NASA Faked the Moon Landing—Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax

TLDR

Despite consensus that CO₂ emissions are altering the climate, many remain unconvinced, in part because climate‑change denial blogs have amplified skepticism. The authors surveyed visitors to climate‑blog sites to identify factors that influence acceptance or rejection of climate science. The results show that support for free‑market ideology and conspiratorial beliefs predicts rejection of climate science and other scientific facts, while belief in scientific consensus strongly predicts acceptance.

Abstract

Although nearly all domain experts agree that carbon dioxide emissions are altering the world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a platform for denial of climate change, and bloggers have taken a prominent role in questioning climate science. We report a survey of climate-blog visitors to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science. Our findings parallel those of previous work and show that endorsement of free-market economics predicted rejection of climate science. Endorsement of free markets also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that, above and beyond endorsement of free markets, endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the Federal Bureau of Investigation killed Martin Luther King, Jr.) predicted rejection of climate science as well as other scientific findings. Our results provide empirical support for previous suggestions that conspiratorial thinking contributes to the rejection of science. Acceptance of science, by contrast, was strongly associated with the perception of a consensus among scientists.