Climate Deniers Still Tout Debunked Conspiracy 5 Years On While Public Demands Action

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It has been five years since climate scientistsโ€™ e-mails were stolen from the University of East Anglia in 2009. Since then, the publicโ€™s interest in the scandal has declinedย considerably.

While the wider public โ€œastutely lost interest in climategate long agoโ€, this is not the case for climate deniers, according to a new study published in Environmental Research Letters.

โ€œThe brevity of public interest in โ€˜climategateโ€™ stands in contrast to the continued and growing fascination of the โ€˜scepticโ€™ blogosphere with that event,โ€ the studyย describes.

Researchers analysed Google Trends data on the number of times โ€˜climategateโ€™ was mentioned in the news in June compared to the frequency with which the topic appeared on scepticย blogs.

Decline in Publicย Interest

The study shows that since 2007, there has been an overall decline in public interest in climate change. Within this context, interest spikes for a โ€œbrief blipโ€ during events such as climategate or Hurricane Sandy.

But this interest dwindles quickly. Between May and June this year, Google News returned just 329 stories referencing โ€˜climategateโ€™. This is in comparison to 14,200 news stories containing the terms โ€˜Sandyย climateโ€™.

In contrast, the top 20 most frequently read sceptic websites show an ever increasing number of hits from 2009ย onwards.

In 2010, the number of webpages on these sites that were either updated or newly created totalled 2,169. By 2013, this had more than doubled, reaching 5,450 new or updatedย pages.

While part of the decline in general public interest could be attributed to the news cycle, thereโ€™s more to it than that says the studyโ€™s author, Stephenย Lewandowsky.

โ€œTo the extent that there is more to it [than a lack of attention span] itโ€™s because people have decided there was nothing to it [climategate] โ€“ and indeed, there was not,โ€ Lewandowsky told DeSmog UK.

Conspiratorialย Discourse

So why are climate deniers still so focused on climategate? As Lewandowsky explained: โ€œIf you oppose a scientific fact thatโ€™s supported by a pervasive consensus among scientists, then itโ€™s difficult to oppose that without postulating some sort of conspiracy among scientists. Wherever you look, whenever you do the research, you find that science denial involves conspiratorial discourse โ€“ whether itโ€™s tobacco, HIV/AIDS, orย climate.โ€

โ€œClimategate is just the gift that keeps on giving for anyone who wants to spin conspiratorial theories,โ€ he continued. โ€œ1000s of stolen personal emails provide fertile ground for the conspiratorial imagination and some people will continue to spin those theories 30 years fromย now.โ€

Meanwhile, โ€œmost members of the public are more interested in the fact that 2014 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record, or very close to itโ€, Lewandowskyย added.

As the study explains, the perception of the prevalence of sceptic opinions is grossly overestimated compared to the actual extent ofย scepticism.

โ€œThe brevity of public interest in โ€˜climategateโ€™ is remarkable,โ€ it concludes. โ€œIt therefore appears advisable not to mistake the continued conspiratory obsession of the โ€˜scepticโ€™ blogosphere with โ€˜climategateโ€™ with widespread publicย interest.โ€

@kylamandel

Photo: Colin – Egetย arbejde

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Kyla is a freelance writer and editor with work appearing in the New York Times, National Geographic, HuffPost, Mother Jones, and Outside. She is also a member of the Society for Environmental Journalists.

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