{"id":67204,"date":"2015-12-07T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=67204"},"modified":"2015-12-04T14:48:46","modified_gmt":"2015-12-04T14:48:46","slug":"unearthing-americas-deep-network-of-climate-change-deniers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/12\/unearthing-americas-deep-network-of-climate-change-deniers\/","title":{"rendered":"Unearthing America’s Deep Network of Climate Change Deniers"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new study attempts the first tally\u00a0of those driving\u00a0the peculiarly American strain\u00a0of climate change denial.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Photographer:<\/a>

Photographer: Luke Sharrett\/Bloomberg<\/p><\/div>\n

Nov 30, 2015 \u2014<\/em>The American public has turned away from outright denial of climate change. Sixty-three percent of adults describe the problem as “serious”\u00a0in the latest opinion poll<\/a> from the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em> and ABC News, a dip from the 69 percent who held that view in June. The minority who remain skeptical of climate science\u2014a group that includes presidential hopefuls and powerful lawmakers\u2014can count on\u00a0a dedicated network of several thousand professional supporters.<\/p>\n

New research for the first time has put a precise count on the people and groups working to dispute the scientific consensus on climate change. A loose network\u00a0of 4,556 individuals with overlapping ties to 164 organizations do the most to\u00a0dispute climate change in the U.S.,\u00a0according to a paper published today in Nature Climate Change<\/em><\/a>. ExxonMobil and the family foundations controlled by Charles and David Koch emerge as the most significant\u00a0sources of funding for these skeptics. As a\u00a0two-week\u00a0United Nations climate summit begins today in\u00a0Paris, it’s striking to notice that a similarly vast infrastructure of denial isn’t found in any other nation.<\/p>\n

The role of ExxonMobil and the Kochs in influencing climate denial\u00a0hadn’t been empirically studied before now, according to Justin Farrell, an assistant professor of sociology at the Yale School of Forestry &\u00a0Environmental Studies and the author of the new paper. He said the flow of money from group to group and person to person is often opaque to researchers.<\/p>\n

ExxonMobil has maintained for years that it does not fund denial of climate change. A spokesman pointed out\u00a0that the company’s\u00a0$100 million<\/a> founding commitment to Stanford University’s Global\u00a0Climate &\u00a0Energy Project was made in 2002, right in the middle of the period covered by the Nature Climate Change<\/em> study. Representatives for any of the\u00a0Koch family foundations could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n

Farrell said he focused on ExxonMobil and the Koch foundations because “they are reliable indicators of a much larger effort of corporate lobbying in the climate change counter-movement.”\u00a0He\u00a0examined Internal Revenue Service data showing which groups in the network of climate contrarians accepted funding from ExxonMobil or Koch foundations between 1993 and 2013. Recipients from those two sources tend to occupy central nodes in what he calls a “contrarian network.” Groups funded by ExxonMobil or the Kochs\u00a0“have greater influence over flows of resources, communication, and the production of contrarian information,” Farrell wrote.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0graphic from the paper shows how individuals’ affiliations tie the organizations (shown as balls) together into a network. The groups shown as green balls received some corporate funding over the 20-year period in Farrell’s study from either ExxonMobil or the Kochs; organizations shown as red balls did not. The green balls, Farrell found, make up\u00a0the highly influential\u00a0network center that is more effective than the outliers at “the production of contrarian information.”<\/p>\n

\"Justin<\/a>

Justin Farrell; Nature Climate Change<\/p><\/div>\n

The research was neither easy nor glamorous. One particular element of tedium was making sure that individuals were not represented more than once. Farrell analyzed the individuals, eliminated all middle initials, corrected misspellings, and deleted courtesy titles. “This was completed by hand,” he noted, “on all 4,556 names.” A supplement to the\u00a0paper\u00a0lists all 164 of the organizations he\u00a0identified as promoting climate-change skepticism,\u00a0a roster that includes the CATO Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Heartland Institute.<\/p>\n

Once he understood the network, Farrell investigated which organizations were most successful in pushing their view. He found that groups with\u00a0ties to the two big donors were more likely to see their viewpoints\u00a0make it into media than those without such ties.<\/p>\n

Last week, meanwhile, Farrell published<\/a>\u00a0a separate study\u00a0in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/em> that sought to show how\u00a0funding from corporate donors\u00a0shapes\u00a0public thought and opinion on climate science.\u00a0“Corporate funding influences the actual language and\u00a0thematic content of polarizing discourse,” he wrote. “These effects were visible\u00a0over time.”<\/p>\n

Over the 20 years under review, climate contrarianism increased the most in major media sources\u2014more even than in\u00a0presidential speeches or\u00a0congressional floor statements. Farrell’s research took him through 40,785 documents from contrarian groups; 14,943 from the New York Times<\/em>, Washington Times<\/em>, and USA Today<\/em>; 1,930 from U.S. presidents; and 7,786 from Congress.<\/p>\n

For Robert Brulle, a sociology professor at Drexel University who has conducted research on the topic, Farrell’s research helps define how climate denial works. “Corporate funders create and support conservative think tanks,” which then pass off climate misinformation as valid. The mainstream media pick up on it, which helps shape public opinion.<\/p>\n

“This brings up the following question,” Brulle said.\u00a0“Why is the media picking up and promulgating the central themes of climate misinformation?”<\/p>\n

Download Farrell\u2019s research study pdf: PNAS Corporate funding and ideological polarizarion about climate change<\/a>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 bloomberg.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new study attempts the first tally of those driving the peculiarly American strain of climate change denial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}