Misinformation brigade: Why climate denial thrives online?

WASHINGTON: Record global temperatures on July 3 kicked off the hottest week ever recorded as intense heatwaves gripped the planet. Climate scientist Friederike Otto of London’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment called the heat “a death sentence for people and ecosystems.”

Yet the next day, a political journalist in the UK, Isabel Oakeshott, tweeted that “climate change headbangers panicking about a few hot days last month can calm down … It’s 13 degrees and pouring.” She added that she was “about to light the woodburner.” Within a day, over 2.2 million people had seen the tweet. Oakeshott, a presenter on the conservative TalkTV news channel and former editor of the Sunday Times, often comments on Twitter about “climate change nuts.” On July 5, she asked “where’s Greta when it’s woolly jumpers in July?”

Amid the worst heatwaves ever recorded in the US, China, Mexico, Siberia and beyond, and near-unanimous scientific consensus that humans have induced global heating — in large part by burning fossil fuels — how does such denial continue to flourish? The largest global survey on climate change opinion published in 2021 showed that nearly 65% of people across diverse age ranges in over 50 countries believe this crisis is a “global emergency,” yet researchers have shown a recent resurgence in skepticism and denial.

An anecdotal look at DW’s own Planet A TikTok channel shows comments that peddle outright denial, but also question solutions such as the transition to clean energy.

“Climate change is not real. It’s just about the money. This is sad that you scared children. You should be ashamed of yourself,” wrote one user after DW posted a video about young activists suing the state of Montana for not doing enough about the climate crisis. “So how are they going to charge their EVs when there is no electricity?” another wrote, implying that renewable energy is not a reliable power source — despite wind and solar being the cheapest and fastest-growing forms of energy.  

These are old rhetorical tricks that today are targeted less at climate science than solutions, says John Cook, a climatologist and senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne, and author of the Skeptical Science blog that has long debunked climate misinformation. The idea that “solutions will be harmful” or “solutions won’t work” is a repackaging of old attacks on the cost of climate action from the 1990s, he added. “The goal posts have moved,” said Callum Hood, head of research at the global Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Climate denial now employs deflection and “sows doubt” to ultimately delay the energy transition. The logic runs that “doing something is worse than doing nothing,” Hood explained, referring also to the notion of “climate inactivism” coined by climate researcher and author Michael Mann.

“There are clear vulnerabilities in the way social media platforms are designed and governed at present which allows such content to rise to the surface,” said Jennie King, head of climate research & policy at the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a global think tank researching extremism and disinformation. These platforms have been constructed with an “algorithmic bias” that create “echo chambers” to make users “susceptible to consume, accept and spread misinformation,” explained Kathie Treen of the University of Exeter, and co-author of a 2020 article on online misinformation and climate change.