Recent studies have shown that skepticism about human-caused climate change has increased among people in Europe and the United States. Researchers have tried to examine the causes behind this trend. What some of the studies have found is that there could be connectivity between populistic and nationalistic ideologies and climate skepticism. The purpose of this study has been to, through an idea analysis, examine the American president Donald Trump to see what type of climate sceptic he is according to the typology created by Rahmstorf. Furthermore, the study seeks to understand if the scepticism could be linked to the theories of populism and nationalism. The study is based on interviews done by newspapers and tv-shows but also tweets written by Trump. The study found that Trump’s climate scepticism could be classified into all of Rhamstorf’s different levels of skepticism. It also found that Trump’s argumentation in the interviews and in his tweets could, in accordance with earlier research, be linked to populism and nationalism.

This dissertation studies three aspects of the economics of climate change: how rising sea levels will affect coastal homeowners in Florida; how changes in weather will affect the prevalence of crime in the United States; and why skepticism about climate change is so common among the general public. Chapter 1 uses housing market data to estimate the welfare costs of shoreline loss along coastal beaches in Florida. I develop a structural housing market model and use it to provide a welfare interpretation for the coefficients from a new “discontinuity matching” hedonic research design. Using housing sales data, beach width surveys, and historical beach nourishment records, I then estimate Florida homeowners’ willingness to pay for an extra foot of sand. I find that changes in beach width have little impact on housing prices, except possibly at very eroded beaches. Chapter 2 estimates the impact of climate change on the prevalence of criminal activity in the United States. The analysis is based on monthly crime and weather data for 2,972 U.S. counties from 1960 to 2009. The results show that temperature has a strong positive effect on criminal behavior, and that between 2010 and 2099, climate change will cause an additional 35,000 murders, 216,000 cases of rape, 1.6 million aggravated assaults, 2.4 million simple assaults, 409,000 robberies, 3.1 million burglaries, 3.8 million cases of larceny, and 1.4 million cases of vehicle theft. The social cost of these climate-related crimes is between 20 and 68 billion dollars. Chapter 3 develops a model of rational skepticism about policy-relevant scientific questions. Many policy debates have three features: first, individuals initially disagree about some scientific question; second, new evidence about the question becomes available; and third, the evidence may be systematically biased. Under these conditions, Bayesian disagreements persist even in the face of an infinite quantity of new evidence. Furthermore, Bayesian updating based on the new evidence produces “skeptics”, in the sense that individuals whose prior beliefs conflict most with the observable evidence end up with the most extreme posterior beliefs about the degree of bias. These results provide insight into the phenomenon of climate skepticism.

The climate change skepticism has been becoming a more and more distinct and apparently increasing social phenomenon. To date, western scholars have described the different forms it can take and the factors supporting its increase. In the recent years, we've been observing some signs of a similar trend in the Czech Republic because the number of people who find the anthropogenic climate changes significant has been decreasing and the proportion of the "skeptic population" has been growing. Although in the first part of this paper I present an overview of data concerning the "public climate change skepticism" (available poll data), its primary focus is on the research of activities carried out by individuals and groups that relativize the importance of climate changes constantly, publically and in a more or less organized manner. In such case we can talk about a certain form of a countermovement against the environmentalism and the mainstream climatology. This paper draws mainly from a qualitative study conducted between 2011 and 2014 by means of semi-structured interviews with active Czech climate change skeptics. The goal of the study was to describe the strategies of climate change skeptics actions in the changing political and discursive environment, the forms of their organization and the...

The global consensus is that the ongoing global warming is unsustainable and that human activity is responsible. The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to keep the Earth's average temperature below 2 degrees and ideally not more than 1.5 degrees. However, currently, we are losing this fight as greenhouse gas emissions and the Earth's average temperature continue to increase. Sweden has embraced its responsibility to lead the transition towards sustainability and has set the world's most ambitious climate goals. However, the new government in 2022 appears to have put Sweden's climate policy on the back burner, causing concern among environmentalists and the general public as Sweden's ambitious climate goals are at risk of not being met. This essay examines the reasons for the climate skepticism of right-wing populism in Sweden, a country known for its leadership in environmental issues. The conclusion is that the reasons for the climate skepticism of the right-wing populist party in Sweden (SD) are primarily based on ideological values. This conclusion is based on the analysis of how SD frames and argues about the climate issue, which is a consequence of their ideology. This essay discusses the political and societal challenges in achieving Sweden's climate goals and the potential consequences of not meeting these targets, particularly in the context of right-wing populism.