How Believing Climate Change is a “Hoax” Shapes Climate Skepticism in the United States

‘Scientists don’t care about truth anymore’: the climate crisis and rejection of science in Canada’s oil country

“…As evidenced in the empirical work discussed above (Haney 2021;Haney and McDonald-Harker 2017;McDonald-Harker, Bassi, and Haney 2021), the 2013 Southern Alberta Flood left many people wondering what they did not know about environmental problems and climate change -a finding consistent with research in other geographic contexts demonstrating how first-hand experience of negative environmental events decreases things like conspiracy ideation among climate change skeptics (Sarathchandra and Haltinner 2020). The flood exposed gaps in their knowledge and changed their views.…”

“…As the follow section teaches us, communities reliant on fossil fuel extraction are particularly prone to this sort of denial. First, however, it is also important to note that disasters also play a role in shifting climate change beliefs and environmental concern, as first-hand experience of disaster and/or extreme weather events has been found to alter such views, often in the direction of greater acceptance of the scientific consensus and greater environmental concern (Sarathchandra and Haltinner 2020;Hamilton, Safford, and Ulrich 2012;Cutler 2016;Tanner and Árvai 2018;Tidball 2012;Kato, Passidomo, and Harvey 2014). This debate is far from settled, however, and it should be noted that this is not the case during and after all crises (Hamilton et al 2016), and that these perspectival changes do not necessarily translate into actions or pro-environmental behaviors (Dessai and Sims 2010), owing to a disconnect between actions undertaken and severe impacts of climate change, which may happen far away from the highest-contributing communities (Zahran et al 2008).…”

“…Messaging from think tanks feeds into widespread belief in conspiracy theories in Alberta -a strain of thought originating in right-wing populist political movements dating back to the 1930's which situated Albertans as victims of various federal and global conspiracies (Shamchuk 2012). In the United States, those believing in a global climate conspiracy make up a sizable minority of climate change deniers, and this group is disproportionately composed of higherearning, right-wing, religious, educated older men (Sarathchandra and Haltinner 2020). As Lewandowsky, Oberauer, and Gignac (2013) find, conspiratorial beliefs tend to coalesce as those who believe in one conspiracy theory also tend to believe in others.…”

“…Further, they find that endorsement of freemarket economics (a common position in Alberta, as I discuss below) is predictive of climate change denial. Though scientists are not normally the main party implicated in such conspiracy theory beliefs, those who hold such beliefs nevertheless do hold a measurable distrust in science (Drummond and Fischhoff 2017;, even relative to other types of climate deniers (Sarathchandra and Haltinner 2020).…”

“…She says that this 'fearmongering' is done by politicians and scientists with regard to the climate crisis, specifically. Such accounts imply that scientists are stoking public fear in order to gain something personally, implying at least some degree of conspiratorial thinking found in climate change research from other jurisdictions (Sarathchandra and Haltinner 2020;Haltinner and Saratchandra 2020).…”