The ‘Alice in Wonderland’ mechanics of the rejection of (climate) science: simulating coherence by conspiracism

Abstract

Science strives for coherence. For example, the findings from climate science form a highly coherent body of knowledge that is supported by many independent lines of evidence: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human economic activities are causing the global climate to warm and unless GHG emissions are drastically reduced in the near future, the risks from climate change will continue to grow and major adverse consequences will become unavoidable. People who oppose this scientific body of knowledge because the implications of cutting GHG emissions-such as regulation or increased taxation-threaten their worldview or livelihood cannot provide an alternative view that is coherent by the standards of conventional scientific thinking. Instead, we suggest that people who reject the fact that the Earth's climate is changing due to greenhouse gas emissions (or any other body of well-established scientific knowledge) oppose whatever inconvenient finding they are confronting in piece-meal fashion, rather than systematically, and without considering the implications of this rejection to the rest of the relevant scientific theory and findings. Hence, claims that the globe "is cooling" can coexist with claims that the "observed warming is natural" and that "the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us." Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that "something must be wrong" with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation. (2018) 195:175-196 This high-level coherence accompanied by contradictory subordinate propositions is a known attribute of conspiracist ideation, and conspiracism may be implicated when people reject well-established scientific propositions.

Influence and seepage: An evidence-resistant minority can affect public opinion and scientific belief formation

“…For example, belief polarization Jern, Chang, & Kemp, 2009) can be accommodated within a rational Bayesian framework, and it has been shown that Bayesian agents can form persistent "echo chambers," enclosed epistemic bubbles in which agents share most beliefs (Madsen, Bailey, & Pilditch, 2018). The use of rational agents also seemed advisable in light of several suggestions that climate denial can be considered a rational enterprise Lewandowsky, Cook, & Lloyd, 2016), notwithstanding its wholesale dismissal of scientific evidence.…”

“…Although we modeled denial by including a bias parameter, it does not follow that resistance to evidence is "irrational." On the contrary, denial has been identified as a rational political operation of considerable effectiveness (Lewandowsky, Cook, & Lloyd, 2016), and even under a fully Bayesian approach, resistance to evidence can be modeled by inclusion of auxiliary hypotheses Gershman, 2018).…”

Understanding and Countering Misinformation About Climate Change

“…There are a variety of arguments and rhetorical strategies employed in climate misinformation, some of which are mutually contradictory (Lewandowsky, Cook, and Lloyd, 2016). Identifying and analyzing these arguments yields insights into the psychology driving climate science denial, and provides foundational frameworks that inform refutational strategies.…”

El consenso sobre el origen humano del cambio del clima no ha sido demostrado aún

“…Esta línea argumental ya la expresaron Kahan et al (2011) al señalar cifras de consenso (entre el 45% y 15%) sobre la responsabilidad humana en el aumento de las temperaturas que relacionaron con atribuciones ideológicas y culturales. En la misma línea se encuentran también los textos de Bedford (2010), Bedford y Cook (2013), Benestad et al (2013), Kahan (2015) y Lewandowsky et al (2013Lewandowsky et al ( , 2016, muestras del evidente grado de ideologización que el debate ha alcanzado. Liu et al (2015) analizaron 1350 testimonios de 253 audiencias en el Congreso de EEUU (periodo 1969-2007) de los que 752 (55,7%) fueron de científicos, y catalogaron su opinión sobre si existe un cambio del clima y qué efecto tiene el hombre, pero sin señalar causa concreta.…”

“…Los defensores del planteamiento del IPCC, que en sus versiones más radicales reducen la hipótesis a que el hombre es el causante del cambio del clima por la emisión de CO 2 , llegan a lo absoluto al afirmar que se ha alcanzado la denominada "settled science", la ciencia definitiva, y que el debate está cerrado. En su argumentación afirman que (i) una cosa es disentir y otra crear infundios, (ii) que la discrepancia puede ser legítima e ilegítima, porque la discrepancia puede esconder oscuras intenciones ligadas a una conspiración para desinformar a la sociedad (Biddle y Leuschner, 2015), y por último (iii) se defiende la tesis argumentando que está basada en el consenso científico (Benestad et al, 2013;Bedford y Cook, 2013;Lewandowsky et al, 2013Lewandowsky et al, , 2016. O dicho de otro modo: están en posesión de la absoluta verdad.…”