The preponderance of scientific information to support that climate change is real, happening now and will continue to adversely impact the world’s climate systems appear to be facts that trickle off the heads of deniers like rain off a duck.

This year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is a Nobel Peace Prize winning organization seen as the most respected climate watchdog in the world with members from almost 200 countries, released a series of reports with formidable warnings about the urgency of addressing climate change.

Not only is climate change currently causing glaciers to melt, sea levels to rise and increased droughts, heat waves, wildfires, floods and mega-storms—IPCC concludes that human activity in the form of burning fossil fuel, deforestation and over consumption is 97-100 percent certain to be the cause.

Nonetheless, Conspiracy theorists and climate deniers don’t like to be confused by facts that go against their deeply entrenched beliefs and social psychologists believe it may be the way they are hardwired.

A recent study at Yale University led by Dr. Anthony Leiserowitz suggests the human brain may reject scientific facts that threaten the individual’s deeply held convictions on views and principles.

According to Leiserowitz’s research, when someone is deeply invested in a certain point of view and it is threatened, something called “motivation avoidance” may kick in, which allows the person to filter, downplay or just simply ignore the scientific facts presented.

But many conspiracy theorists and climate deniers do more than just ignore the facts. They are drawn to anything that supports their point of view, which comes in the form of right-leaning publications, conservative media and Koch Industry funded denial campaigns. It provides them with the misinformation they use as “facts” to counter peer-reviewed climate science on every published comment and Op/Ed platform they can find.

But more media outlets are banning deniers from the pages of their publications.

Kevin Mathews asked in his 2013 EcoWatch article:

“If a climate change denier has no place to voice his opinion, does he still make a sound?

Not on Reddit, the Los Angeles Times, Popular Science or the Sydney Morning Herald, whose editors took the risk of a censorship accusation to close the door for deniers to post their propaganda (sun-spots, natural cycles, the world is cooling) in the face of overwhelming scientific consensus.

Reddit’s scientist and forum moderator Nathan Allen explained they required “submissions to be related to recent publications in reputable peer-reviewed journals which effectively excludes any climate denial.”

Allen had to make it an official policy, because global warming deniers were so pushy. “No topic consistently evokes such rude, uninformed, and outspoken opinions as climate change. [added] We felt that to allow a handful of commenters to so purposefully mislead our audience was simply immoral.”

However, according to Greenpeace's PolluterWatch report, the propaganda juggernaut sponsored by rich fossil fuel moguls like the Koch brothers continues to funnel millions into climate denial groups.

Furthermore, there will always be a willing stable of right-winged conspiracy-minded deniers who may be hardwired to reject the notion that 9/11 wasn’t an inside job, man actually walked on the moon and climate change is real, caused by humans and is happening now.

But it is becoming more common place for responsible editors and informed citizens to recognize factual inaccuracies when they seem them, no matter how much oil-drenched money is used to boost climate change ignorance, delusion and fallacy.

Related article:

IPCC report: Human inaction to climate change would be catastrophic

More reports from PrairieDogPress

Delilah Jean Williams, environmental and political journalist; PrairieDogPress writer; Artistic Director, Keystone Prairie Dogs.***PrairieDogPress is the media channel for keystone-prairie-dogs.com, which is a fundraising website to support environmental groups for extraordinary efforts to protect Great Plains habitat and prairie dogs in the wild. PDP uses humorous images, social commentary and serious-minded political reports to challenge government on numerous levels, including accountability to the people, the protection of threatened species, the environment and Earth’s natural resources.