In this paper we present an empirically driven language to discuss climate change skepticism. We conceptualize skeptic/skepticism as an umbrella term that includes those who actively reject climate science and those who are uncertain about climate change. We propose four categories for better empirical analysis of climate skepticism: epistemic deniers, epistemic doubters (borrowing from Capstick and Pidgeon 2014), attribution deniers, and attribution doubters (borrowing from Rahmstorf 2004). Using a unique dataset of surveys (n = 1000) and interviews (n = 33) with residents of the U.S. Pacific Northwest who are skeptical about climate change, we compare those four groups across several predictors and demographic variables (age, race, gender, political ideology, religiosity, income, education, and level of trust in science) and outcome variables (environmental concern, policy support, and conspiracy ideation (adherence to the belief that climate change is a “hoax”). We demonstrate the importance of considering attitudinal uncertainty in the analysis of climate skepticism by providing evidence for the presence of a continuum of thought wherein epistemic deniers and attribution doubters make up the two ends of a continuum with more complicated distinctions between epistemic doubters and attribution deniers.

在本文中，我们提供了一种以经验为依据的语言来讨论气候变化怀疑论。我们将怀疑论者/怀疑论者概念化为一个总括性术语，其中包括那些积极拒绝气候科学的人和那些不确定气候变化的人。为了更好地对气候怀疑论进行实证分析，我们提出了四个类别：认识论拒绝论，认识论怀疑论者（来自Capstick和Pidgeon，2014年），归因否认论和归因怀疑论者（来自Rahmstorf，2004年）。使用独特的调查数据集（n = 1000）和对怀疑气候变化的美国太平洋西北地区居民进行的采访（n = 33），我们比较了这四个群体，涵盖了多个预测变量和人口统计变量（年龄，种族，性别，政治思想，宗教信仰，收入，教育，认识论否认者和归因怀疑者组成一个连续体的两端，认识论怀疑者和归因否认者之间有着更为复杂的区别。