By John Cook, The University of Queensland

The fossil fuel industry has spent many millions of dollars on confusing the public about climate change. But the role of vested interests in climate science denial is only half the picture.

Interest in this topic has spiked with the latest revelation regarding coalmining company Peabody Energy. After Peabody filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, documentation became available revealing the scope of Peabody’s funding to third parties. The list of funding recipients includes trade associations, lobby groups and climate-contrarian scientists.

This latest revelation is significant because in recent years, fossil fuel companies have become more careful to cover their tracks. An analysis by Robert Brulle found that from 2003 to 2010, organisations promoting climate misinformation received more than US$900 million of corporate funding per year.

However, Brulle found that from 2008, open funding dropped while funding through untraceable donor networks such as Donors Trust (otherwise known as the “dark money ATM”) increased. This allowed corporations to fund climate science denial while hiding their support.

The decrease in open funding of climate misinformation coincided with efforts to draw public attention to the corporate funding of climate science denial. A prominent example is Bob Ward, formerly of the UK Royal Society, who in 2006 challenged Exxon-Mobil to stop funding denialist organisations.

John Cook interviews Bob Ward at COP21, Paris.

The veils of secrecy have been temporarily lifted by the Peabody bankruptcy proceedings, revealing the extent of the company’s third-party payments, some of which went to fund climate misinformation. However, this is not the first revelation of fossil fuel funding of climate misinformation – nor is it the first case involving Peabody.

In 2015, Ben Stewart of Greenpeace posed as a consultant to fossil fuel companies and approached prominent climate denialists, offering to pay for reports promoting the benefits of fossil fuels. The denialists readily agreed to write fossil-fuel-friendly reports while hiding the funding source. One disclosed that he had been paid by Peabody to write contrarian research. He had also appeared as an expert witness and written newspaper op-eds.

John Cook interviews Ben Stewart, Greenpeace at COP21, Paris.

The bigger picture of fossil-fuelled denial

Peabody’s funding of climate change information and misinformation is one episode in a much larger history of fossil-fuel-funded misinformation. An analysis of more than 40,000 texts by contrarian sources found that organisations who received corporate funding published more climate misinformation, a trend that increased over time.

The following figure shows the use of the claim that “CO₂ is good” (a favourite argument of Peabody Energy) has increased dramatically among corporate-funded sources compared with unfunded ones.

Prevalence of denialist claim from corporate funded and non-funded sources. Farrell (2015)

In 1991, Western Fuels Association combined with other groups representing fossil fuel interests to produce a series of misinformation campaigns. This included a video promoting the positive benefits of carbon dioxide, with hundreds of free copies sent to journalists and university libraries. The goal of the campaign was to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact)”, attempting to portray the impression of an active scientific debate about human-caused global warming.

ExxonSecrets.org has been tracking fossil-fuel-funded misinformation campaigns for more than two decades – documenting more than A$30 million of funding from Exxon alone to denialist think tanks from 1998 to 2014.

Exxon’s funding of climate science denial over this period is particularly egregious considering that it knew full well the risks from human-caused climate change. David Sassoon, founder of Pulitzer Prize-winning news organisation Inside Climate News led an investigation into Exxon’s internal research, discovering that its own scientists had warned the company of the harmful impacts of fossil fuel burning as long ago as the 1970s.

John Cook interviews David Sassoon from Inside Climate News.

Even Inside Climate News’s revelation of industry’s knowledge of the harmful effects of climate change before engaging in misinformation campaigns has precedence. In 2009, an internal report for the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing fossil fuel industry interests, was leaked to the press.

It showed that the coalition’s own scientific experts had advised it in 1995 that “[t]he scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO₂ on climate is well established and cannot be denied”. Nevertheless, the organisation proceeded to deny climate science and promote the benefits of fossil fuel emissions.

Ideology: the other half of an “unholy alliance”

However, to focus solely on industry’s role in climate science denial misses half the picture. The other significant player is political ideology. At an individual level, numerous surveys (such as here, here and and here) have found that political ideology is the biggest predictor of climate science denial.

People who fear the solutions to climate change, such as increased regulation of industry, are more likely to deny that there is a problem in the first place – what psychologists call “motivated disbelief”.

Consequently, groups promoting political ideology that opposes market regulation have been prolific sources of misinformation about climate change. This productivity has been enabled by the many millions of dollars flowing from the fossil fuel industry. Naomi Oreskes, co-author of Merchants of Doubt, refers to this partnership between vested interests and ideological groups as an “unholy alliance”.

Reducing the influence

To reduce the influence of climate science denial, we need to understand it. This requires awareness of both the role of political ideology and the support that ideological groups have received from vested interests.

Without this understanding, it’s possible to make potentially inaccurate accusations such as climate denial being purely motivated by money, or that it is intentionally deceptive. Psychological research tells us that ideologically driven confirmation bias (misinformation) is almost indistinguishable from intentional deception (disinformation).

Video from free online course Making Sense of Climate Science Denial (launches August 9).

The fossil fuel industry has played a hugely damaging role in promoting misinformation about climate change. But without the broader picture including the role of political ideology, one can build an incomplete picture of climate science denial, leading to potentially counterproductive responses.

John Cook, Climate Communication Research Fellow, Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Main image:  Flickr/H M Cotterill

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By John Cook, The University of Queensland

When we published a paper in 2013 finding 97% scientific consensus on human-caused global warming, what surprised me was how surprised everyone was.

Ours wasn’t the first study to find such a scientific consensus. Nor was it the second. Nor were we the last.

Nevertheless, no-one I spoke to was aware of the existing research into such a consensus. Rather, the public thought there was a 50:50 debate among scientists on the basic question of whether human activity was causing global warming.

This lack of awareness is reflected in a recent pronouncement by Senator Ted Cruz (currently competing with Donald Trump in the Republican primaries), who argued that: The stat about the 97% of scientists is based on one discredited study.

Why is a US Senator running for President attacking University of Queensland research on scientific agreement? Cruz’s comments are the latest episode in a decades-long campaign to cast doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change.

Back in 2002, a Republican pollster advised conservatives to attack the consensus in order to win the public debate about climate policy. Conservatives complied. In conservative opinion pieces about climate change from 2007 to 2010, their number one argument was “there is no scientific consensus on climate change."

Recent psychological research has shown that the persistent campaign to confuse the public about scientific agreement has significant societal consequences. Public perception of consensus has been shown to be a “gateway belief,” influencing a range of other climate attitudes and beliefs.

People’s awareness of the scientific consensus affects their acceptance of climate change, and their support for climate action.

The psychological importance of perceived consensus underscores why communicating the 97% consensus is important. Consensus messaging has been shown empirically to increase acceptance of climate change.

And, crucially, it’s most effective on those who are most likely to reject climate science: political conservatives.

In other words, consensus messaging has a neutralising effect, which is especially important given the highly polarised nature of the public debate about climate change.

Expert agreement

Consequently, social scientists have urged climate scientists to communicate the scientific consensus, countering the misconception that they are still divided about human-caused global warming.

But how do you counter the myth that the 97% consensus is based on a single study?

One way is to bring together the authors of the leading consensus papers to synthesise all the existing research: a meta-study of meta-studies. We did exactly that, with a new study published in Environmental Research Letters featuring authors from seven of the leading studies into the scientific consensus on climate change.

A video summary of the new paper into climate change consensus. (2016)

A recurring theme throughout the consensus research was that the level of scientific agreement varied depending on climate expertise. The higher the expertise in climate science, the higher the agreement that humans were causing global warming.

To none of our surprise, the highest agreement was found among climate scientists who had published peer-reviewed climate research. Interestingly, the group with the lowest agreement was economic geologists.

Expertise vs consensus. Skeptical Science

Seven studies quantified the level of agreement among publishing climate scientists, or among peer-reviewed climate papers. Across these studies, there was between 90% to 100% agreement that humans were causing global warming.

A number of studies converged on the 97% consensus value. This is why the 97% figure is often invoked, having been mentioned by such public figures as President Barack Obama, Prime Minister David Cameron and US Senator Bernie Sanders.

Studies into consensus. Skeptical Science

Manufacturing doubt about consensus

The relationship between scientific agreement and expertise turns out to be crucially important in understanding the consensus issue. Unfortunately, it provides an opportunity for those who reject human-caused global warming to manufacture doubt about the high level of scientific agreement.

They achieve this by using groups of scientists with lower expertise in climate science, to convey the impression that expert agreement on climate change is low. This technique is known as “fake experts,” one of the five characteristics of science denial.

For example, surveys of climate scientists may be “diluted” by including scientists who don’t possess expertise in climate science, thus obtaining a lower level of agreement compared to the consensus among climate scientists. This is partly what Senator Rick Santorum did when he argued that the scientific consensus was only 43%.

Another implementation of the “fake expert” strategy is the use of petitions containing many scientists who lack climate science credentials. The most famous example is the Oregon Petition Project, which lists over 31,000 people with a science degree who signed a statement that humans aren’t disrupting the climate. However, 99.9% of the signatories aren’t climate scientists.

The science of science communication tells us that communicating the science isn’t sufficient. Misinformation has been shown to cancel out the effect of accurate scientific information. We also need to explain the techniques of misinformation, such as the “fake expert” strategy.

This is why in communicating the results of our latest study, we not only communicated the overwhelming scientific agreement. We also explained the technique used to cast doubt on the consensus.

John Cook, Climate Communication Research Fellow, Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Main image: Eggborough coal fired power station in England. Credit: Flickr/John Mabbit

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More than 10,000 people from 150 countries have signed up for a free online university course that aims to explain the science of climate science denial and give the public the best tools to fight misinformation.

The course, from the University of Queensland in Australia, has recruited some of the world’s leading climate scientists, along with psychologists, science historians and even world famous natural history presenter Sir David Attenborough, who all gave interviews for Denial101x.  Course instructors include scientists and contributors to the Skeptical Science website.

John Cook, course developer, instructor and Climate Communication Fellow at the university’s Global Change Institute, told DeSmogBlog the seven-week course would explain everything from the fundamentals of climate change science, to the techniques used by climate science deniers and the psychologies of denial.

He hopes the course will help to “close the consensus gap” – the chasm between the 97 per cent of expert scientists who accept that humans are causing climate change and members of the public, politicians and media commentators who still reject the science. 

Cook, the founder of the Skeptical Science climate myth debunking site, told DeSmogBlog:

Our course isn't about specific individuals because climate misinformation is like a renewable resource, recycled repeatedly by many individuals – it's a pity we can't harness energy from climate science denial.

We're countering any misinformation that distorts the science of climate change. We debunk a number of myths that downplay the existence of global warming, that deny humans are causing climate change and that seek to downplay the severity of climate impacts.

So our approach is to look at the empirical scientific research into the psychology of denial, and address general myths and misconceptions.

The course is recommended for anyone with a high school science qualification or higher and should take between one and two hours per week to complete. The Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) looks at what drives the rejection of climate science (spoiler alert, says Cook, “it’s political ideology”), then debunks some of the most common climate science myths, before looking at the psychology of denial and, finally, how to most effectively counter misinformation.

One section of the course contains first hand accounts of personal attacks faced by climate scientists, with contributions from Professor Michael Mann, of Penn State University, Harvard’s Professor Naomi Oreskes and Texas Tech University’s Professor Katherine Hayhoe. 

Summarising these tactics of climate science deniers who go on the attack, Dr Ben Santer, of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, says: “Go after the scientist. Go after their integrity. Go after their funding… make life miserable for them.”

Cook says the course's approach is based on research in a field of psychology known as “inoculation theory”.  He says:

This research finds that to stop misinformation from spreading, we need to expose people to a weak form of the misinformation – in the same way that we stop viruses from spreading by giving people flu shots: a weak form of the virus. This process of inoculation has been adopted in some university classes by professors in the US  – three of those professors are part of our course team. But a Massive Online Open Course with the ability to reach thousands of students all over the world offers a powerful opportunity to scale up inoculation against science denial to a much wider scale. 

So why a course on climate denial? Cook says it comes down to the right of the public to be well informed, but too many are currently confused by misinformation.

This confusion has significant societal consequences. For example, much of the public think there's an ongoing scientific debate about the basic fact that humans are causing global warming – despite the fact that there's 97% agreement among climate scientists. But when people aren't aware of the scientific consensus, they're less likely to support action to mitigate climate change. This is a key example of the damaging impact of misinformation, and why we need a course that counters misinformation and reduces the influence of climate science denial. Climate change affects everyone, and everyone can have a voice on what we can do to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

 Enrollments for Denial101x are still open. 

Image credit: University of Queensland

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Around the world scientists are not sleeping well. They toss and turn knowing humanity is destroying the Earth’s ability to support mankind. The science is crystal clear and all of us 'ought to shaking in our boots' Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme told me last year.

But hardly any of us are shaking in our boots. Why is that?

The most extensive survey about the scientific consensus that humanity is causing global warming was published Thursday May 16 in Environmental Research Letters (ERL). Researchers looked at 12,000 scientific scientific articles published between 1991 and 2011 on the subject and found 97.1% of the articles agreed global warming is primarily caused by human activities.

The fact there is a consensus on the causes of climate change is not new. Previous studies in 2011, 2009 and even back to 2004 had very similar results. Even during the early 1990s, there was a clear scientific consensus that global warming was underway and that burning fossil fuels was the main cause said John Cook of the University of Queensland and co-author of the peer-reviewed ERL study.

“However the public thinks there is a debate about this; that it's a 50-50 split amongst scientists,” Cook told DeSmog.

A 2012 poll from Pew Research found that less than half of Americans thought that scientists agreed humans were causing global warming. Cook said he's not aware of similar surveys in Canada but expects it might be higher in Canada – but no where close to 100% awareness – that there is a consensus amongst the more than 10,000 scientists from more than 70 countries surveyed in the study.

“The consensus is a global phenomena and it's been around for over 20 years. We should be talking about solutions,” he said.

Cook says he's hoping his study will help the public finally realize this and then they will push their governments to take action.

However, just recently Canada's Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver was widely reported casting doubt on climate change science saying “scientists have recently told us that our fears [about climate change] are exaggerated.”

Oliver cited as his expert source a newspaper columnist and well-known climate skeptic who has no expertise on the subject.

In recent years media rarely challenge false statements from politicians or even bother to fact-check their bland assurances that Canada does take the dangers of climate change very seriously. It is scientifically impossible for Canada to expand the tar sands and meet its climate protection commitments of working to keep global warming to less than 2C.

Nor are plans to dramatically expand the natural gas industry in BC to export LNG or to boost coal exports compatible with Canada's international commitments and moral obligations. Nor is drilling for oil or gas in the Arctic.

It's not just the Harper government's false statements and hypocritical policies that are misleading the public, there is an entire climate mis-information industry. Numerous think tanks, industry CEOs and associations and PR experts, some disguised as journalists, all claim we can burn and sell as much fossil fuel as we like.

And if climate change exists, it's not that big of a deal they say. Besides China is mostly to blame because they have a lot coal plants.

The avalanche of distortions and outright lies has become so bad and the public so confused that various groups have created fact-check websites such as the Oil Sands Reality Check launched today. On this site all facts are cited with sources and checked for their accuracy by a scientific advisory committee.

Expanding the tar sands and building pipelines are inconsistent with Canada's climate change commitments and government policy said Danny Harvey, a climate scientist at University of Toronto.

“There's no room in the atmosphere….we need to slowly phase out tar sands production or risk catastrophe,” Harvey said at a press conference today at the launch of the Oil Sands Reality Check website.

There cannot be a debate over the tar sands without having the real facts and that's what Oil Sands Reality Check site offers said Thomas Homer Dixon of the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ont.

“There are deep contradictions between tar sands production and the climate change reality,” said Homer Dixon, author of Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future.

“Canadians have not yet come to grips with this contradiction,” he said.

Image Credit: Harper's visit to NYC, May 16, 2013 by Erik McGregor via flickr.

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