Climate change deniers why

How do you respond? I respond that the easiest way to lose a war is to deny that you are in one. This is not a war that we choose to be in. But powerful interests have engineered the most well-funded and elaborate public relations campaign in the history of Earth to block progress on climate. We need to recognize that these are not actors who are going to play nice with us. They are not engaged in a good faith conversation based on facts and logical arguments.

After detailing the systematic efforts to block action on climate in the book, you say that you are optimistic. What makes you hopeful? But we might get a climate bill that involves market mechanisms, as well as incentives. President-elect Joe Biden is pretty pragmatic on this. For too long, we have allowed this issue to be framed entirely as one of science or economics or policy and politics.

People of good will are finally demanding action. Richard Schiffman is an environmental journalist based in New York City. Credit: Nick Higgins. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. But losing massive areas of natural vegetation through deforestation and changes in land use completely nullifies this minor fertilisation effect.

Climate change deniers will tell you that more people die of the cold than heat, so warmer winters will be a good thing.

This is deeply misleading. Vulnerable people die of the cold because of poor housing and not being able to afford to heat their homes. Society, not climate, kills them. This argument is also factually incorrect. In the US, for example, heat-related deaths are four times higher than cold-related ones.

This may even be an underestimate as many heat-related deaths are recorded by cause of death such as heart failure, stroke, or respiratory failure, all of which are exacerbated by excessive heat. Climate change deniers argue we cannot take action because other countries are not taking action. But not all countries are equally guilty of causing current climate change.

Given the historic legacy of greenhouse gas pollution, developed countries have an ethical responsibility to lead the way in cutting emissions. But ultimately, all countries need to act because if we want to minimise the effects of climate change then the world must go carbon zero by Deniers will also tell you that there are problems to fix closer to home without bothering with global issues.

But many of the solutions to climate change are win-win and will improve the lives of normal people. Developing a green economy provides economic benefits and creates jobs. Improving the environment and reforestation provides protection from extreme weather events and can in turn improve food and water security. The final piece of climate change denial is the argument that we should not rush into changing things, especially given the uncertainty raised by the other four areas of denial above.

The deniers have nothing to contribute to this. However infuriating they are, arguing with them or debunking their theories is likely only to generate publicity or money for them. It also helps to generate a fake air of controversy over climate action that provides cover for the vested interests seeking to delay the end of the fossil fuel age. But the deniers are not all the same. They tend to fit into one of four different categories: the shill, the grifter, the egomaniac and the ideological fool.

The shill is the easiest to understand. He, and it almost always is he, is paid by vested interests to emit clouds of confusion about the science or economics of climate action. This uncertainty creates a smokescreen behind which polluters can lobby against measures that cut their profits. A sadder case is that of the grifters. They have found themselves earning a living by grinding out contrarian articles for rightwing media outlets. Do they actually believe the guff they write?

The egomaniacs are also tragic figures. They are desperate for recognition, and, when it stubbornly refuses to arrive, they are drawn to make increasingly extreme pronouncements, in the hope of finally being proved a dogma-busting, 21st-century Galileo. The ideological fool is the fourth type of climate denier, and they can be intelligent. But they are utterly blinded by their inane, no-limits version of the free-market creed.