Climate denial has moved from disputing data to defunding its collection

Evidence

Taken together, conspiracist hoax claims and the corporate misinformation and campaign funding strategy suppress the realities of climate change and distort public discussion in remarkable ways. For example, they have resulted in a gag rule that prevents the military from taking facts about climate change into account in its planning. A 2003 Pentagon report recognized rising sea levels and desertification as security threats, and a 2014 Department of Defense report “categorized climate conflict as a near term strategic challenge.” Yet 216 members of Congress supported an amendment blocking the military from considering the impact of climate change in its strategic planning. In another case, the word climate was eliminated from the mission statement of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Across the board, offices and programs with responsibility for collecting and analyzing data are eliminated or starved of resources; the Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency announced its intention to defund satellites and ocean buoys that keep track of climate changes. As environmental activist Bill McKibben wrote, “We’re not just going to ignore the mounting evidence, we’re going to stop collecting it.” Government scientists and other professionals responsible for estimating the risks of climate change are not the only ones whose work is obstructed and who face this malignant normality; on a vast swath of issues affecting public health and security, whole agencies are going dark. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 252

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the corruption-of-knowledge themes relevant to infrastructure and governance; the gag rule blocking military climate planning pairs with how denial migrates from argument to data-suppression.
• SHARE: For anyone tracking climate/environmental policy: the 216-member congressional amendment gagging military planning and NOAA stripping the word ‘climate’ are concrete, citable instances.
• XREF: connects to: Exxon deliberately reversed its climate research to fund denial when regulation loomed — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 246; Climate denial trades on manufactured doubt, not persuasion of scientists — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 927; Denial’s second stage concedes warming but disputes causes and models (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Denial’s second stage concedes warming but disputes causes and models #expands (0.85)
• Climate change denial escalates through stages that progressively free behavior from moral self-sanctions #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2729
• Climate denial trades on manufactured doubt, not persuasion of scientists #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 927
• Tobacco’s manufactured doubt predated and enabled climate denial playbooks #corroborates (0.72) — Jamal Awil, The Whispering Archive, 788
• Manufactured doubt, not genuine debate, explains public confusion over climate science consensus #corroborates (0.72) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 75
• Fossil fuel funding manufactured doubt that made climate change a partisan media issue #corroborates (0.72) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 160
• Corporations manufacture doubt as a deliberate product to block climate action #corroborates (0.72) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 108