{"id":420541,"date":"2026-01-08T16:50:34","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T15:50:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=420541"},"modified":"2026-01-08T16:50:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T15:50:37","slug":"studying-skeptics-through-a-keyhole-why-climate-communication-research-cant-see-what-it-refuses-to-understand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=420541","title":{"rendered":"Studying Skeptics Through a Keyhole: Why Climate Communication Research Can\u2019t See What It Refuses to Understand"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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This is the title of a recent article published on January 7, 2026, by Charles Rotter on Watts Up With That.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charles Rotter tells the story behind an academic paper by Bernhard Forchtner, titled “The Rise of (Affective) Obstruction: Conceptualizing the Evolution of Far-Right Climate Change Communication (1986\u20132018),” which was published in the journal Environmental Communication in late 2025.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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_____________________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From Watts Up With That?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Charles Rotter<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Research
Full article: The Rise of (Affective) Obstruction: Conceptualizing the Evolution of Far-Right Climate Change Communication (1986\u20132018)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bernhard Forchtner\u2019s paper, \u201cThe Rise of (Affective) Obstruction: Conceptualizing the Evolution of Far-Right Climate Change Communication (1986\u20132018)\u201d<\/a><\/em>, is presented as a neutral, longitudinal investigation into how climate skepticism supposedly \u201cevolved\u201d on the political right. It spans more than thirty years, codes 733 articles, and deploys a sophisticated vocabulary of \u201caffect,\u201d \u201cemotive economies,\u201d and \u201cmelodramatic narration\u201d to explain why opposition to climate policy exists at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet from the outset, the paper makes clear that it is not trying to understand skeptics. It is trying to explain them away.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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ABSTRACT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Research has illustrated that today\u2019s far right in the Global North takes largely climate obstructionist stances, commonly featuring ageist\/misogynistic\/racist tropes. However, little is known about how this present became to be, how climate change was articulated in the 2000s and earlier. I therefore ask: how has far-right climate communication evolved between 1986 and 2018? Have there been notable changes at the level of both<\/em> specific claims and<\/em> their emotiveness \u2013 and if so, what might explain them? In response, I analyze 733 articles printed across four exemplary, continuously published (non-)party sources covering the Austrian and German far-right spectrum, in order to offer a novel conceptualization of three periods: benevolent silence<\/em> (1986-1996), concerned acceptance<\/em> (1997-2006), and antagonistic obstruction<\/em> (2007-2018). Thus, I show that the far right became today\u2019s (affective-)obstructionist force and link this shift to: the US climate countermovement; dynamics in the political field; and, interrelated, increasingly melodramatic (affective) climate communication, turning climate change into another site for the making of far-right subjectivity. By conceptualizing three periods, by considering the development over time of both<\/em> specific claims and<\/em> affect, and by suggesting reasons behind this evolution, I substantively contribute to understanding far-right climate obstruction and the anti-liberal\/anti-democratic backlash it facilitates.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The author states early on that the far right \u201ctakes largely obstructionist stances, i.e. opposing effective climate action.\u201d That sentence looks innocuous until one pauses to notice what is being smuggled in. \u201cEffective climate action\u201d is treated as a settled category, not an open question. Opposition is therefore not disagreement but obstruction by definition. No evaluation of policy outcomes is offered. No cost\u2013benefit analysis is attempted. Effectiveness is assumed, not demonstrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This framing is never revisited. It is the theological axiom on which the entire paper rests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the study, skepticism is defined not as an intellectual challenge to climate claims or climate policy, but as a cultural and emotional deviation. Forchtner repeatedly emphasizes that obstruction is not primarily about evidence or uncertainty, but about feelings:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cObstruction revolves not simply around propositional knowledge (specific claims) but \u2018affective positioning\u2019; obstruction is also affective obstruction.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is not an incidental remark. It is the paper\u2019s central move. By redefining skepticism as affective positioning rather than analytical judgment, the author exempts himself from having to engage with skeptical arguments at all. One does not debate emotions; one diagnoses them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, skepticism is explicitly framed as a community-building exercise rather than a reasoned stance:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe far right is also a \u2018community of feelings\u2019 which offers \u2018alternative perceptions, interpretations and feelings about everyday phenomena, political debates and the right-wing project itself\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Note what is absent. There is no mention of alternative models, alternative interpretations of climate sensitivity, alternative readings of observational data, or alternative risk assessments. The alternatives that matter here are emotional, not analytical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This pattern continues when the paper describes how skepticism allegedly functions psychologically:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cClimate change became another site\u2026 of (re)producing far-right subjectivity and Othering of, e.g. \u2018globalist elites\u2019, \u2018Greens\u2019, \u2018the left\u2019 and racialized Others.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Here, disagreement with climate policy is not treated as disagreement with policy. It is treated as a tool for identity construction, moral boundary drawing, and social antagonism. Skepticism is not wrong; it is suspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author\u2019s own language makes clear that skepticism is viewed as a moral failure rather than an epistemic one. Opposition to climate policy is said to \u201cfacilitate the anti-liberal\/anti-democratic backlash.\u201d This claim appears in both the abstract and the conclusion, functioning as a kind of moral bookend to the analysis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But nowhere is this causal chain demonstrated. No evidence is presented that skepticism causes authoritarianism, nor that acceptance of climate alarmism prevents it. The association is asserted, not argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most revealing passages are those in which the author describes the emotional \u201cinversion\u201d he believes characterizes skepticism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWhat was accepted and an object of concern (human-induced climate change), became opposed, with concern attached to climate protection and contempt for those driving it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This sentence is meant as an indictment. In reality, it is an admission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes\u2014concern shifted from speculative climate projections to concrete climate policies. That shift was not emotional pathology. It was rational prioritization. Policies are tangible. They have measurable costs. They affect energy prices, industrial competitiveness, household budgets, grid stability, and food production. Climate models, by contrast, are abstractions with widening uncertainty ranges the further they project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paper never asks why concern might rationally move in that direction. Instead, it treats the shift as evidence of \u201cmelodrama,\u201d \u201cantagonism,\u201d and \u201caffective obstruction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That framing becomes explicit when the author claims:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cPeriod 3 is characterized by an increasingly antagonistic attitude of clear-cut boundaries and certainty rather than rhetorical constraint, ambiguity, and doubt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is one of the paper\u2019s most ironic passages. Climate skepticism is being criticized for certainty by an academic field that routinely declares \u201cthe science is settled,\u201d labels dissent as dangerous, and frames climate change as an existential emergency requiring immediate, sweeping intervention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anyone has abandoned rhetorical constraint and doubt, it is not the skeptics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The paper\u2019s treatment of scientific disagreement further illustrates its ideological enclosure. When skeptics invoke uncertainty, alternative explanations, or methodological critiques, these are framed not as arguments but as imported talking points, often attributed to malign influence:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThe article traces this evolution back to\u2026 the US climate change countermovement which diffused obstructionist views within the European far right already during the 1990s.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This explanation absolves European skeptics of agency while simultaneously denying them intellectual autonomy. They did not reason their way to skepticism; they were infected by it. Ideas do not spread because they explain anomalies or resolve contradictions. They spread because of networks, ideology, and affect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is the worldview on display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even when the paper acknowledges internal dissent\u2014articles within the same publications defending mainstream climate science or warning against conspiratorial thinking\u2014these are treated as deviations from the narrative rather than evidence that skepticism is internally contested and intellectually heterogeneous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One such intervention is quoted by the author himself, warning that denying greenhouse-gas risks would be \u201cfatal\u201d from a scientific point of view. Yet this moment is not used to interrogate why skepticism persists despite such warnings. Instead, it is presented as a lost battle against an inevitable slide into obstruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The possibility that skepticism might be responding to real weaknesses in climate science or climate policy is never entertained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most striking is the paper\u2019s repeated insistence that skepticism is fundamentally melodramatic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cThrough melodrama, powerful affective responses are circulated to \u2018stick to\u2019 and \u2018stick together\u2019, to increase polarization of \u2018good vs. evil\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This would be a devastating critique\u2014if it were not a perfect description of mainstream climate communication itself. Apocalypse framing. Moral binaries. Urgency narratives. Children as symbols. Dissenters as villains. These are not inventions of skeptics. They are staples of climate advocacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the paper treats melodrama as a one-way phenomenon, flowing outward from skeptics while leaving the dominant narrative untouched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, the paper accomplishes exactly what climate communication research has been doing for years: it studies opposition without granting it intellectual dignity. It catalogs language without engaging substance. It interprets disagreement as pathology. It substitutes affect theory for epistemology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most honest sentence in the entire paper is likely unintentional. When Forchtner writes that skepticism turns climate change into \u201canother site for the making of far-right subjectivity,\u201d he reveals the underlying assumption: climate change already belongs to one side. To resist that ownership is not to argue, but to trespass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until climate researchers are willing to step outside that assumption\u2014until they can imagine that skepticism might arise from disciplined uncertainty rather than emotional deficiency\u2014they will continue producing elaborate studies that explain everything except the thing that matters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They may quote skeptics endlessly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They may code them meticulously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They may analyze their \u201caffective economies\u201d until the funding runs out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They will still have no idea why climate skepticism exists.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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