5 signs of climate deniers

There are 5 signs of climate deniers or climate delayers or climate change trolls on social media and they tend to have common traits. It is useful to describe climate deniers falling in 2 camps.

Climate Deniers

Climate deniers make up about 3% of the globe but in some countries where climate denial media is dominant (USA or Australia) the rate of climate denialism can be as high as 8%. More common is climate delayers.

Climate Delayers

These individuals, corporations and governments have perverted the climate denier arguments and suggest that while we have climate change, we cannot affort to change, or too costly, we have time etc.

5 Signs of Climate Deniers Behaviour

  1. Anonymous
  2. Selective
  3. Persistent
  4. Diversionary
  5. Irrational.

For further reading check out this site for more rebuttals

1. Anonymous

Many times they have no public profile, with few friends or relationships. Typical social media advice is that if they have only recently joined and have a bland image as their profile, and have few friends.

  • This may be because they may be based in Russia or other places and due to spam and other reasons they may have time
  • Alternatively, they are genuine, but have been bought by the weaponisation of climate change denial and the $200 million dollars spent each year by the fossil fuel companies.

2. Selective

One of the key strategies previously in climate change deniers strategies was to deny the science. Typically

  • Science is not settled
  • CO2 is necessary for life
  • Plants and animals can adapt
  • This is the coldest winter we’ve had in years
  • Climate change is natural and normal—it’s happened at other points in history.
  • There’s no consensus among scientists that climate change is real
  • Climate change is good for us.
Per capita annual carbon dioxide emissions and cumulative country emissions. Data from the Global Carbon Project. Nature. Data from the Global Carbon Project

3. Persistent

Climate delayers are persistent. The most common arguments included

  • Economic denial – costs too much and will focus on investment in renewable energy.
  • Humanitarian denial – they say that it will be beneficial
  • Political denial – other countries are not doing anything, so we don’t need to.

4. Diversionary

  • Crisis denial – they will state that other reasons
  • Too many people (The club of Rome diversion)
  • Need to focus on poverty or education
  • Climate change deniers will tell you that more people die of the cold than heat, so warmer winters will be a good thing.

5. Illogical.

Most climate deniers make illogical statements without any reference. These similarly hollow arguments were used in the past to delay ending slavery, granting the vote to women, ending colonial rule, ending segregation, decriminalising homosexuality, bolstering worker’s rights and environmental regulations, allowing same sex marriages and banning smoking.

Marketing Spend by Climate Deniers

Anti-climate change lobbying spend by the five largest publicly-owned fossil fuel companies. Statista, CC BY-SA

Further Reading on Climate Denial and Climate Change

IPPC Reports on Climate Change

It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.”

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

11 Certainties about Climate Change

From Earth.Org 11 Interesting Facts about Climate Change with graphs (click here)

  1. We are certain we caused it
  2. The last decade was the hottest in 125,000 years
  3. The ocean absorbs most of the heat we produce
  4. CO2 is at its highest in 2 million years
  5. We are losing 1.2 trillion tons of ice each year
  6. Air pollution is both good and bad
  7. Attribution is now possible (extreme weather)
  8. Global warming is (partially) reversible
  9. We lost 302.4 billion work hours to excessive heat in 2019
  10. It could become too hot to live in many places by the end of the century
  11. The cost of inaction is higher than the opposite

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