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

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334544 November 12, 2025 12 / 23 4.3 Attribution denial • Claims span from “natural causes,” e.g., increasing solar heat, to a climate system insensitive to additional car- bon, to claims that the carbon dioxide does not stem from human emissions, to claims that we cannot know what causes changes in climate. Authors often call climate models unreliable, such as Cotton and Pielke, Sr. (1995), while others simply cast doubt on the entire greenhouse theory in general. Cotton and Pielke, Sr.’s first edition was self-published by Aster* Press, then Cambridge University Press published subsequent editions in 1995 and 2007. Assuming CUP had it reviewed, this appears to be the only peer-reviewed book in the data (making 99% of the denial books unvetted by peer-review), which may be why the language is much more tempered and careful com- pared to other books. An example of this type of claim is found in Macrae: From the start, instead of claiming “certainty,” a concept that has no place in science, climate scientists could have explained to the public that their models are tentative. They could have admitted in 2007, when the non-warming of the 21st century became clear, that the planet wasn’t warming, rather than attacking those who were simply stating the truth. lnstead, the IPCC’s 2007 report declared that warming of the 21st century was “unequivocal,” an astonishing conclusion but quite in line with the IPCC’s agenda of creating climate fear rather than climate reason (Macrae 2010, p. 310).

• The role of CO2 in AGW is exaggerated or wrong. The greenhouse effect is considered to be fact, whereas the enhanced greenhouse effect is an unproven theory (Bate and Morris, 1994, p. 14). And When viewed in geological context, and assessed against factual data, the greenhouse hypothesis fails (Carter, 2010, p. 29). The earliest book in the data set, Carbon Dioxide: Friend of Foe? (Idso 1982), claims that carbon actually cools the climate: …what conclusion could possibly be drawn from these global temperature data other than that enhanced atmospheric CO2 concentrations either tend to cool the Earth or to exert no climatic influence whatever? No one who is truthful to himself can honestly say otherwise (p. 59, emphasis in original). • Doubt that increasing CO2 is from human emissions. • Only God can change the climate. 4.4 Impact denial. Impact denial claims argue that increased warming/CO2 will be beneficial or rejects negative impacts. • A warmer world will be an improved world. • A rejection of a long list of problems: