This paper updates the analysis of funding of the Climate Change Countermovement from 2003 -2010 to 2003 -2018, doubling the time period of the previous analysis. Funding for the organizations in the CCCM has continually increased at a rate of 3.4% throughout the time period. The source of the vast majority (74%) of this funding cannot be identi ed. Where funding can be identi ed, it is dominated by contributions from a few large conservative philanthropies.

Recent scholarship suggests that groups who oppose acting on climate change have shifted their emphasis from attacking the credibility of climate science itself to questioning the policies intended to address it, a position often called ‘response skepticism’. As television is the platform most used by audiences around the world to receive climate information, we examine 30 news programmes on 20 channels in Australia, Brazil, Sweden, the UK and USA which included coverage of the 2021 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the Physical Science. Using manual quantitative content analysis, we find that skepticism about the science of climate change is still prevalent in channels that we have classified as ‘right-wing’, but largely absent from channels classified as ‘mainstream’. Forms of response skepticism are particularly common in ‘right-wing’ channels, but also present in some ‘mainstream’ coverage. Two of the most prominent discourses question the perceived economic costs of taking action and the personal sacrifices involved. We explore the implications of our findings for future research and climate communication.

This paper updates the analysis of funding of the Climate Change Countermovement from 2003 – 2010 to 2003 – 2018, doubling the time period of the previous analysis. Funding for the organizations in the CCCM has continually increased at a rate of 3.4% throughout the time period. The source of the vast majority (74%) of this funding cannot be identified. Where funding can be identified, it is dominated by contributions from a few large conservative philanthropies.

How did governmental experts respond publicly to the politicisation of climate change in the policy domain? Did they remain neutral to this process, resisted these efforts, or enabled them? Using longitudinal data derived from a content analysis of congressional testimonies provided by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) between 1983 and 2015, I find that the proportion of climate-related advocacy statements increased over time, yet their prevalence varied with the political context. As the agency’s position-taking on the issue intensified over time, this intensity was conditional on the political context. Most importantly, the EPA experts never denied the scientific basis of climate change, not even under presidential administrations that did, and instead advocated for climate action. These findings complicate traditional conceptualisations of experts as either independent from or subservient to politics, suggesting a more complex relationship where experts attempt to respond to contentious politics while maintaining continuity in their mission.