Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
Introduction
References
All Topics
Philosophy
Ethics

Climate denialism bullshit is harmful

Profile image of Joshua LuczakJoshua Luczak

Asian Journal of Philosophy

https://doi.org/10.1007/S44204-023-00062-6
visibility

…

description

20 pages

link

1 file

Abstract

This paper suggests that some climate denialism is bullshit. Those who spread it do not display a proper concern for the truth. This paper also shows that this bullshit is harmful in some significant ways. It undermines the epistemic demands imposed on us by what we care about, by the social roles we occupy, and by morality. It is also harmful because it corrodes epistemic trust.

Related papers

Climate Change Skepticism and Denial: An Introduction
Riley Dunlap
View PDFchevron_right
Sources and amplifiers of climate change denial
Riley Dunlap

Research Handbook on Communicating Climate Change, 2020

's dramatic 1988 Senate testimony that human-caused global warming had already begun put the issue on the US national agenda (McCright & Dunlap, 2000). Yet, the US has still not enacted effective carbon reduction policies due to intense opposition from industry Political Action Committees (PACs), corporate lobbying and other tactics (Ard et al., 2017; Brulle, 2018; Brulle & Aronczyk, 2019). One crucial strategy has been to cast doubt on the seriousness of human-caused climate change, first by promoting supposed 'uncertainty' about its existence and seriousness (Oreskes & Conway, 2010), and then by attacking climate science and more recently the integrity of climate scientists (Boussalis & Coan, 2016; Powell, 2011). This denial campaign has created widespread scepticism and outright denial among the American public and policy-makers that clearly hinders effective action. The campaign to sow uncertainty about climate change was facilitated by decades of promotion of free-market (or neoliberal) ideology and outright attacks on government (Klein, 2014; Oreskes & Conway, 2010), and more recently by assaults on institutions and experts of all types-especially government officials, scientists, educators, and the mainstream media (Nichols, 2017). The consequence is that anti-intellectualism (long a feature of American life) has become widespread (Jacoby, 2008), creating a major decline in trust in government and many other institutions (Brennan, 2019; Jones, 2018). This has helped generate a 'post-truth society' (D'Ancona, 2017) highly receptive to various sources of misinformation and 'alternative facts,' such as 'climate change has no scientific basis'. This chapter provides an overview of the key sources and amplifiers of climate change denial in the US, which constitute a large 'ecosystem' of actors that has evolved over the past three decades-new ones emerging as needed and marginal ones fading away (Brulle & Aronczyk, 2019). These include fossil fuels and other major corporations and their trade associations, conservative philanthropists and their foundations, conservative think tanks, public relations firms, various front groups and coalitions, 'astroturf' groups designed for short-term campaigns, a small number of contrarian scientists, a vast conservative 'echo chamber' (consisting of conservative TV and radio outlets and a few newspapers, denier bloggers and denial advocates on social media) and nearly the entire Republican Party. We briefly highlight the above actors' roles and interconnections in what is often called the 'denial machine' (Begley, 2007), constituting a 'climate change countermovement' (CCCM) that opposes the scientists, policy-makers, and activists promoting concern about climate change and the need to reduce carbon emissions (Brulle & Aronczyk, 2019; Dunlap & McCright, 2015). Its primary strategy is the creation and dissemination of misinformation regarding climate science and climate change more generally (Cook, Chapter X; Oreskes & Conway, 2010), an effort facilitated to some degree by the inherent complexity of climate science (Dunlap & McCright 2015; Gallant & Lewis, Chapter X). While the CCCM has spread internationally, it originated in the US and thus we will focus primarily on American actors and amplifiers of denial.

View PDFchevron_right
Climate Change Denialism: Its History, Arguments and Links to Psychology
Mandy Bradbury
View PDFchevron_right
Climate Change Skepticism and Denial
Riley Dunlap

American Behavioral Scientist, 2013

View PDFchevron_right
Seepage: Climate change denial and its effect on the scientific community
Stephan Lewandowsky

Global Environmental Change, 2015

View PDFchevron_right
Distrusting Climate Science: A Problem in Practical Epistemology for Citizens
Thomas Atchison

Iowa State University Summer Symposium on Science Communication, 2012

I briefly present empirical findings suggesting that citizens in contemporary democracies face great difficulties in arriving at an accurate picture of the world and of the relevant policy options and in identifying trustworthy sources of information. Unfortunately, these difficulties do not seem to diminish with more education or with more effort and attention. I argue that a highly polluted information environment can defeat the sorts of strategies generally recommended to individuals under the label 'critical thinking.' Finally, I consider what sort of institutional or systemic conditions would be necessary to provide citizens with a manageable epistemic task.

View PDFchevron_right
Anthropocentrism: is it a root of climate change denial?
Julie James
View PDFchevron_right
The Ideology of Climate Change Denial in the United States
Jean-Daniel Collomb

European journal of American studies, 2014

View PDFchevron_right
Climate Science Denial as Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance
Sharon Mason

Social Epistemology, 2020

Climate science denial results from ignorance and perpetuates ignorance about scientific facts and methods of inquiry. In this paper, I explore climate science denial as a type of active ignorance called willful hermeneutical ignorance, where ignorance is actively maintained by a gap in a person's conceptual resources. This kind of ignorance is active in the sense that it resists correction. For instance, climate science denial may be motivated by ideological reasoning and other biases, it is often not responsive to the introduction of more evidence, and it can be maintained as consequence of conceptual gaps, or hermeneutical lacunas, that make possible a certain degree of blindness to evidence. I then identify three hermeneutical lacunas in the epistemology of science that prevent the uptake of evidence for anthropogenic climate changeone from Lawrence Torcello and two from the work of Dale Jamieson. Finally, while climate science denial's resistance to correction poses significant challenges for effective education about climate science, this framework also suggests a way forward: education that emphasizes building basic concepts required for understanding and interpreting scientific research.

View PDFchevron_right
Regime Pseudoscientists Enforce Climate Change Narrative
Michael Rectenwald

Mises Institue Wire, 2022

Although the field of experimental psychology has a very dubious track record in meeting scientific standards, it is nevertheless continually used to discredit the views of select subjects under study. It does this by pathologizing said subjects and their views. For example, the field has been mobilized to discredit so-called conspiracy theorists by attempting to identify the mistaken mental processes that conspiracy theorists exhibit. The methods and results of such studies have proven to be less than stellar, to say the least. Now, the field is also being wielded to discredit “climate change deniers.”1 By pathologizing the thinking processes of these stubbornly mistaken subjects, the views of said subjects can be safely dismissed. After all, the theory of anthropogenic climate change (ACC) is obviously true, or so says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the planetary authority on the matter. Likewise, those who doubt or deny ACC must be crazy. The point of psychological studies is to discover just what is wrong with these people and how, if possible, to change their minds.

View PDFchevron_right

References (52)

  1. See, for example, Dodd, Papineau, Grenne, Slack, Rittner, Pirajno, O'Neil, and Little (2017).
  2. Again, see, for example, the collection of large scale reconstructed temperature records in Dessler (2015: Ch.2).
  3. Aklin, M., & Urpelainen, J. (2014). Perceptions of scientific dissent undermine public support for envi- ronmental policy. Environmental Science and Policy, 38, 173-177.
  4. Almassi, B. (2012). Climate change, epistemic trust, and expert trustworthiness. Ethics and the Environ- ment, 17, 29-49.
  5. Balling, R. C. 2005. Heat wave hot air. TCS Daily, August 4.
  6. Biddle, J. B., & Leuschner, A. (2015). Climate skepticism and the manufacture of doubt: Can dissent in science be epistemically detrimental? European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 5, 261-278.
  7. Borenstein, S. (2016). Revamped satellite data shows no pause in global warming. PhilStar Global, March 4.
  8. Caney, S. (2021). Climate justice. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2021 edn. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
  9. Carter, Bob. (2006). There is a problem with global warming it… Stopped in 1998". The Telegraph, 9, 135. Carter, L., & McClenaghan M. (2015). Exposed: academics-for-hire agree not to disclose fossil fuel fund- ing. EnergyDesk.
  10. Coady, D., & Corry, R. (2013). The climate change debate: An epistemic and ethical enquiry. Palgrave Macmillan.
  11. Cohen, G. A. (2012). Complete bullshit. In Michael Otsuka (Ed.), Finding Oneself in the Other. Princeton University Press.
  12. Cubby, B., & Lawes, A. (2010). The benefit of the doubt. The Sydney Morning Herald.
  13. Darling, S. B., & Sisterson, D. L. (2014). How to change minds about our changing climate. The Experiment.
  14. DeMelle, B. (2012). Heartland institute exposed: internal documents unmask heart of climate denial machine. DeSmog.com, February 14.
  15. Dessler, A. (2015). Introduction to modern climate change (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  16. Dickinson, T. (2010). The climate killers. Rolling Stone, 1096, 35-41.
  17. Dodd, M. S., Papineau, D., Grenne, T., Slack, J. F., Rittner, M., Pirajno, F., O'Neil, J., & Little, C. T. S. (2017). Evidence for early life in Earth's oldest hydrothermal vent precipitates. Nature, 543, 60-64.
  18. Eilperin, J., Dawsey, J., & Brady D. (2019). White House to set up panel to counter climate change con- sensus, officials say. The Washington Post, February 24.
  19. Fang, L. (2019). Coal giant provided secret financing to group challenging climate lawsuits. The Inter- cept, December 17.
  20. Frankfurt, H. G. (2009). On bullshit. Princeton University Press.
  21. Friedman, L. (2019). A coal baron funded climate denial as his company spiralled into bankruptcy. The New York Times, December 17.
  22. Gillis, J., & Kaufman L. (2012). Leak offers glimpse of campaign against climate science. The New York Times, February 15.
  23. Goldenberg, S. (2012). Heartland Institute faces fresh scrutiny over tax status.The Guardian, February 17. Hannan, E., & Carney S. (2005). Thinkers of influence. The Age, December 10.
  24. Hardwig, J. (1985). Epistemic dependence. The Journal of Philosophy, 82, 335-349.
  25. Hardwig, J. (1991). The role of trust in knowledge. The Journal of Philosophy, 88, 693.
  26. Harkinson, J. (2009). "No. 8: Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change (A.K.A. The Idso Family)". Mother Jones, December 4.
  27. Hirji, Z. (2018). Here's how much money the mercer family donated to climate misinformation groups in 2016. BuzzFeed News, January 25.
  28. Idso, C. (2014). Pope Francis, fossil fuels won't cause armageddon. The Federalist, September 19.
  29. Irzik, G., & Kurtulmus, F. (2019). What is epistemic public trust in science? The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 70, 1145-1166.
  30. Kimbrough, S. (2006). On letting it slide. In Hardcastle Reisch (Ed.), Bullshit and Philosophy (pp. 3-18). Open Court.
  31. Leiserowitz, Anthony, Edward W. Maibach, Seth Rosenthal, John Kotcher, Parrish Bergquist, Matthew Ballew, Matthew Goldberg, and Abel Gustafson. 2012. Climate Change in the American Mind: April 2019. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Program on Cli- mate Change Communication.
  32. Leiserowitz, A. A., Maibach, E. W., Roser-Renouf, C., Smith, N., & Dawson, E. (2013). Climategate, public opinion, and the loss of trust. American Behavioral Scientist, 57, 818-837.
  33. Littlemore, R. (2012a). Heartland insider exposes institute's budget and strategy. DeSmog.com, February 14. Littlemore, R. (2012b). What passes for a Brain Trust at Heartland? DeSmog.com, February 23. Ludlow, P. (2022). The varieties of bullshit. In Medium, edited by EJ Spode.
  34. Mahon, J. E. (2016). The definition of lying and deception. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2016 edn. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
  35. Mashey, J. (2012). Fake science, fakexperts, funny finances, free of tax. DeSmog.com, February 14. McCraw, B. W. (2015). The nature of epistemic trust. Social Epistemology, 29, 413-430.
  36. McKinnon, C. (2016). Should we tolerate climate change denial? Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 40, 205-216.
  37. Myhre, G., Shindell, D., Br' eon, F. M., Collins, W., Fuglestvedt, J., Huang, J., Koch, D., Lamarque, J. F., Lee, D., Mendoza, B., Nakajima, T., Robock, A., Stephens, G., Takemura, T., & Zhang, H. (2013). 2013: Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing". In T. F. Stocker, D. Qin, G. K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S. K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex, & P. M. Midgley (Eds.), Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
  38. NA. 1998. Determination 118: Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling v. Star Tribune. Minnesota News Council.
  39. O'Keefe, W. (2004). The challenge of making climate science policy relevant. C. Marshall Institute Policy Outlook.
  40. Oreskes, N., & Conway, E. M. (2011). Merchants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
  41. Parker, W. (2018). Climate Science. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, summer 2018 edn. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
  42. Petersen, A. M, Vincent E. M., & Westerling A. L. (2019). Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists andcontrarians. Nature Communications 10.
  43. Readfearn, G. (2018). Billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart revealed as key donor to Australian cli- mate science denial promoter institute of public affairs. DeSmog.com, July 17.
  44. Shi, J., Visschers, V. H. M., & Siegrist, M. (2015). Public perception of climate change: The importance of knowledge and cultural worldviews. Risk Analysis, 35, 2183-2201.
  45. Shulman, S. K. A., & Meyer A. (2007). Smoke, mirrors and hot air: how ExxonMobil uses big tobacco's tactics to manufacture uncertainty on climate science. Tech. rep., Union of Concerned Scientists.
  46. Singer, S. F. (2016). Climate change: the burden of proof. American Thinker, January 29.
  47. Solomon, S., D. Qin, M Manning, R. B. Alley, T. Berntsen, N. L. Bindoff, Z. Chen, A. Chidthaisong, J. M. Gregory, and G. C. Hegerl. 2007. Technical summary, climate change 2007: The physical sci- ence basis.Contribution of working group I to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change : 19-91.
  48. Surgey, N. (2016). Peabody coal bankruptcy reveals climate denial network funding. PRWatch, June 13.
  49. van der Linden, S. L., Leiserowitz, A. A., Feinberg, G. D., & Maibach, E. W. (2015). The scientific con- sensus on climate change as a gateway belief: Experimental evidence. PLoS ONE, 10, 1-8.
  50. Zagzebski, L. (2004). Epistemic value and the primacy of what we care about. Philosophical Papers, 33, 353-377.
  51. Zagzebski, L. (2009). On Epistemology. Cengage Learning.
  52. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Related papers

Climate Skepticism and the Manufacture of Doubt: Can Dissent in Science be Epistemically Detrimental?
Justin Biddle, Anna Leuschner

The aim of this paper is to address the neglected but important problem of differentiating between epistemically beneficial and epistemically detrimental dissent. By "dissent," we refer to the act of objecting to a particular conclusion, especially one that is widely held. While dissent in science can clearly be beneficial, there might be some instances of dissent that not only fail to contribute to scientific progress, but actually impede it. Potential examples of this include the tobacco industry's funding of studies that questioned the link between smoking and lung cancer, and the attempt by the petroleum industry and other groups to cast doubt upon the conclusion that human consumption of fossil fuels contributes to global climate change. The problem of distinguishing between good and bad dissent is important because of the growing tendency of some stakeholders to attempt to delay political action by 'manufacturing doubt' (Oreskes & Conway 2010). Our discussion in this paper focuses on climate science. This field, in our view, is rife with instances of bad dissent. On the basis of our discussion of climate science, we articulate a set of sufficient conditions for epistemically problematic dissent in general, which we call “the inductive risk account of epistemically detrimental dissent.”

View PDFchevron_right
Social constructionism and climate science denial
Sven Hansson

European Journal for Philosophy of Science

It has been much debated whether epistemic relativism in academia, for instance in the form of social constructivism, the strong programme, deconstructionism, and postmodernism, has paved the way for the recent upsurge in science denial, in particular climate science denial. In order to provide an empirical basis for this discussion, an extensive search of the social science literature was performed. It showed that in the 1990s, climate science was a popular target among academic epistemic relativists. In particular, many STS scholars used it as an allegedly clear example of claims by natural scientists that should be treated as mere social constructions, rather than as reports on the actual state of the natural world. A few connections between social constructivists and corporate science denialism were also uncovered, but the extent of such connections could not be determined. With few exceptions, the stream of criticism of climate science from academic relativists has dwindled sin...

View PDFchevron_right
Ideology and the Narrative of Climate Skepticism
Raul Perez Lejano

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2019

It is reasonable to assume that more effective communication of climate science might be the remedy for widespread climate skepticism. However, narrative analysis of climate-skeptical discourse suggests it can be otherwise. Taking the United States as a case in point, we argue how at least some forms of climate skepticism are founded upon an ideological narrative that (for its adherents) is prior to, or more fundamental than, the issue of climate. In other words, skepticism may not always (or even usually) be fundamentally about climate to begin with. This more basic, universal, ideological construct at the root of climate skepticism encompasses social status, race and ethnicity, class, culture, and other social conditions. If climate-skeptical discourse in the United States is commonly built upon a genetic metanarrative that is really about social fracture, it may be resilient to scientific argument. It is quite possible that responding to climate skepticism will require addressing...

View PDFchevron_right
"A General Theory of Climate Denial"
Peter J . Jacques (he, him)

The question at hand is, “Why is there a social counter-movement that rejects climate change?” This article begins by first naming this counter-movement “climate denial” and working through the various apparent options by specifically looking at the scholarship on Holocaust denial for insight. Through this insight, we can understand the counter-movement as a reactionary force working to sow confusion for ideological reasons that promote a specific privilege. At the same time, privilege is also protected by the presentation of climate change science as a binary position of “acknowledgement or rejection” that itself promotes privilege and dysfunction across the intersection of science and society. In the end, at least one answer to the question “why denial?” appears to be “because it is serious and threatening” and this, at least partially, explains the existence of this counter-movement.

View PDFchevron_right
Is It Appropriate to 'Target' Inappropriate Dissent? On the Normative Consequences of Climate Skepticism
Anna Leuschner

As Justin Biddle and I have argued, climate skepticism can be epistemically problematic when it displays a systematic intolerance of producer risks at the expense of public risks (Biddle and Leuschner 2015). In this paper, I will provide currently available empirical evidence that supports our account, and I discuss the normative consequences of climate skepticism by drawing upon Philip Kitcher's "Millian argument against the freedom of inquiry." Finally, I argue that even though concerns regarding inappropriate disqualification of dissent are reasonable, a form of "targeting" dissent—namely revealing manufactured dissent—is required in order to identify epistemically detrimental dissent and, thus, to protect scientific and public discourse.

View PDFchevron_right

Related topics

  • Environmental Ethics
  • Asian Philosophy
    • 580 California St., Suite 400
    San Francisco, CA, 94104
    © 2025 Academia. All rights reserved