Climate Change Denial and Beliefs About Science

Karen Kovaka (Virginia Tech)

University of Toronto

Wednesday, October 17, 2018 12:00 pm EDT

University of Toronto
IHPST Common Room
Victoria College. Third Floor
Toronto, ON M5S 1K6, Canada

Social scientists have offered a number of explanations for why Americans commonly
deny that human-caused climate change is real. In this paper, I argue that these explanations
neglect an important group of climate change deniers: those who say they are on the side of
science while also rejecting what they know most climate scientists accept. I then develop a
“nature of science” hypothesis that does account for this group of deniers. According to this
hypothesis, people have serious misconceptions about what scientific inquiry ought to look like.
Their misconceptions interact with partisan biases to produce denial of human-caused climate
change. After I develop this hypothesis, I propose ways of confirming that it is true. Then I
consider its implications for efforts to combat climate change denial, and for other cases of
public rejection of science.

Please contact Michael Miller (mike.miller@utoronto.ca) if you would like a copy of the paper.