{"id":28758,"date":"2025-12-09T10:59:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T15:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/?p=28758"},"modified":"2025-12-09T11:01:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T16:01:23","slug":"monmouth-study-provides-insights-on-the-nature-of-climate-science-denial-arguments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/2025\/12\/09\/monmouth-study-provides-insights-on-the-nature-of-climate-science-denial-arguments\/","title":{"rendered":"Study Provides Insights on the Nature of Climate Science Denial Arguments"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If the vast majority of scientists believe that climate change is happening and human activities are the main driver, why do so many Americans doubt it? Monmouth University Professor Peter Jacques recently completed a 12-year analysis of over 100 books rejecting climate science in an attempt to understand the roots and reasoning of the arguments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-medium is-style-left-bracket\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" style=\"object-position: 53.555% 32.105%\" src=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/58\/2025\/12\/Peter-Jacques-3-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Peter Jacques portrait\" class=\"wp-image-28759\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/58\/2025\/12\/Peter-Jacques-3-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/58\/2025\/12\/Peter-Jacques-3-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/58\/2025\/12\/Peter-Jacques-3-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/58\/2025\/12\/Peter-Jacques-3-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/58\/2025\/12\/Peter-Jacques-3.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Rechnitz Family\/Urban Coast Institute Endowed Chair in Marine and Environmental Law and Policy Peter Jacques<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Jacques, the University\u2019s Rechnitz Family\/Urban Coast Institute (UCI) endowed chair in marine and environmental law and policy, pored over climate denial books going back to the 1980s along with co-author and Oklahoma State Regents Professor of Sociology Emeritus Riley Dunlap and undergraduate students in Jacques\u2019 research lab. The team coded the books and cataloged whether they made arguments in one or more of the four following categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Trend Denial (81 percent): Global warming never occurred, stopped, or that the data describing it is unreliable.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Attribution Denial: (94 percent): Climate change may be happening, but it\u2019s not at all or not primarily the fault of humans.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Impact Denial (76 percent): Increased warming\/carbon dioxide levels will actually be beneficial, not harmful, or not as harmful to society as science claims.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Policy Denial (94 percent): Climate mitigation policies are ineffective or harmful.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Jacques said the most common argument in the books was that greenhouse gases were not a cause of climate change, which is consistent with attribution denial claims being made in 94 percent of the books. The high rate of policy denial claims logically follows; if human activities such as burning fossil fuels aren\u2019t causing warming, then there would be no need to change behaviors. However, the study found that criticisms of specific aspects of climate science were usually presented as symptoms of broader issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s never really about the science \u2013 it\u2019s always about something bigger,\u201d Jacques said. \u201cFor example, you\u2019ll have a claim that greenhouse gases don\u2019t cause climate change, but it will be connected to a claim that there\u2019s a foundational problem with the integrity of science.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jacques said many of the arguments examined were introduced with a reasonable premise \u2013 for example, that climate change is happening, but is not as severe as some say. Upon reading on, though, the books inevitably attacked the basics of climate science, alleged it was being manipulated by outside forces, or raised questions that have already been studied as something new. For a layman who doesn\u2019t have access to the scientific literature or the time or training to make sense of it, Jacques said it is natural to conclude from the back and forth that there is a legitimate scientific divide on matters that are settled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe problem is what I call \u2018the science trap,\u2019\u201d Jacques said. \u201cWe often can\u2019t tell apart a genuine dispute inside the technical science from a politically manufactured controversy, especially if that narrative is coming from credentialed scientists.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The study explores the origins of climate science denial, concluding that it picked up significant momentum around 1992. That year, the United Nations held its landmark Rio Summit, which established the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change that was later responsible for the Kyoto Protocols and landmark Paris Climate Agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What was different about climate denial than earlier and less successful battles against environmental causes was that it wasn\u2019t tied to economic grievances or the loss of liberties, such as rights to take natural resources that were proposed for protections. Instead it attacked science head on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe climate change countermovement changed tactics and it hid the anti-environmental element,\u201d Jacques said. \u201cIt was no longer initially saying something like protecting the wilderness was bad, but your science is bad. That engages the broader public. We all want to have good information to make policies that are rational and based in reality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The paper concludes much of the opposition to climate science is motivated by \u201canti-reflexivity,\u201d a resistance to change course in response to new societal problems. The anti-climate science movement is also the most organized in economically powerful nations with entrenched fossil fuel industries, with the U.S. being foremost among them, according to Jacques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The full study, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/journals.plos.org\/plosone\/article?id=10.1371\/journal.pone.0334544\">Foundations of climate change denial: Anti-environmentalism and anti-science,<\/a>\u201d was published in the journal PLOS One.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If the vast majority of scientists believe that climate change is happening and human activities are the main driver, why do so many Americans doubt it? Monmouth University Professor Peter Jacques recently completed a 12-year analysis of over 100 books rejecting climate science in an attempt to understand the roots and reasoning of the arguments. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":28760,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-11 18:36:09","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28762,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28758\/revisions\/28762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/uci\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}