Foundations of climate change denial: Anti-environmentalism and anti-science

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334544 November 12, 2025 11 / 23 In both examples, the denial claim and the reason for denial are in the same discussion in the chapter section and are tied to each other through direct explanation. These samples demonstrate the insight provided by examining the larger semantic ecosystem, and the opportunity to read more deeply into denial narratives, which we would miss if we looked at the denial claim alone. 4.1 Results of stage one coding. Table 1 shows the frequencies of the denial codes from Stage One, which indicates most books (94%) reject GHGs attribution and mitigation policy. All books had to make a claim in at least one denial category to be included in the population, but the average book made claims in 3.3 categories. Thus, a majority of the books rejected most climate science categories and the need for GHG-reduction policies. In fact, about half of the books (49%) expressed all four categories of denial and 77% expressed at least three kinds of denial. However, only three books kept to one category of science rejection and therefore did not make a case against mitigation policy, demonstrating the rarity of this position. This tells us there is a high degree of consistency and durability amongst the denial claims across nearly thirty years. Here we describe some of the findings, quoting sparingly for space, from the data listed in the supporting information, again, cited with parenthetical references to distinguish them from academic references in the work cited list.

4.2 Rejection of the warming trend. Trend denial occurs in three major claims: warming never occurred, warming stopped, or that the data describing warming is unreliable. Here are representative claims made by authors in the dataset, with each bullet point a sub-theme of the larger denial category: • That there is no warming at all “They show that the greenhouse heat is entirely dissipated to outer space by the cloud generated by the greenhouse effect. Therefore there is no greenhouse heat left on earth to generate global warming” (Fong 2005, xv). • That warming stopped from somewhere between the 1970s to the 2000s: There is irrefutable scientific evidence that global temperatures are NOT rising (in fact, temperatures have dropped slightly since 1998).…” (Huseman 2010, back cover). • That temperature data is unreliable, e.g., land and satellite temperature measures do not agree, or that urban heat islands corrupt temperature measurements, and that climate scientists cannot be trusted, e.g., Mann’s “hockey stick” temperature reconstruction. According to the USHCN [US Historical Climatology Network run by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] archives, the temperature has warmed only.5°F since the mid- l800s. Tossing out corrupted USHCN data, there has actually been a net-cooling since 1930-during the same period in which atmospheric C02 has noticeably increased (Sussman 2010, p. 61). Table 1. Books that Assert Attribution, Trend, Impact, and Policy Denial. Trend Denial Attribution Denial Impact Denial Policy Denial Total 87 101 82 102

Percent 81 94 76 94 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334544.t001