Community Energy Literature Review

Three aspects of climate change denial will be discussed: the psychology of denial, the beliefs of political elites, and climate misinformation. The section on psychology cites a 2020 paper about motivated denial – knowing the facts but denying them – and briefly refers to information processing and the links between emotion and cognition in two later papers. The section on political elites is based on a 2026 survey of elected officials, staffers, regulators, lobbyists, and policy professionals in the United States. The final section cites two recent papers, one on the spread and persistence of climate misinformation, the other predicting its future development. Psychology of denial “Action on climate change is currently minimal, and woefully inadequate for steering away from the worst trajectories and impacts.” These were the opening words of a 2020 paper entitled Understanding and Countering the Motivated Roots of Climate Change Denial . By motivated denial, the authors meant “kn...

Some positive views on progress in combatting climate change will be considered in this post. They concern what has been achieved so far; public support for climate action; our understanding of climate change; new technology; global action; and individual rewards. Achievements In a 2014 report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) set out four scenarios for future warming based on different levels of emissions. The recent removal of the worst case, highest emissions scenario from the group of four has attracted considerable media comment. This scenario, known as RPC8.5 assumed continuing emissions with increased use of fossil fuels, resulting in a temperature rise of 4.5°C by 2100. (The notation refers to a level of radiative forcing of 8.5 watts per square metre). An article in The Conversation (2026) notes that climate change predictions must be revised in the light of new information and that RPC8.5 was removed because “climate action is starting to work”. Positi...

Some online resources with climate change content are outlined below. Many are blogs or include blogs. They vary in geographic scope from global to regional: many are US based, and some of the views expressed oppose the current climate change consensus. Resources are listed alphabetically and are drawn from the Feedspot online reader, which interacts with media outlets such as blogs, podcasts, magazines and news websites. URLs or web addresses for all the resources mentioned are listed in the References section. List of Resources   Carbon Brief is UK-based and covers developments in climate science, climate policy and energy policy. Topics covered include Carbon Offsets: their history and impacts, with a glossary and Q&A; China Policy: its growing solar power, continued use of coal, clean-energy exports and low-carbon transition in cities; and UN Climate Talks: a carbon-pricing system for international shipping, missed deadlines for 2035 climate pledges, COP 29 outcomes ...

Climate scientists have great difficulty in making known the risks brought about by climate change. They face denial, scepticism and distrust in science in a world of misinformation and divisive politics (Woodley et al., 2022). Some of the difficulty comes from the scientific community itself, which tends to assume that providing scientific information “will necessarily lead to desired behavioural changes” and is constrained by its own standards of “strict objectivity and political separation”. The authors of the paper argue that conventional communication methods put distance between scientists and their intended audiences and may “fail to generate inspiration and connectivity”. They believe that scientists should be willing to “radically adapt their communication strategies” and they discuss three relevant factors. First, they examine the problems of communicating climate change risks arising from the inherent difficulties of the subject, the activities of vested interests and lobb...