Climate Change denial, although held by a minority of Canadians, is a significant risk to addressing climate change because it discredits information, slows progress on urgent policy changes and distracts people from taking action.
We’ve all heard this song before! Paid spokespeople, posing as science professionals, are brought into the debate (sometimes with funding) to dispute or confuse public health science.
In fact, the tactics of using misinformation and denying evidence that were used years ago by tobacco companies during the 1950s and 60s are the very same tactics we see used today on the topic of climate change.
Interestingly, we saw these strategies used ALSO during the discussions about acid rain, ozone depletion, and DDT and other pesticides since the 1960s.
And nowadays, as the IPCC says, “Rhetoric and misinformation on climate change and the deliberate undermining of science have contributed to misperceptions of the scientific consensus,”
What are these deniers; these merchants of menace; these peddlers of doubt doing?
CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL IS…
If you are reading this and you live in the early 21 century then you know that climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns and there is unprecedented international scientific consensus on its causes and impacts.
Climate change denial is “the dismissal, or unwarranted doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change; that it is caused by humans; that it will impact nature and human society; or dismissing that there are potential ways for adaptation and mitigation by human actions.” (wiki)
Some people who deny climate change are sitting around our own dinner tables or are even in the corridors of power.
There is high profile commentary, in America and here in Canada) that it as a controversy or something to take sides and debate about.
A less gentle definition comes from Riley Dunlap, that those who cast doubt on the scientific consensus of climate change are funded and organized by what he calls a “denial machine of industrial, political and other interest groups …to create uncertainty about science in general and global warming in particular.” …this is to promote an agenda supporting certain products or industries.
A good capping off of this definition comes from Jordi Xifra’s 2015 study that gives us a peak into possible motives for this denial machine. For instance, 9 out of 10 papers that were skeptical on global warming are initiated by right-wing think tanks.
WHAT IS IT – THE TOBACCO ROOTS
Denialism has a recent and dark history. We can start with tobacco roots.
From the time when scientists were fist linking tobacco to lung disease, back in the 1950s, there’s been the phenomenon of well-funded communicators that were less focussed on robust debate, or even spirited lively discourse… and more pointed to drawing legitimacy away from the science to protect the profits of industry.
That might seem a little bit much. So let’s look at some of the details.
The studies by Michael Mann, John Cook and Oreskes and Conway (the links are below) do a very detailed job of chronicling these communications actions. They name the key players and organizations active in these campaigns over the last few decades.
They document how Industrial interests launched “information” campaigns. wrote misleading summaries to the media, misrepresenting data to politicians, advocated for an equal voice in the media, set up quasi-scientific think tanks.
These researches used extensive detail and mass amounts of source material to outline the funding mechanisms, links to politicians and public officials, the debates in journals and news media that were used to distort the story about climate. They looked at the development of denialism in American politics and this how it has had devastating consequences all over the World and here in Canada
THE CHRONOLOGY
The chronology of the story is nested in the KEY high profile public health discussions of the last few decades.
TOBACCO, — There was extensive scientific evidence that smoking caused lung cancer. Immediately when the studies were published, there was huge pushback from the industry and many manipulations in the media to discredit the science. The science won that debacle and there are warnings on cigarettes and even some active lawsuits by government against the tobacco for the health cost consequences.
ACID RAIN, — There was emerging evidence that certain types of pollutants – SO2 – had destructuve impacts for lakes in the NorthEast of United States and Canada and Sweden. When this science was published, there was a replay of massive pushback from people with vested interests. They manipulated media, influenced officials. The science won (or partially won) this one also. Regulations to address acid rain were eventually passed in the 1990s and the amount of SO2 has decreased sharply – but more work remains.
OZONE DEPLETION…. There was evidence that certain chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) caused depletion of the Ozone layer by way of complex chemical reactions in the atmosphere.. Finally, after a long struggle with deniers and their funded fake research, science prevailed with the Montreal protocol, 1988, and the dangerous CFCs were reduced… saving millions of lives.
“The protocol is the result of an extraordinary process of scientific study, negotiations among representatives of the business and environmental communities, and international diplomacy.” Ronald Regan
SECOND HAND SMOKE – Second hand smoke was found by scientists to cause cancer. In response, the tobacco industry coordinated a scientific controversy with the purpose of stopping regulation of their products. There was a very unnecessarily long struggle against science deniers. By the early 2000s there are smoke free laws and regulations in many countries. These also are popular – 80% in support – and they result in less hospital admissions saving lives and billions of dollars.
INSECTICIDES – The pattern of discovery and industry pushback and burying the truth prevailed even in the story of pesticides and DDT. The work brilliant author Rachel Carson (she wrote Silent Spring) was later maligned by industry as a part of the strategy to malign science and science-based regulation – even long long after the facts – and still free of the facts.
THE VESTED INTERESTS
At each one of these episodes, there is an intense struggle for science against vested, well-funded interests that actively dispute science and lobby governments.
The research on this is robust and engaging because there are many references to actual news stories, government reports and records of congressional hearings. Interestingly, the researchers spend time on noting how the machinery for all this resistance to science in America emerged during the 1960s, 70s and 80, and 90s and even the early 2000s. Names are used! Some of the names are the same from episode to episode
Imagine, some of the very same individuals were involved in the numerous campaigns against tobacco regulations and then quickly turned to fight against regulations for SO2 by denying acid rain and then turned to fight science again by advocating for further sales for DDT and encouraging regulators to ignore environmental science.
During this era, industry was successful at hiring their own spokespeople, hired fake research, submitted stories to national news outlets pretending to represent science, actively discredited scientists and journals. They funded misinformation campaigns. Harassed and discredited individual researchers. Purchased advertising to convey falsehoods about disagreement among scientists.
Sounds too far fetched??
This isn’t the stuff of conjecture or guesswork. This is well-documented and listed out for everyone to see including the actual correspondences, the ads, excerpts from the congressional hearings.
The anti-science lobbyists established think tanks that had a clear agenda of “protecting” American industry from science – I will NOT name the think tanks here – but they are named in the books. These think tanks still exist today and have copy-cats organizations in Canada.
EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL CAMPAIGNS
What is the impact of all this? Why is it a big deal if there are a few nay-sayers out there; some contrarians.
Even if there are vested interests and shifty campaigns. Can regular good thinking people actually be dissuaded by a couple of op eds or advertisements?
It turns out, these campaigns can be very successful; especially when it comes to delays and perceptions
MEET THE CONSENSUS PROJECT
The team at Sceptical Science worked on a project to identify the consensus on climate science and researched how this interacted with public perceptions of the consensus.
They identify something they call the consensus gap. There is significantly MORE consensus among scientists that the public actually perceives
In addition.. there are specific well-funded disinformation campaigns that are designed to discredit the science and widen the consensus gap. In these sorts of communications, there was intention to convey a sense that there was a debate and that the conclusions were not settled yet. As one of the spokespeople from the tobacco industry once said “confusion is our product” – this particular intention was the focus later for fake controversies around acid rain, ozone layer depletion and the increased need for regulations for pesticides
Misinformation affects people in several ways. Misinformation succeeds in causing people to believe false information. Tests on the effect of misleading climate statistics, for example, found that providing just a handful of misleading numbers was effective in lowering acceptance of climate change
TACTICS
To understand how does this manufacturing of doubt works, let’s take a look at the tactics.
The listing of the denial communications tactics can all be managed by words that start with “D” so we can have a handy way to remember them. First, DENY the facts. If there is a finding through science, say, for example, that the icesheet is melting. The tactic here is to say “no it is not”. Or, I “heard some scientists saythat it’s not true” This is designed, if you fall for it, to places the onus of proof on the person pointing to the fact. Actually, as we know, if you make a claim, especially a bold claim, then the onus is on you to explain your basis for the claim.
DEFLECT the argument: This is where another topic is spuriously introduced. If someone says, “the ice sheet is melting”, you can deflect that by saying “hey, there is a lot of advantage for Canada with an open seaway through the northwest passage. This is deflection because we weren’t talking about make-believe advantages about an open seaway.
DISTRUST the messenger: You can convey a distrust of the individual scientist on any point by saying something like, “oh that scientist is just trying to get more funding for more research” or “that particular study was flawed”. Let’s keep an eye on the merits of the findings.
DISCREDIT the science: There’s a set of claims that work in this category. Just state the claim “the scientists do not agree” [yes they do] or.. “the science on this stuff is always changing” [no it isn’t]. We see a lot of this approach makse it all the way to media stories when they imply that something is controversial when its not; or giving fair time to opposing views… when that is like giving fair airtime to arguments for flat earther or astronomy.
DISCREDIT the intention: It is pretty easy to quickly mention that the scientists are always looking for way to influence the political agenda and bring in socialism. You could also make a claim that they are there make a buck with these dramatic stories about rising sea levels. This is way past murky intentions and political agendas.
DOOMISM
For this last point on Tactics, credit goes to Michael Mann. DOOMISM is a really wicked part of the denial arsenal because it pushes people to inaction. The communicator throws-up arms and says “well, there’s not much we can do about this then!” “all is lost..”, “society is truly over”. There’s an emergency, there’s no time for this.
MADE IN CANADA CAMPAIGNS
For a point of view on the Canadian context for denial… impacts of denial in Canada, we can look at a couple of campaigns. Remember these reflect the vested interests are at work in Canada… that’s what they do for a living… These guys lobby and invest in campaigns to ensure a livelihood and continuation of the industry. That’s their job.
Canadian author Seth Klein says, “the new climate denialism is when our leaders say that they get the climate crisis, but then they don’t practise politics that aligns with what the science says we have to do”.
There are a few examples of recent denial-based communications campaigns by Canadian Governments.
Albert exPremier Jason Kenney’s $30 million “war room” officially launched in 2019 — an effort to combat what his United Conservative Party government calls misinformation about Alberta’s energy industry. He is so mad about what the science says about CO2 emissions, that he’s spending $30M of taxpayer money to get his own more convenient answers. The “war” rhetoric is a bit much.
It doesn’t end there. Emily Eaton and Simon Enoch conducted a study analyzing how the oil industry’s “extractive populism” strategy impacts Saskatchewan politics. The Saskatchewan Party government, from former premier Brad Wall to current premier Scott Moe, often promoted oil industry talking points and used them to direct policy.
Shane Gunster and colleagues conducted a study, “Our Oil: Extractive Populism in Canadian Social Media”, that reviewed of hundreds of media stories, thousands of social media postings… (face book, twitter). They identified that there was significant effort to attract social media support for framings of oil extraction as part of public will and democratic expression and that there’s a need to defend the industry (against “elites”) and fight for the “common good”.
They named this “extractive populism”
They looked at how oil lobby groups like the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers built social media campaigns to inspire industry employees and passive supporters to become, as one CAPP spokesperson called it, “visible and vocal champions of the industry.”
The study analyzed social media campaigns from Cenovus, Enbridge, Oil Respect, the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors, Oil Sands Strong, Resource Works, as well as the CAPP affiliated “Canada’s Energy Citizens” campaign.
These campaigns used the familiar denial tactics and push doubts about climate change, bolster claims about Canada’s “ethical oil”, making it sound like there’s grassroots support in conservative media and plenty of controversy in the science (where there wasn’t).
These framings then get likes and are replayed and rattle through the social media echo chambers
DENIAL DISRUPTS TRANSITION
Climate change denial and the associated misinformation and professional discrediting is alive and well in Canada. Does this have the potential to slow policy change progress, distort public opinion, distract from important urgent matter of Canada’s inevitable transition from fossil fuels.
YES IT DOES… We just have to look to the lessons of past lessons from tobacco, acid rain, second hand smoke. Denialism causes huge delays, exacerbates regionalism, creates more friction and more work and confuses government direction on the important and inevitable policy shifts.
This, ultimately leads us to think about how the story is told. Matto Mildenberger, University of California worked with researchers at the University of Montreal, Erik Lachapelle is one of the observers that note the important role for media “You would have a climate scientist on a cable news show or a panel debating climate policy, and the media would find someone who disbelieved [it] or was from an industry group that was rejecting the climate consensus,” said Mildenberger. “It gives [the public] a false sense that there was real substantial scientific debate about this.”
On a more optimistic note… the same researchers, shows that Canadians everywhere, from the most Conservative to the most Liberal ridings, are united in understanding that climate change poses a major threat to the people and places they cherish.
The experts tell us that successful science communication campaigns typically feature “simple clear messages, repeated often, by a variety of trusted voices,”
Sources
- https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-committee-launches-investigation-of-fossil-fuel-industry
- https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-war-room-launch-calgary-1.5392371
- https://www.efficiencycanada.org/alberta-energy-poverty/
- https://read.aupress.ca/read/regime-of-obstruction/section/4037be5a-9c09-49e1-8957-7923c7851408
- Dunlap, Riley E. (2013). “Climate Change Skepticism and Denial: An Introduction“. American Behavioral Scientist. 57 (6): 691–98.
- “Climate Change Deniers and Advocacy: A Situational Theory of Publics Approach“. Jordi Xifra. (2016). American Behavioral Scientist. 60 (3): 276–287
- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ten-reasons-we-dont-talk-about-climate-change_b_7093774
- http://theconsensusproject.com/
- https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/the-consensus-handbook/
- Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway
- The Climate Wars, Michael Mann
- Ranney, M.A. & Clark, D. (2016). Climate Change Conceptual Change: Scientific Information Can Transform Attitudes. Topics in Cognitive Science, 8(1), 49-75
- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings
- said author Seth Klein, the former B.C. director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency
- On the point of “Doomism”… Michael Mann even parts ways with many of his climatologists by criticizing some of the writers for being unrealistically fatalistic… when there is so much at stake. He quotes one Twitter user, “All-out war on Climate Change made sense only as long as it was winnable. Once you accept that we’ve lost it, other kinds of action take on greater meaning”. I guess we infer that “other kinds of action mean… less engagement in climate change. In fact… in Merlyn Sewals blog “Top Ten Reasons people do NOT talk about Climate Change…. Despair was number one… even though we don’t have the luxury of despair. To Michael Mann, Doomers go to the same place as deniers… toward inaction
https://www.alberta.ca/public-inquiry-into-anti-alberta-energy-campaigns.aspx
https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Consensus_Handbook-1.pdf
https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ccom/