CLIMATE CHANGE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS PROFESSIONAL

Historians of science have detailed the political origins of the CCC movement, documenting how its strategic efforts succeeded in distorting the science-based narrative on multiple fronts, e.g., by promoting the idea that there is a lack of scientific consensus concerning anthropogenic CC 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, despite the fact that objective research has found little evidence for such a claim. Yet, while an anthropogenic cause is supported by an overwhelming majority of climate change scientists (CCS) 5, climate change contrarians (CCC) have successfully organized a strong voice within politics and science communication in the United States 6, 7. Since the early 2000s there has been little disagreement among scientific experts over the fundamental evidence supporting the existence, origin, and societal significance of anthropogenic climate change (CC) 1, 2, 3, 4.

CLIMATE CHANGE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS PROFESSIONAL

These results demonstrate why climate scientists should increasingly exert their authority in scientific and public discourse, and why professional journalists and editors should adjust the disproportionate attention given to contrarians.

Yet when comparing visibility in mainstream media sources only, we observe just a 1% excess visibility, which objectively demonstrates the crowding out of professional mainstream sources by the proliferation of new media sources, many of which contribute to the production and consumption of climate change disinformation at scale. Here we show via direct comparison that contrarians are featured in 49% more media articles than scientists.

Projecting these individuals across the same backdrop facilitates quantifying disparities in media visibility and scientific authority, and identifying organization patterns within their association networks. We juxtapose 386 prominent contrarians with 386 expert scientists by tracking their digital footprints across в€ј200,000 research publications and в€ј100,000 English-language digital and print media articles on climate change.

Climate change national academies press