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

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0334544 November 12, 2025 21 / 23 28. Hsieh HF, Shannon SE. Three Approaches to Qualitative Content Analysis. Qual Health Res. 2005;15(9):1277–88. 29. Rahmstorf S. The Climate Skeptics. Weather catastrophes and climate change - Is there still hope for us? Munich: pg Verlag; 2005. p. 70–5. 30. Aton A. Trump’s climate denial shapes House GOP backbench. E&E News. 2023. 31. Almiron N, Boykoff M, Narberhaus M, Heras F. Dominant counter-frames in influential climate contrarian European think tanks. Clim Change. 2020. 32. McKie RE. Climate Change Counter Movement: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Sought to Delay Climate Action. Palgrave Macmillan. 2023. 33. Foucault M. Archaeology of knowledge. Abingdon UK: Routledge. 1989. 34. Krippendorff K. Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. Los Angeles: Sage; 2013. 35. McCright AM, Dunlap RE. Anti-reflexivity: The American Conservative Movement’s Success in Undermining Climate Science and Policy. Theory, Culture & Society. 2010;27(2–3):100–33. 36. Dunlap RE. Clarifying anti-reflexivity: conservative opposition to impact science and scientific evidence. Environ Res Lett. 2014;9(2):021001. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/9/2/021001 37. Tilly C, Wood LJ. Social movements 1768-2012. Routledge. 2016. 38. Lo CYH. Countermovements and Conservative Movements in the Contemporary U.S. Annu Rev Sociol. 1982;8(1):107–34. https://doi.org/10.1146/ annurev.so.08.080182.000543

39. Meyer DS, Staggenborg S. Movements, Countermovements, and the Structure of Political Opportunity. American Journal of Sociology. 1996;101(6):1628–60. https://doi.org/10.1086/230869 40. Boykoff M, Farrell J. Climate change countermovement organizations and media attention in the United States. Climate change denial and public relations: Strategic communication and interest groups in climate inaction. 2019. p. 121–39. 41. Conversi D, Hassan C, Posocco L. From climate change denial to war-mongering nationalism. International Journal of Political Ecology. 2023;31:99–122. 42. Brulle RJ. Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations. Climatic Change. 2013;122(4):681–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-1018-7 43. Farrell J. Network structure and influence of the climate change counter-movement. Nature Clim Change. 2015;6(4):370–4. https://doi.org/10.1038/ nclimate2875 44. McKie RE. Climate Change Counter Movement Neutralization Techniques: A Typology to Examine the Climate Change Counter Movement. Socio- logical Inquiry. 2018;89(2):288–316. https://doi.org/10.1111/soin.12246 45. Jacques PJ. Anglo Fears: Rejection of Climate Change and Anglo Anxiety. In: Vandeveer S, Weinthal E, Sowers J, Editors. Oxford Handbook of Comparative Environmental Politics. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press; 2021. p. 335–55. 46. Brulle RJ. Denialism: organized opposition to climate change action in the United States. Handbook of US Environmental Policy: Edward Elgar Publishing; 2020.

47. Almiron N, Xifra J. Climate Change Denial and Public Relations: Strategic communication and interest groups in climate inaction: Routledge; 2019. 48. Elsasser SW, Dunlap RE. Leading voices in the denier choir: Conservative columnists’ dismissal of global warming and denigration of climate science. Behav Sci. 2013;57(6):754–76. 49. Farrell J. Corporate funding and ideological polarization about climate change. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2016;113(1):92–7. https://doi. org/10.1073/pnas.1509433112 PMID: 26598653 50. Busch T, Judick L. Climate change—that is not real! A comparative analysis of climate-sceptic think tanks in the USA and Germany. Climatic Change. 2021;164(1–2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-02962-z 51. Cann HW, Raymond L. Does climate denialism still matter? The prevalence of alternative frames in opposition to climate policy. Environmental Politics. 2018;27(3):433–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1439353 52. Painter J, Ettinger J, Holmes D, Loy L, Pinto J, Richardson L, et al. Climate delay discourses present in global mainstream television coverage of the IPCC’s 2021 report. Commun Earth Environ. 2023;4(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00760-2 53. Brulle R, Carmichael J, Jenkins JC. Shifting public opinion on climate change: an empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate change in the U.S., 2002–2010. Clim Change. 2012;114(2):169–88. 54. Smith EK, Bognar MJ, Mayer AP. Polarisation of climate and environmental attitudes in the United States, 1973-2022. npj Climate Action. 2024;3(1):2.

55. Hamilton LC, Hartter J, Lemcke-Stampone M, Moore DW, Safford TG. Tracking Public Beliefs About Anthropogenic Climate Change. PLoS One. 2015;10(9):e0138208. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138208 PMID: 26422694 56. Dunlap RE, McCright AM, Yarosh JH. The Political Divide on Climate Change: Partisan Polarization Widens in the U.S. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development. 2016;58(5):4–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2016.1208995 57. McCright AM, Dunlap RE. Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in the United States. Global Environmental Change. 2011;21(4):1163–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.06.003 58. McCright AM. Anti-reflexivity and climate change skepticism in the US general public. Hum Ecol Rev. 2016;22(2):77–107.