Summary: The social science literature about climate change includes many oddities. A new hot paper about climate denial adds to that list, and illustrates why the climate policy debate has become gridlocked.

Another social science study of climate deniers makes waves on the Left: “Text-mining the signals of climate change doubt” by Constantine Boussalis and Travis G. Coan in the highly-ranked journal Global Environmental Change, January 2016. The abstract reads like real news…

“…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 compile the largest corpus of contrarian literature to date, collecting over 16,000 documents from 19 organizations over the period 1998–2013; 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 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.”

The authors execute these goals described in the three bullets with detail and skill. From which they draw the conclusion of the last sentence. But their evidence provides little support for that conclusion; it is almost irrelevant to it. They state their conclusions in more detail. …

“The overall level of CTT {conservative think tank} information has grown rapidly over the past decade and a half, reaching a peak during late 2009-early 2010. Topics questioning the integrity of individual scientists and scientific bodies appear closer (semantically) to politics than science, suggesting that claims often consider the hallmark of scientific skepticism are rooted in politics. The era of climate science denial is not over. … CTTs tend to react to the external environment — i.e., they counter claims …”

They provide strong evidence and analysis for their first, second, and fourth conclusions. This post discusses the third. Citations are omitted from the following quotations.

A strong opening followed by a quick shift to denialism

“Climate scientists overwhelming agree that the Earth is getting warmer and that the rise in average global temperature is predominantly due to human activity. Yet a sizeable segment of the American public rejects this “consensus view” and U.S. climate policy remains in a state of limbo. As of early 2015, 1/3 of the American public believes that climate change is not primarily caused by human activity and only 1 in 10 understands that more than 90% of climate scientists agree on the existence and nature of observed global warming. What explains this divergence in views among climate scientists and the American public? What factors promote inaction on comprehensive climate change mitigation policy? These questions have garnered considerable attention in disciplines across the social and behavioural sciences.”

The authors then quickly steer onto the rocks. In the first three pages they say …

“One prominent explanation investigates the influence of a “well-funded and relatively coordinated ‘denial machine’” in shaping the public’s understanding of climate science. …

Specifically, the environmental movement is viewed as promoting social change, the denial countermovement is viewed as preserving the status quo …

Viewed largely as an extension of the conservative movement in the U.S., organized climate denial was born out of the deep pockets of conservative foundations and corporate interest groups committed to promoting free-market principles and rolling back government intervention in all aspects of the economy …

It is within the shift from direct to indirect challenges to environmental policy that the full importance of CTTs in the denial countermovement comes into view.

… as the engine of information in the “denial machine,” CTTs are the agents actually responsible for “framing the field” of AGW. Communications research repeatedly emphasizes the sensitivity …

As such, CTTs arguably provide the ‘“connective tissue’ that helps hold the denial countermovement together”. …

CTTs transform this material base into information, generating the narrative of climate denial; …

Nevertheless, despite a general understanding, considerably more research is needed to fully specify the linkages between key actors in the denial countermovement and longitudinal data is necessary to test dynamic theories of organized climate scepticism.”

This is powerful but devoid of meaning since the paper never defines “denial”. The literal meaning of “denying” science or “denying” climate change constitutes serious but easy to prove changes (perhaps libelous if made without evidence). Silence on this key point is inexplicable. Where were the reviewers? (For more about defining “denial” see this note.)

The closest they come to a description is the following, paraphrasing “Challenging Global Warming as a Social Problem: An Analysis of the Conservative Movement’s Counter-Claims” by Aaron M. McCright and Riley E. Dunlap in Social Problems, November 2000 (ungated copy) …

“Overall, the analysis suggests that climate scepticism during this period {1996 and 1997} centred on three major counter-claims: the evidentiary basis of global warming is weak or wrong, global warming would be beneficial if it was to occur, and global warming policies would do more harm than good.”

This is low-grade science. Look at the first item. Global warming is not a binary condition, and it exists as past warming (data) and future warming (forecasts). The coding system McCright and Dunlap ignores both factors. It does not distinguish between questioning data (the magnitude of past warming, including pre-instrument data) and forecasts (the likelihood and magnitude of forecasted future warming).

McCright and Dunlap give brief quotes, but name only the source — no date, title, or URL to allow verification. The quotes lack any context; readers cannot tell if they refer to past warming over millennia, centuries, or specific decades of the past or future. Without that we do not know if this is “flat earth” pseudoscience or a discussion of cutting-edge forecasts of models. Whatever the physical scientific basis of the conservatives cited, McCright and Dunlap give us sloppy social science.

Boussalis and Coan do “Topic Interpretation”

They give little evidence supporting their conclusions about climate “denial”. Their elaborate data collection produces no data of such specificity.

They provide a small number of quotes, but often in misleading fashion. For example they give an excerpt from “Temperatures Flat Despite Record Rise in Emissions” by James M. Taylor of the Heartland Institute, 11 November 2011 — carefully sculpted to look wrong. Here is a better excerpt (in no rational sense is this denial of science or warming).

“In light of the 2010 emissions data, global carbon dioxide emissions have risen by fully a third since the year 2001, yet global temperatures have not risen over the past decade. Global warming activists contend carbon dioxide emissions are the sole or primary factor in global temperature changes, yet global temperatures show no change despite a 33% increase in global carbon dioxide emissions. The fact that global temperatures are not rising despite such a significant increase in carbon dioxide emissions provides validation of skeptical arguments, not a cause for heightened alarm. “… The real-world disconnect between carbon dioxide emissions and global temperatures is one of the factors that argues strongly against such a scenario, however. Temperatures have risen merely 0.2 to 0.3°C during the past third of a century and have not risen at all during the past decade.”

They also quote statements “challenging the agreement of scientists” that “emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is leading to a rise in global temperatures”. For example, this from “You Call This Consensus?” by Joseph Bast of the Heartland Institute, 7 July 2011. It is accurate; the authors imply but do not show otherwise.

“Contrary to what you read repeatedly in daily newspapers or hear on television, most scientists do not believe there is a “scientific consensus” that man-made climate change (often labeled anthropogenic global warming, or AGW) is or will be a catastrophe. … It is important to distinguish between the statement, which is true, that there is no scientific consensus that AGW is or will be a catastrophe, and the also-true claims that the climate is changing (of course it is, it is always changing) and that most scientists believe there may be a human impact on climate (our emissions and alterations of the landscape are surely having an impact …”

The headline IPCC statement — the subject of so many surveys proving almost total concurrence by climate scientists — concerns anthropogenic warming since 1950. Are there any studies showing a consensus of climate scientists about the likelihood of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming?

Also, the authors appear unaware of the peer-review literature about past climate change, as when they cite these as evidence of conservative’s denial machine in action …

“Appeals to long-term natural cycles in temperature, as purportedly demonstrated by the Roman and Medieval Warm periods, are also common.”

“Many documents also suggest alternative climate forcing inputs such as the sun or cosmic rays.”

They do not give an example. However, the Roman and Medieval Warm periods are historical fact, although the sparse temperature record has prevented definitive determination of their geographic scope.

As for the sun, there is a large peer-reviewed literature suggesting that it has a large effect on climate (see the papers listed in section 7), although AR5 gives it little credence (“There is very low confidence concerning future solar forcing estimates, but there is high confidence that the TSI RF variations will be much smaller than the projected increased forcing due to GHG during the forthcoming decades.).

This tour has only covered the first four pages, with five more to go. However these give a representative view of the paper’s methods and accuracy.

A last note: about sources

The authors cite a wide range of sources, including activists’ publications (e.g. of the Union of Concerned Scientists, mostly non-scientists) and their websites — such as Skeptical Science, despite its history of providing false information (example here). Typical of their sources is “Organized Climate Change Denial” by Riley E. Dunlap and Aaron M. McCright in The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society (2011, copy here). It is a literature review (as usual, citing many papers by activist groups).

Conclusions

“The era of climate science denial is not over.”

Boussalis and Coan make four conclusions, but their finding of “science denial” gets the most attention — deservedly so. They identify climate denial by reasoning which is little more than organized prejudice, an inexplicable oversight of the reviewers. Perhaps their conclusion about “denial” is correct, but they make little effort to prove it.

This is yet another of the obviously weak social science studies about climate denial that shape the minds of people on the Left. They like the conclusions and applaud. Criticism from the Right is ignored, presumed inherently invalid — as the authors do with conservatives’ writings in this study.

This is epistemic closure (an extreme form of confirmation bias working within a community), dominating their thinking, as it so often does on the Right. It shows the common culture of Americans, and our blindness — as each sees this in their foes, but not in themselves.

About the authors

Constantine Boussalis is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin (personal website here) and holds a Ph.D. in political science. Travis G. Coan is a statistician and Lecturer at Harvard Law School; he has a Ph.D. in political science (C.V. here).

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