Organized Climate Change Denial To Block Green Programs,Top Scholars Conclude

Riley E. Dunlap, a sociology professor at Oklahoma State, and Aaron M. McCright of Michigan State call it the “climate change denial machine” in their book chapter, “Organized Climate Change Denial,” for the new Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society.

Key Components of Climate Change Denial Machine page 147 of Organized Climate Change Denial

In a note, the authors explain:

The actions of those who consistently seek to deny the seriousness of climate change make the terms “denial” and “denier” more accurate than “skepticism” and “skeptic,” particularly since all scientists tend to be skeptics.

Some try to downplay the central role of the denial machine in U.S. politics, but the fact is that what the deniers have accomplished in this country is unique in the world, going far beyond the spread of disinformation. They have allowed fossil fuel interests to “capture” almost an entire political party (see National Journal: “The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones”).

Here is the conclusion of the study:

Many factors influence both national and international policy-making on environmental (and other) issues (Dryzek et al. 2002). We are definitely not suggesting that organized climate change denial has been the sole factor in undermining efforts to develop domestic climate policies in nations such as the U.S., Australia and Canada where it has been particularly prominent, nor at the international level where diverging national interests are obviously a major obstacle (Parks and Roberts 2010). Nonetheless, it is reasonable to conclude that climate change denial campaigns in the U.S. have played a crucial role in blocking domestic legislation and contributing to the U.S. becoming an impediment to international policy-making (McCright and Dunlap 2003; Pooley 2010). The financial and organizational resources and political and public relations expertise available to and embodied in the major components of this machine, and the various actors’ ability to coordinate efforts and reinforce one another’s impacts, have certainly had a profound effect on the way in which climate change is perceived, discussed and increasingly debated—particularly within the U.S.

We have argued that because of the perceived threat posed by climate change to their interests, actors in the denial machine strives to undermine scientific evidence documenting its reality and seriousness. Over the past two decades they have engaged in an escalating assault on climate science and scientists, and in recent years on core scientific practices, institutions and knowledge. Their success in these efforts not only threatens our capacity to understand and monitor human-induced ecological disruptions from the local to global levels (Hanson 2010), but it also weakens an essential component of societal reflexivity when the need for the latter is greater than ever.

Related Posts:

• Water Development Board Report Says Texas "Will Not Have Enough
• 2011’s Off the Charts Weather and Climate Stats
• Drought Spawning La Niña Continues To Next Year
• Politics & Global Warming
• Global Warming Amplifying Texas Drought, Wildfires...
• Crunch Time for U.S. Science Funding
• Hot Summer of 2011 Rewrites Record Books
• U.S. Endures Hottest Summer Since Dust Bowl Era
• Texas Faces Massive Wildfires, Record Drought
• Fox News: ‘Facts Are Certainly’ On The Side Of Global Warming.
• Global Warming’s Heavy Cost
• HOT HOT HOT! Austin Breaks Heat Record
• No End in Sight for Texas Drought
• Texas - Hottest Ever Summer, Drought Worse Than 1930's Dust Bowl
• Texas Scientists: $5 Billion Drought Caused By Deadly Combination Of Climate Variability And Carbon Pollution
• Al Gore Calls ‘BS’ On ‘Crap’ Peddled By Climate Denial Machine
• Texas Ag Commissioner "Pray for Rain"
• Monster Heat Wave - Mandatory N. Tx Water Restrictions Coming
• The Conservative Think Tank Trys Climate Skeptic Damage Control
• The Conservative Media Deny It’s A Record-Setting Hot Summer
• NASA - Climate change: How do we know?
• Rush Limbaugh Says Heat Index Is A Government Plot
• GOP Deny The Average Recorded Temperature Of Earth Has Been Increasing
• Natural Shields Against Climate Change Weaker Than Thought
• Dramatic Climate Swings Likely as World Warms
• Record Heat Wave Gripping Central U.S.
• Re-Framing The Climate Change Discussion
• A Fierce Campaign To Stop Clean Energy Development
• Times of London Retracts It's "Global Warming Is A Hoax" Story
• ALEC Exposed - And It's Connection To Texas Laws
• Mother Nature is Just Getting Warmed Up: Stanford climate scientists forecast permanently hotter summers

The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, according to a new climate study by Stanford University scientists…. “According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years,” said the study’s lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh

• Science stunner — On our current emissions path, CO2 levels in 2100 will hit levels last seen when the Earth was 29°F (16°C) hotter: Paleoclimate data suggests CO2 “may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models”

• FLASHBACK: Michele Bachmann’s Global Warming Denial
• Michele Bachmann: Let’s repeal clean air and clean water for our children