Geography and politics influence climate change denial in the United States
Researchers examine Twitter data and find climate change denial prevalent in the South and among the GOP
I’ve been on a roll this last month or so when it comes to apprehending how others view the reality of climate change. In January I looked at how religious affiliation affects a person’s belief in climate change. More recently, I ran across an interesting study of geography, politics, and other factors that affect a person’s acceptance or denial of global warming’s reality.
Researchers from Nanjing University in China and the University of Michigan ingeniously used data from Twitter (now called X by the very rich guy who owns it) to look at climate change denial, who disbelieves the science and why. The team examined tweets from November 2017 through May 2019. Mining this type of data is quicker and less costly than traditional survey methods, and as the sample size is much larger, it may give more reliable results. The scientists published their results in the journal Scientific Reports last week.
The researchers found that almost 15 percent of Americans deny the reality of climate change, with most of those rejecting the science living in the central states and the South. The rate of denial in some states exceeds 20 percent. Folks who live on the West Coast, Northern Atlantic states, and New England tend to believe the science.
The data revealed pockets of believers and disbelievers within those general geographic trends. About 12 percent of Californians say that global warming isn’t real, yet Shasta County, near the Oregon border, has a denial rate of 52 percent. Travis County, Texas, where Austin is situated, has a denial rate of 13 percent, well below the state average of 21 percent.
The researchers further parsed the Twitter data by county. While they were unable to link a denier with his or her voting record, they found that counties with a high rate of climate denialism also had a high percentage of GOP voters. They also found a high correlation between climate denialism and dependence on fossil fuels. The percentages of deniers dropped in counties with overall higher education levels and higher COVID vaccination rates.
The researchers then looked at cyberspace and who was retweeting whom. They found a small cyberspace community of deniers and a much larger community of believers. Deniers shared 15,000 retweets among their own followers (termed co-retweeting by the researchers), while believers produced 224,000 co-retweets.
Of the denialist tweeters, former president Trump had the biggest influence, with The Daily Wire, The Daily Caller, and Breitbart also producing climate-denying tweets that were heavily retweeted. I am only slightly familiar with Breitbart, having clicked on the website a couple of times a few years ago, and I am thoroughly unfamiliar with The Daily Wire and Caller. The researchers say that all of them “regularly broadcast contrarian views on climate change.”
Among prominent denialists is Dinesh D'Souza, who established a career in rightwing politics in the 1980s. He has produced a number of political books and movies that are critical of liberals and Democrats, such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. One of his most recent movies, 2000 Mules, is based on the claims of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election, which supposedly tilted the results to Joe Biden. I’ve not seen it, but the film is broadly debunked by sources such as The Denver Post, FactCheck.org, and Reuters.
The authors of the study identified Townhall Media and Climate Depot, along with some right wing political commentators and activists as producers of outright disinformation and misinformation on climate. The authors suggest that these climate deniers are “enabling climate change denialism to amplify and expand.”
The larger group of Twitter users who accepted and tweeted about the reality of climate change were dominated by political figures, including Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent Democrats, such as Sheldon Whitehouse and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well as Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders. Of the top 30 tweeters, four are long-standing, mainstream news outlets: The New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, and ABC.
Cold snaps in different parts of the U.S. increased tweeting among climate deniers, while wildfires and hurricanes increased the number of tweets from those who accepted the climate science. Climate deniers often tweeted that climate change is a hoax or a conspiracy orchestrated to dupe the public into supporting projects and policies that will ultimately enrich a “Blue elite.”
How this research might help us
The researchers don’t offer much hope that Twitter or other social media could change climate deniers’ minds. They found almost zero crossover of retweets from believers to deniers, and vice versa. Believers have almost no chance of engaging deniers in conversation on climate, at least on Twitter.
Even outside of Twitter, communicating with climate deniers is more than a challenge. On this platform, Substack, I’ve witnessed climate denial intransigence, having recently read on Notes a critical assessment of climate scientist Michael Mann’s recent court battle. Mann sued Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn, both conservative writers, for defamation and won. Conservatives and climate deniers criticized Mann for being angry or even appearing lonely in the courtroom, anything but acknowledge that he legitimately won his case in court.
More so, many of these deniers exist in a cognitive unreality. Former president Trump has insisted, falsely, that he won the 2020 election, an untruth believed by 70 percent of Republicans. As noted above, Dinesh D'Souza, a prominent climate denier, repeats and supports Trump’s claim. The researchers found also lower rates of COVID vaccinations among deniers, which may indicate an anti-science bias and a buy-in with much of the politically generated misinformation concerning the virus.
Also, ever since I was a child, I’ve noticed how gleefully people love to believe false things, sometimes the more fantastical the better. They can feel they are in on a secret, that they have special knowledge. It can be a lot more fun (and less scary) to believe an evil cabal of scientists, party operatives, reporters, and government employees have taken decades to create a vast climate change conspiracy rather than acknowledge the reality of climate change and that it will change and destroy much of the world that we know and love.
Finally, a good question to ask is Do these deniers make a difference? Are their numbers and voices sufficient enough to impede progress on climate change? History doesn’t give us much guidance here. Great progressive legislation of the 1960s, the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, was passed despite vocal opposition. On the other hand, in the 1970s the Equal Rights Amendment was close to ratification. Almost at the last minute, a small but very vocal group kept it from becoming part of our Constitution.
I’d like to end on an upbeat note: I’ve recently encountered Republicans, even some who identify as MAGA, who nonetheless believe the science of global heating. I’m hoping to find some more of these folks and talk to them. Maybe, this will be the subject of a future Green Dispatch. I’m guessing it might be these folks—and not the Bernie Sanders and Michael Manns of the world—who can convince the deniers of the reality and dangers of climate change.
I’ve been thinking about this recently too, but along the lines of climate concern is classist, in addition to political and geopolitical.
'.....an anti-science bias and a buy-in with much of the politically generated misinformation concerning the virus.'
The thing is, a lot of these people who believe such far right-wing propaganda are pissed off as well as strongly distrust the whole system and its institutions.
Now, while they are indeed justified in their feelings towards the system, the problem is that they've become too emotional, and so aren't thinking rationally and using common sense towards certain facts. Herein lies the main challenge in getting through to them.
Insightful article, Paul.