BELIEF IN DISSENTER MESSAGES VS. ANTHROPOGENIC CLIMATE CHANGE ACCEPTANCE: A HARD LESSON IN CLIMATE EDUCATION

Organized climate change dissention dedicates a considerable amount of resources to spread misinformation regarding anthropogenic climate change (ACC). Anti-ACC messages work in opposition to the efforts of formal and informal climate educators. Misinformation produced by organized dissention covers a wide range of topics which we group into several common themes: naïve scientific & non-scientific statements which attack the science of ACC, sophisticated scientific statements which imply warming is not anthropogenic, arguments that assert recent warming is natural or out of our control, arguments that imply changes are simply part of a larger cycle, and statements that highlight the benefits of a warming climate.

Our research focused on determining which dissenter message theme is most associated with dissent. Participants (N=971) from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk responded to the Anthropogenic Climate Change Dissenter Inventory and results were subjected to multivariate logistic regression. Respondents who agreed that recent warming is only part of a larger cycle were the most likely to reject ACC when compared to agreement with other dissenter message themes. Other stronger correlations included participants’ preferred news network and political ideology. Interestingly, belief in claims that scientists unethically conduct research or that a warming climate would be beneficial were not significantly correlated with dissent.

Others have argued that ACC knowledge is not a strong predictor of dissent. However, these researchers often use self-assessed knowledge (e.g., “how much do you know about ACC”) in lieu of an ACC assessment when making claims. The prevalence of misinformation may be driving these researchers’ results—that belief or concern is lower for those with a higher understanding of the science of ACC. With that said, our results agree with these researchers’ assertion that knowledge is not the strongest predictor of dissent. Implications for educators may include teaching ACC in the context of society, including why an individual’s trusted source of news may provide them with misleading information regarding the phenomenon. In other words, effective ACC instruction must move beyond teaching ‘just the science’ and include discourse concerning misinformation and organized dissent.