New Delhi: Trawling YouTube for some lessons on climate change? User discretion is advised.
YouTube searches for climate change-related content are likelier to throw up videos about warming denial than about the climate crisis staring at the world, a study has found.
The study was conducted by a senior researcher at RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and published last month in the journal Frontiers of Communication.
The study involved a search for videos on climate change using 10 keywords, including climate change, climate manipulation, and geoengineering. Two keywords commonly used by opponents of mainstream science — chemtrails and climate hacking — were included as well.
Of the 200 videos subsequently analysed — 20 for each keyword — 107 challenged the consensus about climate change, with 91 found to peddle outright conspiracy theories.
Only 93, or around 46.5 per cent, presented the mainstream scientific consensus.
“Searching YouTube for climate-science and climate-engineering-related terms finds fewer than half of the videos representing mainstream scientific views,” said study author Joachim Allgaier in a press release.
“It’s alarming to find that the majority of videos propagate conspiracy theories about climate science and technology,” he added.
Another alarming finding of the study is that both sets of videos received almost the same number of views, 17 million, with those supporting the consensus managing just a slim lead of about 2,000.
ThePrint reached Google, which owns YouTube, for comment on the study. This report will be updated when they respond.
What is climate denial?
It’s something you’ll often hear in US President Donald Trump’s speeches.
In January, as parts of the US reeled under record low temperatures, he quipped that “we need global warming”.
In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2019
It’s a trope frequently employed by climate change deniers, who cite winter weather events — and thus confuse weather, which is short term, with climate — to question the claim that the world’s average temperature is rising.
A large part of the global population does not believe what climate scientists have been telling us for decades, that our climate is changing at an unprecedented rate, and that humans are responsible for it.
Until recently, sceptics challenged the notion of warming altogether. But with its effects getting clearer by the year, the focus has shifted to questioning the cause. Some, for example, argue that warming is a natural variation that Earth has witnessed before.
Others acknowledge that “the planet is warming”, but say “CO2 has nothing to do with it, it is the sun”, while some question the credibility of scientists who talk about the ongoing climate crisis.
Another group offers seemingly scientific arguments that employ logical fallacies and misrepresent data. For instance, deniers cherry-pick studies suggesting the Arctic is gaining sea-ice in the winter, while completely ignoring the bigger picture that the Arctic sea ice is on a fast decline and the loss of ice in Greenland is accelerating.
“The most effective climate (change) deniers begin with a nugget of truth, then extend the concept to a carefully-crafted but erroneous conclusion, explaining their statements with lots of fancy scientific jargon,” said Jennifer Francis, senior scientist and an active science communicator from Woods Hole Research Center, Massachusetts, US, in an email to ThePrint.
“Many readers will be impressed and fooled by the plausible-sounding argument, but never are there bonafide, peer-reviewed, up-to-date, scientific journal articles cited to support their contentions,” she added.
Other deniers propound unfounded conspiracy theories like “chemtrails”, an alleged government bid to pollute the environment and change the weather through aircraft exhausts.
Also read: Trump isn’t just in ‘climate denial’, he’s mimicking criminal behaviour
Some who claim to believe in warming propose solutions that can save humanity without cutting emissions, through ‘climate hacking’, which includes such controversial suggestions as solar radiation management (SRM).
SRM aims at reflecting some of the sunlight back into space to keep the Earth cool. While preliminary experiments show that this might help offset future warming to some extent, there could be dangerous side effects. And it is certainly not a substitute to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
‘A toxic mix’
YouTube isn’t the only online platform where climate denial is rampant. There are numerous blogs, Facebook groups, Twitter accounts, and thinktank websites spreading misinformation about climate change, its impact, and solutions.
“We know that polluting interests and state actors like Russia (one of the countries likely to profit from climate change) are involved in creating troll farms and bots whose sole purpose is to promote climate change disinformation and denial and foment online discord and conflict,” said Michael E. Mann, director, Earth System Science Center at the Pennsylvania State University, US, in an email to ThePrint.
“How much of the climate denial noise we see is due to that, and how much is due to misguided individuals taken in by this misinformation is hard to say,” he added. “But the simple answer: It’s a toxic mix of both.”
Climate deniers project warming as a matter of debate despite the fact that scientists have unequivocally established through long-term data records and analysis that the Earth is indeed warming at an unprecedented rate because of human activity.
A survey of over 12,000 peer-reviewed climate science papers found a 97 per cent consensus that humans are causing climate change by emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere primarily through the burning of fossil fuels.
Finding followers
Even so, the concerted effort at spreading misinformation has been somewhat successful.
A global survey (including 23 countries) released earlier this year, conducted by the London-based market research firm YouGov and the University of Cambridge, found that a surprisingly high proportion of people are doubtful of human-induced climate change.
Among the frontrunners were Indonesia (18 per cent), Saudi Arabia (16 per cent), and the United States (13 per cent).
In the book The Madhouse Effect, Mann and co-author Tom Toles discuss how climate deniers use twisted logic to make their arguments appear “scientific”, and how that is changing public perception, stalling climate action.
“Climate change is the greatest threat we face as a civilisation. The deliberate effort by bad actors to confuse the public and policy makers represents perhaps the greatest modern crime against humanity… and the planet,” said Mann.
“[We must] publicly mock and shame climate change deniers… We need to make it socially unacceptable for people to lie to the public about this matter,” he added.
Francis said the scientific community was already learning ways to hit back at deniers.
“In my experience, the attacks of deniers have mostly backfired when it comes to their intended impacts on climate scientists,” she added, “In response to these affronts, we have become more outspoken, we have actively sought training in becoming more effective science communicators, and we have organised to push back against their outlandish claims with science-based information.”
The author is a freelancer and has a keen interest in the science of climate change and the environment.
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This report has been updated with additional quotes
Fact.: the Earth has gotten less than one degree warmer since 1880. Sea level rise is less than one foot in the last hundred in 20 years. So if we should be so worried, give me data to prove it. Drop the mic now.
Fact: The Earth has gotten about one degree warmer since 1880 *on average*. Average being the keyword. Different parts of the planet are seeing very different rise in temperatures with very different impacts. For instance, the Arctic region has been warming at twice the rate of the global average. The Arctic is an ocean covered in ice, surrounded by land that is also covered in ice. The funny thing about water is that it is solid ice at 0 degrees and liquid water at 1 degrees. So, even a 1 degree rise in temperature is enough to destabilise the ice dynamics, which is largely responsible for the less than one foot sea level rise that you mentioned.
I don’t know which country/region you are from but, for many parts of the world one foot sea level rise is enough to cause major disruptions in their ways of living. See here for further reading: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/are-islands-disappearing
There’s loads of published scientific data out there on all aspects of climate change, gathered over multiple decades and through the magic of internet it is available for anyone who *truly* wants to learn. A good place to start will be here: https://climate.nasa.gov/.
Utterly ignorant comment Mr Green. In fact the Earth has got over 1.2C warmer since the start of the Industrial Revolution so that’s your first lie.
And even if it were true then a full 1 degree C in a century is an incredible temperature spike in terms of the normal fluctuations in Earth’s climate.
If you really don’t understand the difference between what has caused previous temperature fluctuations – usually over tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years – and what has caused the sudden massive spike in temperature in the space of a human lifetime then you shouldn’t even be commentating on a climate related thread until you have educated yourself in the absolute basics at least.
This is basic schoolboy level stuff that most kids learn at school when they are around 12 or 13 years old. Were you ‘home schooled’ by any chance or are you just thick?
The author fails to explain what climate denial actually is. He gives examples but no details on metrics. He fails to explain skepticism in Climate science, which is an integral part of academic progress. Denials are very few and most online dissenters are skeptics who doubt human contributions up the natural increase in temperature that has been happening since the end of Little Ice age of 17th century. As far as Michael Mann is concerned, he is infamous for his faulty hockey stick graph and himself acknowledged the slowdown in warming that happened in the early 2000s. Also, Mann is far from your typical scientist. He is an avid controversy lover, recently lost a lawsuit in Canada, and blocks most people who question his motives. I am a climate scientist and I worked with scientists who produce the global temperature data and the models for prediction of future climate. I would like to know the qualifications of the author and his experience in Climate change politics, if any
Hello Vijay,
There are many tricks climate deniers use to spread misinformation and confuse the public. You actually gave a very nice example of climate denial in your comment. Often when climate deniers can’t find a way to discredit the argument they attack climate scientists personally, questioning their credibility and motives. Just like you are attacking Prof. Mann on his motives. Prof. Michael Mann is a distinguished professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Pennsylvania State University and the director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. This year he received the Tyler Prize for Environmental achievement which is one of the most prestigious awards in environmental science.
I am the author. I have a PhD from the University of California, San Diego, US. I have been studying the latest developments in climate science for over 3 years now.
I appreciate you sharing your opinion and I would also like to know your qualifications and affiliation. Maybe we can discuss further what the hockey stick graph means and how relentless human emissions of greenhouse gases are causing mayhem in the climate system.
Regards, Pushp
Please have Dr. Mann release all the data – pre- and post- adjustment – used in his “hockey stick” chart so the rest of the world can see what adjustments were made and how they are supported by science (or not). It is a simple request that any scientist should have no objection to fulfilling – reproducible results are a tenent of science – right?
The “hockey stick” data and code are available online and have been for more than a decade. See here: http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/shared/research/MANNETAL98/
Several independent scientists have, in fact, reproduced the results: https://ral.ucar.edu/projects/rc4a/millennium/MBH_reevaluation.html
Not only have they been reproduced but extended to show that recent warming is unprecedented as far back as the data go: https://thinkprogress.org/most-comprehensive-paleoclimate-reconstruction-confirms-hockey-stick-e7ce8c3a2384/
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/global-warming-today-unlike-last-2000-years-climate-shifts
The co-called ‘little ice age’ was a localised blip in weather centred on the north atlantic region. The average temperature of the Earth continued on it’s slow cooling phase until the Industrial Revolution since which time the rise in Earth’s average temperature has more than overturned the slow cooling of the previous 7000 years since the Holocene Climactic Optimum.
This again is basic schoolboy level geography that is taught to every 12 year old in Europe. You are just making a fool of yourself in public with your displays of ignorance. Please be quiet until you have educated yourself in the basics.