sooner had anthropogenic global warming (AGW) been placed on the public agenda, perhaps most effectively by James Hansen’s 1988 congressional testimony, than an organized campaign to deny its reality and significance was launched. The early campaign was centered in corporate America, reflected by the Global Climate Coalition, but from the outset the conservative movement was heavily involved (McCright & Dunlap, 2000). The formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 and the emergence of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from the UN’s 1992 “Earth Summit” in Rio generated fears of international action to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels use, fears crystallized by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Consequently, corporate America (especially fossil fuels corporations worried about restrictions on their products) and the U.S. conservative movement (for which opposition to governmental regulations is foundational) joined forces in attacking the scientific evidence for AGW and thus the necessity of reducing carbon emissions—the goal of the Kyoto Protocol.

Both industry and the conservative movement learned during the Reagan administration that frontal attacks on environmental regulations could create a backlash among the public (Dunlap, 1987). Consequently, they gradually shifted to another strategy, promoting “environmental skepticism.” This strategy challenges the scientific evidence for environmental problems and therefore the need for regulations to protect environmental quality (Jacques, 2006; Jacques, Dunlap, & Freeman, 2008). Their major tactic was and continues to be manufacturing uncertainty (Michaels, 2008; Oreskes & Conway, 2010), constantly asserting that the evidence is not sufficient to warrant regulatory action. Historically these efforts focused on specific problems such as secondhand smoke, acid rain, and ozone depletion, but in the case of AGW they have ballooned into a full-scale assault on the multifaceted field of climate science, the IPCC, scientific organizations endorsing AGW, and even individual scientists (Powell, 2011; Weart, 2011).

With scientific evidence for AGW growing stronger and public awareness of global warming mounting (Nisbet & Meyers, 2007), in the late 1990s portions of corporate America—including some fossil fuels corporations—expressed acceptance both of the reality of AGW and necessity of reducing carbon emissions. Several corporations withdrew from the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), gradually leading to its demise in 2002, and it appeared that industry-funded attacks on the scientific evidence supporting AGW were subsiding (Dunlap & McCright, 2011). However, the conservative movement seemed dismayed by the corporate “sellout” and stepped up its already substantial efforts to deny the reality of climate change by attacking climate science and scientists (McCright & Dunlap, 2000, 2003). This transition is symbolized by the Cooler Heads Coalition, a coalition largely of conservative think tanks (CTTs) centered in the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), emerging to fill the void created by the GCC. Similarly, the Heartland Institute, a small regional think tank in the 1990s, emerged as a leading force in climate change denial in the past decade (Pooley, 2010).

It now appears that CTTs such as CEI, the Heartland Institute, the CATO Institute, and the Marshall Institute are playing an ever more important role in efforts to deny AGW by attacking climate science. However, it must be noted that besides helping fund these think tanks, many corporations maintain ambivalent positions concerning the necessity of reducing carbon emissions (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2012). Furthermore, major corporate associations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute continue to strongly oppose policies to reduce carbon emissions (Pooley, 2010). Still, although corporations can bring their enormous resources to bear in lobbying against legislation, the conservative movement (especially its think tanks) often takes the lead in manufacturing uncertainty over climate science. Indeed, CTTs offer the ideal vehicle for undermining the credibility of climate science and attacking climate scientists.

CTTs have long been recognized as the crucial organizational base of the conservative movement, functioning as core “social movement organizations” (Jacques et al., 2008). Typically treated by media as credible sources of objective information, CTTs have achieved the status of an “alternate academia,” and it is common to see their representatives interviewed along with or in lieu of leading academics and treated as independent experts on policy-relevant issues. They employ both in-house and commissioned personnel to produce a vast array of print material (from op-eds to policy briefs to magazine articles to books) as well as make media appearances, provide congressional testimony, give speeches, and so on to promote conservative positions on a wide range of policy issues including environmental protection (McCright & Dunlap, 2000, 2003). CTTs have been credited with having a major impact on U.S. politics and policy making (e.g., Stefanic & Delgado, 1996), influencing such aspects of American life as the conservative tilt of our judicial system (Teles, 2007), tax policies resulting in escalating inequality (Hacker & Pierson, 2007), and the fundamental framing of political debate (Smith, 2007).

It is little wonder then that CTTs have become central actors in climate change policy debates, especially by promoting denial of the reality and significance of AGW and thus the necessity of carbon emission reductions (Dunlap & McCright, 2011; Hoggan, 2009; Lahsen, 2008; McCright & Dunlap, 2000, 2003; Oreskes & Conway, 2010; Powell, 2011). The purpose of this article is to examine in detail one key tool CTTs use to sow skepticism toward AGW throughout the larger society: sponsoring books espousing climate change denial, including those by the small number of contrarian scientists who challenge mainstream climate science.

The present study extends our earlier work by examining books espousing climate change denial per se published through 2010, including some examined in the prior study since they represent examples of environmental skepticism. Besides focusing on book connections to CTTs, we also examine the educational credentials and national backgrounds of their authors or editors. Given that climate change denial has become widespread within the United States and to some degree internationally, we pay particular attention to the role of CTTs in diffusing a skeptical view of climate change and climate science to a wider audience both within the United States and internationally.

In part this expectation is based on prior experience. In an earlier study of environmental skepticism writ large ( Jacques et al., 2008 ), we examined 141 books espousing skepticism toward the scientific evidence for environmental problems of all types (including global warming) published through 2005, looking for evidence of linkages to CTTs. We found that 130, or 92%, of the books were linked to a CTT, either via publication by a CTT press or a verifiable connection between the author or editor and a CTT, or both. These links to highly influential and generally well-heeled CTTs challenge a common theme of the books—namely, that the authors or editors are little Davids battling the Goliath of environmental science.

Although just one of many forms of media employed by CTTs, books are especially important for reaching the conservative movement’s core constituency, wider segments of the public, and critical sectors of society such as corporate, political, and media leaders. Books confer a sense of legitimacy on their authors and provide them an effective tool for combating the findings of climate scientists that are published primarily in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals—at least within the public and policy (as opposed to scientific) arenas. Authors of successful books critiquing climate science often come to be viewed as “climate experts,” regardless of their academic backgrounds or scientific credentials, and despite the fact that their books are seldom peer reviewed. They are interviewed on TV and radio, quoted by newspaper columnists, and cited by sympathetic politicians and corporate figures. Their books are frequently carried by major bookstore chains, where they are seen (even if not purchased) by a wide segment of the public, many receive enormous publicity on CTT websites and from conservative and skeptical bloggers, and some are carried by the Conservative Book Club. In short, books are a potent means for diffusing skepticism concerning AGW and the need to reduce carbon emissions. Given the critical role of CTTs in challenging climate science and policy making, and their proclivity for using books to promote their causes, we expect to find a strong link between CTTs and books espousing climate change denial.

In addition to examining book links with CTTs—as done in our prior study—and location of lead author, we coded date of publication, the type of publisher employed, and information on the academic credentials (degrees and fields of study) of authors or editors. Our overall goal is to provide a good sense of the sources of these volumes—who is writing them and who is publishing them—paying special attention to the role of CTTs in the process. In the following sections we describe our coding decisions and thereby clarify information presented for each book in the appendix .

We limit our analysis to first-edition books, ignoring the small number of second-edition volumes that came out in only slightly revised form. 2 The books are listed in the appendix (along with selected information we will shortly describe), grouped by their country of origin as determined via the lead author’s or editor’s apparent place of residence, and then arranged alphabetically by lead author or editor.

Our data set consists of the population of English-language books assigned an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) that espouse various forms of climate change denial. 1 These books reject evidence that global warming is occurring, that human actions are the predominant cause of global warming, and/or that global warming will have negative impacts on human and natural systems. These arguments have been labeled trend, attribution, and impact denial ( Rahmstorf, 2004 ). Books were included only if they take one or more of these positions challenging climate science, all of which are used to reject the necessity of carbon emission reductions. We located 108 books espousing one or more of these versions of climate change denial published through 2010, employing searches via online book stores, bibliographies in denial books, references in articles written by climate change skeptics, and several skeptic blogs that promote denial literature. Climate change denial books, especially those that were published by obscure presses or were self-published, can be difficult to locate, and we have possibly missed a few. However, we are confident that the 108 we analyze represent virtually all denial books in English, allowing us to generalize our findings with confidence.

Results

We begin by charting the publication of these books over time, documenting the recent rapid increase in their numbers, and then highlight a significant new development—the growth of self-published books, often by laypersons denying AGW. We then examine the connections between CTTs and the books, noting how this connection differs for books issued by publishing houses and those that are self-published. We next examine the national origins of the books, showing how production of climate change denial volumes has spread from the United States to several other nations as denial has diffused internationally, noting the role of CTTs in this process. Then we turn to the academic and scientific credentials of the authors or editors of the books, highlighting trends over time and variation across nations. We end by commenting on how the publishing sources used by the denial authors enables most of them to avoid peer review.

Trends Over Time As apparent in Figure 1, the first denial volume, Sherwood Idso’s Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe,3 appeared in 1982, well before AGW had achieved a prominent place on the nation’s agenda. Highlighting the benefits of carbon dioxide, Idso took issue with early climate science that suggested increasing levels of carbon dioxide could produce deleterious effects. The remaining 107 books began appearing in 1989, the year after AGW became a highly visible issue in the United States and the IPCC was established, with 4 coming out that year. They were followed by 19 denial books published in the 1990s, 13 of them in the last half of that decade, reflecting a relatively slow but steady growth in their rate of publication. Another 15 appeared during the first half of the next decade, followed by a veritable explosion of 54 in the second half (especially 2007 to 2009), making a total of 69 from 2000 to 2009. Another 15 came out in 2010, yielding the total of 108 we are examining. Download Open in new tab Download in PowerPoint Many factors influence the writing and timing of books, and we can only speculate on the trend we have just described. There is a slow growth in the number of books appearing before the December 1997 meeting on the Kyoto Protocol,4 then a relatively stable period of modest production (from one to five books a year) for the following decade, followed by the very rapid increase in the number of denial books per year beginning in 2007. There are several factors that likely stimulated the accelerated production of denial books starting in 2007: The release of Al Gore’s (2006)An Inconvenient Truth in both video and book form the prior year and the enormous publicity it received, culminating in the video receiving the 2007 Academy Award for best documentary; Gore and the IPCC receiving the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize; publication of the IPCC’s fourth Assessment Report claiming “unequivocal” evidence of global warming, and attributing it primarily to increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations; consideration of climate change legislation in Congress, particularly the Warner-Lieberman Bill in the Senate and then the Waxman-Markey Bill in the House; and a notable rise in public concern about global warming (Brulle, Carmichael, & Jenkins, 2012). The rising salience of global warming in the eyes of the public and the growing pressure for ameliorative policy action stimulated those skeptical of AGW and opposed to carbon emission reduction policies to step up their efforts to deny the reality and seriousness of AGW. One manifestation of this increased sense of urgency is the accelerating appearance of books critiquing climate science, attacking Gore and climate scientists, and arguing against the need for carbon emission reductions. Other manifestations include conservative elites and media becoming major vehicles for climate change denial, making it a virtual litmus test for Republican political candidates and adding it to the “culture wars” (joining God, gays, guns, and abortion) in the eyes of conservative laypeople—particularly those attracted to the Tea Party (Hoffman, 2012; Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, & Hmielowski, 2011; McCright & Dunlap, 2011). Such diffusion of climate change denial from the core sectors of the conservative movement, especially think tanks, is reflected in an interesting development concerning the denial books: a rapid growth in self-published volumes.5 Specifically, 33 of the books under examination were published by individuals on their own or via a “vanity press,” but 30 of them have appeared since 2000—with 26 coming out between 2007 and 2010! This development has influenced the relationship between denial books and CTTs, as we see next.

Book Ties With Conservative Think Tanks Our examination of the links between the denial books and CTTs follows the procedure we used in our prior study of environmental skepticism (Jacques et al., 2008). Specifically, links were established in one of two ways: The author or editor was affiliated with a CTT or the book was published (or copublished) by a CTT press (often both). Author or editor affiliations with CTTs had to be empirically verifiable (typically from the CTT websites, where they were listed as board members, advisors, experts, etc.) and were not inferred. In choosing to err on the side of caution, we have possibly missed a few affiliations. Table 1 shows the number of denial books linked to CTTs by decade (2000–2010 covers 11 years), as well by whether or not they were issued by a publisher or were self-published. To begin with, in the bottom of the third column we see that across all years 78 of the total 108 volumes, or 72%, have a verifiable link with a CTT. Although reflecting a strong link between CTTs and the denial volumes, this is noticeably lower than the 92% of books espousing environmental skepticism (which, again, includes some of the same books) published through 2005 found to have such a link in our prior study. However, the primary reasons for the lower percentage of climate change denial books being linked to CTTs are suggested by the trends over time as well as a comparison of the links for self-published books versus those issued by publishing houses. First, in the third column we can see that 100% of the denial books published in the 1980s and 95% published in the 1990s are linked to CTTs, whereas this is true of “only” 65% of those published since 2000. Second, the large decline in the percentage of CTT links since 2000 is primarily the result of the preponderance of self-published books appearing over the 11 years, as only one third of the 30 self-published books coming out since 2000 are linked to a CTT. In contrast, 83% of the books from publishing houses since 2000 have links to CTTs. More generally, in the bottom row we see that of the 75 denial books issued by a publishing house, 87% are linked to a CTT, whereas of the 33 self-published denial books, only 39% have such a link. Table 1. Conservative Think Tank Connections of Climate Change Denial Books—With Publishers, Self-Published, and Total—by Decade. View larger version In recent years production of climate change denial books has “diffused” from CTTs to a broader segment of the conservative movement, just as endorsement of climate change denial has spread throughout most of the conservative sector of the public (McCright & Dunlap, 2011). Although the link between denial books issued by publishing houses and CTT presses (87%) is nearly as strong as the overall link found in our prior study of books espousing environmental skepticism, the link is much weaker for self-published denial books. This reflects the fact that many of the self-published books are written by laypeople, often without any scientific background whatsoever, who are clearly quite conservative and have presumably adopted climate change denial because it has become a core tenet of conservatism and is promoted by conservative media and elites. Furthermore, it should be noted that nearly all of the authors or editors of the 108 books endorse a conservative ideology, confirming the strong link between conservatism and promotion of climate change denial emphasized by analysts of the denial campaign (Dunlap & McCright, 2011; Oreskes & Conway, 2010). Also, 17 of the 75 books issued by a publishing house, including the numerous CTT presses, are published by overtly conservative presses or conservative religious presses (as noted in the appendix), additional evidence of the strong link between conservatism and climate change denial. Social movement organizations attempt to diffuse their views, both within the movement as well as throughout the larger society (Strang & Soule, 1998). As the core organizations of the conservative movement, CTTs have obviously been effective in spreading climate change denial throughout the movement, helped of course by conservative media and politicians, various Astroturf campaigns (that they helped establish), the Tea Party, and other elements of what has been termed the climate change “denial machine” (Dunlap & McCright, 2011). As noted above, one manifestation is the increasing number of self-published books by conservative individuals not directly linked to a CTT. The fact that these authors typically cite (and often rely heavily on) prior books with links to CTTs illustrates this successful diffusion. There should be no doubt as to which set of books is most influential. At major bookstores you are likely to find titles like Red Hot Lies by Christopher Horner of the CEI, Shattered Consensus by Patrick Michaels of the CATO Institute, or Unstoppable Global Warming by Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy Project and Dennis Avery of the Hudson Institute, titles also likely to be carried by the Conservative Book Club. On average, the books affiliated with CTTs receive far more publicity (including media appearances for their authors), sell much better, and thus reach larger audiences than do those that are self-published. In addition, individuals affiliated with CTTs are especially likely to produce multiple denial volumes—most notably Fred Singer with six and Patrick Michaels with five. In fact, of the 15 individuals who have published two or more books, 14 are affiliated with CTTs. It is therefore clear that CTTs have played a central role in the explosion of books promoting climate change denial. Indeed, the CTTs that have played particularly prominent roles in attacking climate science in various ways are especially likely to publish (or copublish) the denial books, with the Cato Institute publishing five, the Heartland Institute publishing four, and the CEI, the Marshall Institute, the Hoover Institution, and the U.K. Institute for Economic Affairs each publishing three. These same CTTs are of course linked to far more of the titles via author or editor affiliations.

National Origins of Books The denial of climate change has also diffused geographically, as in the past several years vigorous denial campaigns have developed in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia (Hamilton, 2007; Hoggan, 2009; Monbiot, 2007), and—to a lesser degree—in a number of other nations (Dunlap & McCright, 2011). This diffusion has been stimulated in part by the direct efforts of U.S.-based CTTs, which have sent representatives including contrarian scientists Fred Singer and Patrick Michaels to other nations to promote climate change denial and to network with other members of the denial community.6 These efforts have succeeded particularly well in nations that have a recent history of staunch conservative governments, influential CTTs, and a strong fossil fuels sector—as do Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, along with the United States. The results of the successful geographical diffusion of climate change denial are apparent in Table 2 and the appendix. The latter shows that 19 of the denial books have been authored (or in one case edited) by individuals residing in the United Kingdom, followed by 7 from Canada and 6 from Australia. Other nations from which these English-only books have sprung include Denmark, France, and Sweden, with two each, and the Czech Republic, Germany, New Zealand, and the Netherlands, with one each.7 The results in Table 2 portray the pattern of diffusion by decade. In the 1980s, 80% of the denial books originated in the United States, and the United Kingdom was the only other nation with a single volume (contributing 20% of the small total of five). In the 1990s, the United States contributed 63% of the denial books, followed by the United Kingdom with 21%, whereas the other nine nations contributed 16%. Since 2000, 60% of the denial books have come from the United States, 17% from the United Kingdom, and 24% from the remaining nine nations. That 4 of every 10 denial books since 2000 have been produced by authors or editors outside of the United States is evidence of the success of the U.S. conservative movement in helping diffuse denial internationally. Table 2. Climate Change Denial Books by Nation by Decade and for All Years. View larger version The role of CTTs in diffusing climate change denial internationally is shown in Table 3. Here we see that (because of the recent growth of self-published denial books in the United States) 65% of all denial books in the United States have a link with a CTT, but the figure is much higher in the other nations. In fact, 79% of the books from the United Kingdom are connected to CTTs, and 87% of the books from the various other nations are connected to CTTs. Thus, the pattern of strong connections between climate change denial books coming out of other nations (the large majority of which were published since 2000) comes close to the earlier situation in the United States where all 4 of the denial books published in the 1980s are linked to CTTs, and 11 of 12 published in the 1990s have such a link, making 94% of the early (prior to 2000) U.S. books having a CTT connection. It is not surprising that all eight of the denial books with non-U.S. authors or editors published prior to 2000 are connected to a CTT. Table 3. Conservative Think Tank Connections of Climate Change Denial Books by Nation and for All Books. View larger version Although there is considerable variation in the strength of the conservative movement across the nations being examined, especially in terms of support among the general public, as well as in the popularity and ease of putting out self-published books, it will nonetheless be interesting to see if the production of climate change denial books diffuses beyond CTTs in other nations to the degree that it has in the United States in the past decade.