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Environmental-Use-77 t1_jc63a37 wrote

So climate change deniers would and sometimes still do refute climate change because it would cost too much money to make the acknowledgment and thus change to green technology. So what is keeping them from acknowledging irrefutable data and evidence that climate change is happening?

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MamaMiaPizzaFina t1_jc64rlp wrote

like they care about facts and logic?

It is like a sports game for them. they will support their home team no matter what.

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DisasterousGiraffe t1_jc850jk wrote

"Worldwide, climate change sceptics fall into three main categories.

First of all, you have the climate denialists, who are economically motivated. For example, fake activists are paid by the fossil fuel industries with the aim of delaying action against global warming. This has already been extensively documented.

Then there are the political climate sceptics, who reject the reality of global warming and denigrate the measures proposed to address it, mainly to undermine the political opponents who support these initiatives. They are not necessarily interested in global warming as such. The US elections saw a resurgence of climate scepticism because it provided an opportunity to attack the Democrats' environmental agenda.

And finally, a third category consists in geopolitical climate scepticism, originating in countries with totalitarian regimes. For these governments, such as the Kremlin, the climate crisis is a chance to divide populations and weaken democracies, as I explained in my book Toxic Data. For instance, we know that one of the strategies Putin uses to gain geopolitical influence is to carry out subversive operations on the social networks in a bid to weaken the democracies. His goal is to exacerbate internal divisions in order to alter social cohesion and ensure that the attention of governments is taken up by internal conflicts, or even, where possible, that these governments are themselves delegitimised.

The upsurge in climate change denialism that we've seen since the summer of 2022 appears to originate, in large part, in this third current.

We've come across accounts that initially spread dissension about Covid-19 vaccines, before relaying the Kremlin's propaganda about the war in Ukraine, and eventually defending climate-sceptic theories. 60% of the climate-denialist community active in 2022 took part in pro-Putin digital campaigns."

Investigating climate sceptics’ disinformation strategy on Twitter 03.13.2023, by Sebastián Escalón

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