Anyone paying attention these last few years will have noticed that global warming denial simply isnโt a rational phenomenon. And itโs not just that if there were any reason involved, then denial it would have decreased in prevalenceโrather than increasedโas climate science grew more firm and certain over the past two decades.
No: Itโs much more than that. Itโs that so many climate deniers are, letโs face it, angry. Try talking about the issue on the radio sometime. Get ready for them to call in, ready to argue with you.
Now thereโs new scientific evidence documenting this emotional aspect of climate denial. In a new paper in Risk Analysis designed to tap into the โaffectiveโ component of the climate issue, Yaleโs Nicholas Smith and Anthony Leiserowitz report on four separate studies of the publicโs emotional associations related to climate change, conducted from 2002 to 2010.
In the surveys, people were asked about the first โword,โ โthought,โ โimage,โ or โphraseโ that popped into mind in association with global warming. It was the analysis of these rapid fire responses that showed a steep increase in emotional climate denial. As Smith and Leiserowitz put it:
Several significant trends in Americansโ associations with โglobal warmingโ over time were identified. Perhaps most notable was the large increase in the proportion of naysayer images (e.g., โhoaxโ). The proportion of naysayer images rose from less than 10% in 2002 to over 20% of total responses in 2010.
And even as such denier associations increased, associations involving climate impacts like melting ice and sea level rise declined over the same period (though associations related to โdisastersโ also increased somewhat).
Fascinatingly, the study also looks more closely at the various associations made by the deniers.
By the year 2010, Smith and Leiserowitz report, 23 % of all global warming associations involved naysaying or denial. And upon breaking it down, they found that the biggest proportion of the naysayers were, basically, conspiracy theorists a la Rick Santorum and James Inhofe:
Associations with conspiracy theories (e.g., โthe biggest scam in the world to dateโ) accounted for the largest portion of 2010 naysayer images with over 40% of total responses for this category. This was followed by ๏ฌat denials that global warming exists (e.g., โthere really is no such problemโ), belief that global warming is natural (e.g., โit is a natural occurrenceโ), and references to media hype (e.g., โmedia is taking it way too farโ). Finally, several respondents doubted the reliability of climate science (e.g., โunscienti๏ฌc theoryโ).
In other words, there has been an overall โInhoficationโ of climate denialโmore and more deniers now associate with Inhofeโs absurd 2003 claim that global warming is the โgreatest hoax ever perpetratedโ against the U.S. public.
Moreover, itโs an emotional Inhofication. According to the Smith-Leiserowitz study, the conspiracy theorists were the most emotional of all the deniers:
Mean affect scores for these naysayer image categories also reveal that most of these skeptical and cynical images associated with global warming evoked negative connotations for these respondents. Associations with conspiracy theories and hype evoked the most negative affect, whereas ๏ฌat denials evoked the least negative affect.
There are plenty emotions on the other side of the issue too, of course. For those who perceive global warming in an โalarmistโ or catastrophic fashion, negative emotion also pervades (though to a very different effect).
Nevertheless, this study reinforces something Iโve been arguing for a long timeโtrying to โdebateโ with a global warming denier today is really a foolโs errand. This issue is affecting people emotionally, on a gut level, and probably most of all for those who believe that โbig governmentโ and โglobal environmentalistsโ are pulling the wool over our eyes.
Yes, theyโll make scientific assertions to back up their denial. But if you think itโs really about science, then at this point youโre ignoring a mountain of it.
