Germany’s current climate policy largely relies on top down instruments that range from technological optimism – often discussed as a strategy of climate delay (cf. Lamb et al., 2020; Haas and Schäfer, 2025) – to an outright fossil rollback under the new conservative Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Katharina Reiche.
As long as Merz remains chancellor, this course will not change.
“Right-wing orientation and low trust in government strongly influence rising climate change skepticism.” Sounds like its not related to nationality.
Yeah, I agree: Brain-dead morons who let themselves be easily swayed against their very own interests are everywhere—and unfortunately, they’re also so arrogant in their stupid idiocy everywhere that they flaunt their ignorance with extreme self-confidence.
The internet is really a curse in these matters: People now have the sum of human knowledge right in their pockets, but so many of them are still guided by the most idiotic misinformation—apparently because it boosts their fragile self-confidence to seem to understand a completely false, yet simple, explanation.
This seems to me to be the core tactic of climate change deniers: If you simply claim, without any evidence, that climate change doesn’t exist, the stubborn can maintain their irresponsible lifestyles and even feel superior to scientists, since they don’t even have to try to understand their arguments—they just say: nope, I don’t want to hear any of it because I’m just right. It’s the same behavior that defiant children exhibit.
So the same dumbfucks who killed a bunch of us with covid are now going to kill the entire planet with climate change. Thanks a fucking lot, all you shit-for-brains.
The structure behind rising climate change scepticism in Germany is exactly the same as everywhere else: drowning in brain-numbing amounts of right-wing propaganda screaming 24/7 that opens up about 2-3 new anti-science and counter-factual culture war fronts per day as a diversion.
As the planet heats, public doubt grows
But nice try implying some correlation or even causation here. 🖕
I haven’t read everything but doesn’t the study show who is susceptible to being manipulated but there is no analysis on who does the manipulation? So we don’t know the structure that is behind it.
The site is behind Cloudflare and paywalled here.
As a related report:
United States, Russia, China - state actors spreading climate disinformation in Europe
[Mathilde Jourde, a researcher at French think tank IRIS] … says that much of the disinformation centres on European climate and energy policy, like the European Green Deal, a roadmap launched in late 2019 to make Europe the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050 …
The United States and Russia are both fossil fuel exporters, which means they could benefit from a reduction in the EU’s decarbonisation goals, the IRIS report says. But Jourde says the aims of this kind of disinformation could be much wider: “The disinformation itself might not be the main objective. For Russia, for example, this could serve as a strategic objective amid ongoing tensions in Europe surrounding the war in Ukraine” …
Russian disinformation is certainly spread by state media outlets like Russia Today, which has been banned by the European Union since 2022, but it is often concealed, according to the report. It is often spread by channels aligned with the state such as Portal Kombat, a vast network of disinformation sites discovered in 2024 by Viginum, the French service combating foreign digital interference.
Climate disinformation is also spread by those with links to the government, like conservative think tanks that can coordinate campaigns against environmental policy in Europe. One such body is the [U.S.-based] Heartland Institute, according to the IRIS report. The organisation is openly sceptical of climate change and “receives funding from companies such as ExxonMobil and from Republican donors”. The Heartland Institute opened an office in London in 2024 with the aim of influencing European energy policy …
Other state actors are also spreading climate disinformation, though perhaps less aggressively. China, for one, “won’t deny that climate change is happening, nor its seriousness, but it will promote certain narratives to defend its position”, the researcher said .The country seeks, for example, to highlight its response to climate change and minimise its responsibility, instead insisting on the role of Western nations. The IRIS report notes that “certain points of convergence can be identified” between China and Russia. China also took part in influence operations during the Hawaii wildfires in 2023 and during the floods in Spain in 2024 …
Growing up I was always told id end up living in a nuclear winter… Now I wonder why we dont just follow through…
We will. How else could the USA beat China?
