Climate Change Disinformation and How to Combat It

Abstract

Climate change presents a challenge at multiple levels: It challenges our cognitive abilities because the effect of the accumulation of emissions is difficult to understand. Climate change also challenges many people's worldview because any climate mitigation regime will have economic and political implications that are incompatible with libertarian ideals of unregulated free markets. These political implications have created an environment of rhetorical adversity in which disinformation abounds, thus compounding the challenges for climate communicators. The existing literature on how to communicate climate change and dispel misinformation converges on several conclusions: First, providing information about climate change, in particular explanations of why it occurs, can enhance people's acceptance of science. Second, highlighting the scientific consensus can be an effective means to counter misinformation and raise public acceptance. Third, culturally aligned messages and messengers are more likely to be successful. Finally, climate misinformation is best defanged, through a process known as inoculation, before it is encountered, although debunking techniques can also be successful. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health, Volume 42 is April 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Dispelling misconceptions about economics

“…universities. To incorporate the refutational elements, we follow findings in psychology (Tippett, 2010;Lewandowsky, 2021). According to these, the RT must: (i) state, or activate, the misconception, (ii) affirm explicitly that it is incorrect, (iii) provide arguments and evidence as to why this is the case, stressing the negative consequences of the belief and explaining the scientific conception as simply and clearly as possible.…”

“…The refutation text (RT hereafter) is a communication tool designed to help people revise their false beliefs through slow, analytical processing of information. We design our RT using findings from research in psychology, where the problem of how to dispel misconceptions has been studied for some time (Tippett, 2010;Lewandowsky, 2021).…”

Host, parasite, and failure at the colony level: COVID-19 and the US information ecosystem

“…The editor-in-chief of Science Holden Thorp, reflected: "American science denialism … persists, even at the highest level of leadership, with a president who denies climate change and a vice president-a devout creationist-who believes that Earth is only 6000 years old" [60]. The political right, led by President Trump and his associates [61], who were primarily concerned with his reelection chances, was able to use an existing anti-science movement infrastructure and media organizations that had been developed as a bulwark against policies to mitigate climate change [62].…”

Mainstream Consensus and the Expansive Fringe: Characterizing the Polarized Information Ecosystems of Online Climate Change Discourse

“…The enormity of climate change as a planetary phenomenon, social scientists argue, leads to a desire for cognitive closure [18]. Because of the similarly vast scale of climate change information online, diverse digital populations may indeed be drawn to scientific knowledge; yet at the same time, these motivations may also drive consumption of non-traditional alternatives which promise epistemic certainty [29].…”

“…Such dynamics have been studied in both real-world and digital contexts, featuring conflicts between those who accept the scientific reality of anthropogenic climate change, and those who reject it [9,19]. In particular, researchers across various disciplines have uncovered significant insights into how polarized discourse is linked with social and emotional rifts, leading to the formation of echo chambers, exacerbating hostile interactions, and the spread of climate misinformation [1,18,29].…”