Several researchers have presented studies to understand why doubt about human-caused climate change is so widespread. Researchers now have presented another side of the coin i.e. the factors that make contrarian organizations powerful in the first place.

Researchers of a ground-breaking study claim that findings of their study offer new insights into the factors that are most important to an organization's power when it comes to spreading ideas.

The study’s findings show that funding is the most important factor. It is not about how much funding an organization receives, it’s about from where does the funding come from.

The study stresses having ties with elite corporate benefactors is a predictor of an organization's power and its ability to spread climate-doubting information to the public.

Study author Justin Farrell, a sociologist at Yale University in an e-mail to The Post, said, “I've personally been interested in understanding how a social movement can spread such uncertainty and doubt in the general public on an issue that has achieved near scientific consensus”.

Farrell made a list of over 4,500 individuals with ties to 164 organizations involved in the promotion of contrarian viewpoints. He found that these organizations formed a specific kind of network with other organizations that are more central and more powerful within the network.

Using a specific form of textual analysis Farrell found that organizations that had received funding from either ExxonMobil or the Koch family foundations were more central within the network.

It was also found that these organizations’ texts on climate change were more similar to those found in the news media, which indicates that they had a greater influence in the spreading of ideas into the public.