Think Tank Networks and the Knowledge-Interest Nexus: The Case of Climate Change. Chapter 10: Challenging Climate Change: The Denial Countermovement Riley E. Dunlap and Aaron M. McCright Chapter 11: The Climate Change Divide in Social Theory Robert J. Antonio and Brett Clark Chapter 12: Methodological Approaches for Sociological Research on Climate Change Sandra T. Marquart-Pyatt, Andrew K. Jorgenson, and Lawrence C. Hamilton While there has been progress in natural science understanding of climate change, social science research has not been as fully developed. Although Governor Wolf in January took the welcome step of issuing Pennsylvania’s first executive order on climate change which included a goal of reducing GHGs by 26 percent reduction by 2025 and an 80 percent reduction by 2050, from 2005 levels, these targets are woefully short of Pennsylvania’s fair share of needed global action to achieve the 2015 Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting warming as close as possible to 1.5 0C and no greater than 2.0 o C and nothing has yet been done to decarbonize the Pennsylvania economy as required of the world to by the Paris Agreement. Yet when I pointed out that their scientific representatives had agreed to the very same language under discussion in a  meeting of climate scientists the year before, all countries finally agreed to stipulate that the growing global warming was human-caused. On this website, we have consistently noted that scientific skepticism is the oxygen of the scientific method and should be encouraged even on climate change issues. The book also explains how the denial countermovement has evolved, changed, and expanded over the past quarter-century, changes that included new key actors, supporters, and tactics while the basic strategy of manufacturing uncertainty has expanded into manufacturing public controversy about climate science up until the present (Dunlap, R. and McCright, A., 2015, p.309). (2015). The book also describes how the denial countermovement which began in the United States was diffused internationally to countries including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia,  and recently into several European countries including France, Sweden, and the Netherlands (Dunlap R. &  McCriight, A., 2015, p.316). (2015). And so there is a growing body of sociological work that is now available to help citizens understand how the cultural understanding of climate change has been manipulated at the federal level in the United States and in several other countries. 8. Mr. Wrightstone’s claims about climate change made during the March 31 hearing not only have never been peer-reviewed, but they were also either dramatically inconsistent with peer-reviewed climate change science or were cherry-picked facts that although true on their face do not undermine the conclusions of peer-reviewed science. Climate Change Countermovement Organizations and Media Attention in the United States. In addition, every national GHG emissions reduction target is implicitly a position on the nation’s fair share of safe global emissions. For this reason, all the nations of the world in 2015 agreed to adopt policies that limited warming to as close as possible to 1.5 0C but no greater than 2.0 0C. The above illustration depicts, in a very abbreviated and sketchy form, that as the scientific evidence of the threat from human-induced climate change became stronger over a 40-year period and as the US political opposition to climate change policies successfully fought to prevent the adoption of robust US climate policies, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 rose from below 320 ppm (parts per million) to current levels of over 400 ppm. While there has been significant progress in natural science understanding of climate change, social science analyses have not been as fully developed. Challenging climate change: The denial countermovement. , and if you can't find the answer there, please R. 2015, p.12). So I started my research by googling “climate scepticism,” and my first hit was the Wikipaedia article on “Climate Change Denial.” (There is no Wiki article on climate scepticism.) (eds.) 7. PDF | On Aug 10, 2015, Riley E. Dunlap and others published Challenging Climate Change: The Denial Countermovement | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate RE Dunlap, AM McCright. denial countermovement, conservative think tanks, contrarian scientists, neoliberalism, manufacturing uncertainty, international diffusion. The 5th assessment was published in 2014 and was written by 861 climate scientists whose nominations were reviewed to determine whether they had expert qualifications in climate science. (Caniglia, B.,S., Brulle, R. and Szasz, S., 2015, p.237)  For this reason,  proponents of climate change policies should seek to widely educate civil society about who has funded the numerous participants in the climate change countermovement and the morally reprehensible tactics that they have used. 3. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use. Yet the “facts” of science are established in constant testing through peer-review. This analysis attributes the displacement of Keynesian  economics from the late 1940s until the 1970s by the anti-regulatory economics of  neoliberalism as responsible for a fundamental shift in governing philosophy that significantly reduced constraints on capital accumulation and growth. One of the tools in this effort has been to financially support or publicize the claims of climate skeptics whose claims frequently have not been subjected to peer review. Therefore, those working to improve government and individual responses to climate change should adjust their tactics to respond to the insights of sociologists that have concluded that citizens need to understand how the cultural understanding of climate change has been shaped by powerful actors who have used sophisticated tactics to achieve support for their position that climate change policies should be opposed on the basis of scientific uncertainty and unacceptable costs to the economy. 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