Climate change denial in the context of "Cognitive dissonance"

Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be scientific or factual but are inherently incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims; reliance on confirmation bias rather than rigorous attempts at refutation; lack of openness to evaluation by other experts; absence of systematic practices when developing hypotheses; and continued adherence long after the pseudoscientific hypotheses have been experimentally discredited. It is not the same as junk science.

The demarcation between science and pseudoscience has scientific, philosophical, and political implications. Philosophers debate the nature of science and the general criteria for drawing the line between scientific theories and pseudoscientific beliefs, but there is widespread agreement "that creationism, astrology, homeopathy, Kirlian photography, dowsing, ufology, ancient astronaut theory, Holocaust denialism, Velikovskian catastrophism, and climate change denialism are pseudosciences." There are implications for health care, the use of expert testimony, and weighing environmental policies. Recent empirical research has shown that individuals who indulge in pseudoscientific beliefs generally show lower evidential criteria, meaning they often require significantly less evidence before coming to conclusions. This can be coined as a 'jump-to-conclusions' bias that can increase the spread of pseudoscientific beliefs. Addressing pseudoscience is part of science education and developing scientific literacy.

Intensive animal farming, industrial livestock production, and macro-farms, also known as factory farming, is a type of intensive agriculture used by the meat and dairy industry to maximize animal production while minimizing costs. To achieve this, agribusinesses keep livestock such as cattle, poultry, and fish at high stocking densities, at large scale, and using modern machinery, biotechnology, and pharmaceutics. The main products are meat, milk and eggs for human consumption.

While intensive animal farming can produce large amounts of animal products at a low cost with reduced human labor, it is controversial as it raises several ethical concerns, including animal welfare issues (confinement, mutilations, stress-induced aggression, breeding complications), harm to the environment and wildlife (greenhouse gases, deforestation, eutrophication), increased use of cropland to produce animal feed, public health risks (zoonotic diseases, pandemic risks, antibiotic resistance), and worker exploitation, particularly of undocumented workers. The animal agriculture industry has been accused of actively supporting disinformation campaigns and preventing policies to address climate change.

Antiscience is a set of attitudes and a form of anti-intellectualism that involves a rejection of science and the scientific method. People holding antiscientific views do not accept science as an objective method that can generate universal knowledge. Antiscience commonly manifests through rejection of scientific ideas such as climate change and evolution and the effectiveness of vaccination. It also includes pseudoscience, methods that claim to be scientific but reject the scientific method. Antiscience can lead to belief in false conspiracy theories and alternative medicine. Lack of trust in science has been linked to the promotion of political extremism, corruption and distrust in medical treatments.

In the sciences and in historiography, denialism is the rejection of basic facts and concepts that are undisputed, well-supported parts of the scientific consensus or historical record on a subject, in favor of ideas that are radical, controversial, or fabricated. Examples include Holocaust denial, AIDS denialism, and climate change denial. The forms of denialism present the common feature of the person rejecting overwhelming evidence and trying to generate political controversy in attempts to deny the existence of consensus.

In psychology, denialism is a person's choice to deny reality as a way to avoid believing in an uncomfortable truth. Denialism is an essentially irrational human behavior that withholds the validation of a historical experience or event when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality.