How do we still have climate science deniers in 2026?

It is astounding to me that people (particularly in the USA seemingly) still seem to be bought into climate science denialism.

Perhaps it isn't as many as it appears, since it might be largely online bots. However, clearly the far-right in the UK and USA are heavily invested in climate misinformation. Donald Trump and Richard Tice are prime examples of this.

Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech

If you are a physicists you can review the scientific materials yourself.

For the rest of us, I have found explainers by physicists Myles Allen, Sabine Hossenfelder and Simon Clark to be helpful.

Or you can look further back to this very good verbal explanation from Carl Sagan from 1985.

I was taught about climate change in school in the 1990s. How do people still believe this denialist nonsense?

Choose your conspiracy!

Essentially, if you don't want to actually understand the science on this there are two rival conspiracy theories to choose between.

Conspiracy 1: Climate science is based on a massive conspiracy of scientists who want to convince the world that CO2 causes warming for reasons unknown (insert some nonsense about communism). The motive here is completely unobvious. For some reason scientists who know the "real science" are unable to get their superior science published despite the fact it would win them eternal fame and a nobel prize.

Conspiracy 2: Climate science is unanimous but a small group of fossil fuel interests and right-wing weirdos have been pumping out misinformation on an industrial scale to make it seem that there is some doubt on the issue. This delay tactic was done by the same people using exactly the same techniques on other issues such as tobacco. There is clear motive here.

But why would they lie? 

Fossil fuel companies hired scientists to look into the issue in the 1970s but rather than publish their superior science (since it didn't challenge the mainstream) they just kept quiet and funded misinformation campaigns instead.

Ask yourself - does your view present itself with scientific findings in journals and reports, or is it based on memes from right-wing "think tanks" (sometimes labelled junk tanks because they spew out spam). Essentially what we have here is science vs. a PR campaign.

Note that there are plenty of receipts on one of these conspiracies and nothing but desperate attempts and insinuations regarding the other one. Oreskes and Conway set it all out in their book Merchants of Doubt and I have heard Oreskes on several podcasts explaining the history of doubt-based denialism very eloquently. Or watch this video about a PR person caught in the act of offering to promote denialism. 

Those of us who are not scientists have to look at the facts and consider which conspiracy is the most likely. One side presents memes and out-of-context facts while the other engages with published materials and the weight of scientific opinion?

Does science ever offer truth?

Of course, the expert scientists might be wrong. They might have forgotten something important, like to carry the one or something.

As a philosopher I'm well aware that science doesn't actually offer truth. However, it does offer the best process we know of to seek out errors. It is a self-correcting process and it is the best approach we have to understand a Universe despite our limitations as fleshy beings alive for a few years in a small part of the Universe and with only a few senses available to us.

A scientist who discovered such an error would earn immediate fame and adulation from those who don't want to have to stop burning fossil fuels. Apparently they don't do this due to some bizarre conspiracy.

The big wager

Another thing to ask yourself - would you be willing to bet the prospects of future generations on your conspiracy theory being the right one?

And if the scientists are right, we need to urgently reduce our emissions (which is sometimes very cheap or beneficial to do), suck up excess emissions (at great expense) and help the vulnerable to adapt to the new world we are putting them in.

Many people have been offsetting their emissions (thus achieving personal net zero) for decades because they don't want to make the world worse. People were getting criticised for cheating by using offsets to get to net zero in 2007!

At the end of the day any responsible human has one choice at this point. I don't know how a climate science denier can look a young person straight in the eye.