The Literacy Problem in Climate Discussions

It's become clear to me over the last 5-10 years that one of the greatest challenges hindering productive climate discussions has to do with the lack of scientific literacy. Frequently I when I write posts that articulate my position I cite the scientific literature that supports my position, and it's extremely rare that contrarians actually read what I wrote and respond to its contents. I'll instead get responses that 1) attack me, 2) accuse the scientific literature of being biased/fraudulent, or 3) attempt to change the subject. I get exactly the same kinds of responses if I cite the scientific literature directly. It's easy to conclude from this that climate contrarians are simply obstinate, refusing to read the literature that proves them wrong. And while that may be the case, there may be an even simpler explanation - scientific literacy. The PIAAC (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) has six proficiency levels for literacy. These are:

  • Below Level 1: At best, readers can only understand short, simple sentences or find a single piece of information in a familiar text.
  • Level 1: Readers understand short texts and lists, and they can find single pieces of specific information central to the text's content.
  • Level 2: Readers can integrate parts of a text and make low-level inferences making matches between texts and information, and they can find information that may not be central to the text, but they become lost in dense or lengthy texts.
  • Level 3: Readers at this level can understand dense or lengthy texts, and they can evaluate textual structure and meaning, even navigating competing pieces of information.
  • Level 4: Readers can successfully integrate and interpret complex, long, or multilayered texts, and they can evaluate what they read, including abstract and/or conditional information, and they can construct nuanced arguments from the text.
  • Level 5: Readers can integrate information across multiple dense texts and successfully evaluate even subtleties in multiple lengthy & dense texts, and they can synthesize evidence-based conclusions from complex materials.
From these reading levels, clearly someone needs to have at least a Level 3 literacy to understand and meaningfully evaluate lengthy blogposts that interact with the scientific literature, and they need higher levels of literacy to read, comprehend and evaluate the scientific literature. However, about 52% of the adult population in the US has only Level 2 literacy or lower.
In other words, about half the population of the US can't meaningfully interact with and evaluate dense or lengthy texts, and this is required to understand even lengthy blogposts (and factchecks) that interact with the scientific literature. And climate contrarians on average have lower education levels than those that accept climate science.[1][2] Now, to be fair education and literacy levels do not explain all climate contrarian thinking;  ideological factors appear to dominate.[3] Nevertheless, it's very possible that many of the people who disagree with climate science on social media simply lack the literacy to read and evaluate what we give them as evidence. Among college-educated contrarians, ideological opposition to climate science may actually drive scientific illiteracy - that is, the fear of being shown wrong may overpower any desire to learn about the evidence that threatens their confirmation bias and/or allegiances to ideological groups. It's not that they can't learn to read the literature, but learning to read scientific literature doesn't benefit them because they're already conditioned to reject conclusions when it conflicts with their ideology.

Social media (especially X but even Facebook) by contrast favors short, simple texts, with perhaps a simple graph or chart, making it much easier for people with Level 2 literacy or lower to navigate. This may explain why climate grifters and contrarian political activists flood social media with just this kind of content - simple ideas with a graph or chart they say supports that idea. The ideas may be lies, and the graphs & charts may be fabricated, ignorant and ridiculous, but the the "simple idea + chart" model may feel compelling to those who lack Level 3 literacy. So John Shewchuk can make a fake graph with no y-axis with the simple idea that the Sun controls climate (not CO2), and this message reaches the scientifically illiterate that are just looking for pretty pictures and simple ideas that will support their confirmation bias.
The fact that Shewchuk's followers don't know what Bray and Eddy Cycles are doesn't appear to matter. They couldn't look up what these cycles are and evaluate their potential impact on climate anyway. But the "simple idea + chart" model works here because the chart superficially looks science-like, and it appears to support the conviction that "it's all just cycles" anyway. So this chart gets shared widely among climate contrarians, and when contrarians see this over and over again, it feels more convincing to them, even though it's sheer nonsense. If I follow this up with a lengthy rebuttal, most (all?) of Shewchuk's followers won't read it, and many lack the literacy to do so. And so Brandolini's Law is likely to be the clear winner among contrarians in this 52% of the US population. Not only does it take an order of magnitude more effort to rebut contrarian nonsense, this 52% won't and can't read the rebuttals anyway. 

Brandolini's Law for the win.



References:

[1] Bentley, R.A., Horne, B.D. Perceptible climate warming amplifies how education increases climate concern in the US. npj Clim. Action 4, 12 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-025-00219-4

[2] Sébastien Bourdin, André Torre. The decline of climate skepticism in France: An analysis of climate change attitudes over the last two decades. American Journal of Climate Change, 2025, 11 (2), pp.244-264. ⟨10.70917/jcc2025-017⟩. ⟨hal-05257591⟩ https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-05257591v1/document

[3] Among Republicans, college graduates are more likely to think AGW is exaggerated than those who have not gone to college. This doesn't contradict the above findings, but it does show that ideological barriers to climate science are significant, not just education levels. https://news.gallup.com/poll/182159/college-educated-republicans-skeptical-global-warming.aspx

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