How False Information on the Internet Can Harm Efforts to Address Climate Change

People who care about the environment are worried that lies from oil companies, people who don’t believe in climate change, and others are stopping us from making the world cooler.

Glenn Burgess

Oil companies, people who doubt climate change, and others are sharing false information. This is making it harder to fight global warming. People are asking Big Tech companies to do more to stop this false information and also to address the problem of pretending to be eco-friendly when they’re not.

On the internet, you can find untrue stories like “the Earth getting hotter is normal,” “cold weather means there’s no global warming,” or “only China is causing climate change.” These false stories can quickly spread on social media, even though tech companies have rules against this kind of fake news.

A report from May 2023 by Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), a group that fights false information, said that Google has been making money from videos that promote climate lies on YouTube. This goes against Google’s own rules.

Google didn’t respond to a request for a comment about this. So, how does false information about climate change spread, and what are the problems it causes?

In what ways is disinformation spread through social media?

A report from CAAD in 2023 discovered that false ideas about climate change are spreading widely online. The report said that often, it’s fossil fuel companies that are responsible for spreading these misleading ideas.

In 2022, a group of over 450 scientists said that fossil fuel companies are trying to hide or play down the facts about the climate crisis through their advertising and PR efforts.

Some common ways of spreading false information about climate change include saying that green energy is expensive and makes it harder to afford things, making people doubt if green technology really works, and trying to make it seem like questioning climate change is part of bigger arguments, like those about “wokeness.”

Sander van der Linden, a professor at the University of Cambridge who has given advice to Meta and Google about dealing with climate misinformation on their platforms, says that people who spread false information about climate change are often connected to other types of false information too. For example, they might also spread false ideas about vaccines, climate change, support for Russia, and conspiracy theories about a “New World Order.”

Researchers from Indiana University found that on social media, emotional posts, things that friends share, and suggestions from algorithms can all make it more likely that false information will get a lot of attention.

Has the problem of climate disinformation been increasing?

False information tends to spread a lot on social media, especially when important events like reports from the U.N.’s climate change group, climate meetings (COP talks), or extreme weather events happen.

Since Elon Musk started running Twitter in 2022, there has been a big increase in false information about climate change, according to van der Linden.

Twitter is now using more computer programs and fewer people to check the content people post on the platform. They didn’t respond immediately for more details.

Digital rights and environmental campaigners say that it’s really important for companies to enforce their rules against false information and pretending to be eco-friendly. This can help stop the spread and impact of climate lies.

In 2022, a report from a British group called the Centre for Countering Digital Hate said that Facebook didn’t put labels saying whether something was true or false on half of all the posts that supported well-known climate change doubters.

This report came after Frances Haugen, a person who used to work at Facebook, said that the company had not been honest with investors about what it was doing to fight false information about climate change and COVID-19.

At that time, Facebook said that they hadn’t finished putting labels on posts before the study was done, and that there’s no one-size-fits-all way to stop false information from spreading.

Is disinformation affecting efforts to address climate change?

In 2022, the IPCC pointed out that false information and turning science into a political debate are big problems when it comes to taking action on climate change. They said that words from people who have a strong interest in money or politics can make it hard to trust climate science.

When people don’t have good information about a complicated topic like climate change, they often decide what to believe based on who’s talking, rather than the actual facts. This was found in research done by John Cook in 2018. He works at the University of Melbourne Center for Behavior Change.

While there are fewer people outright denying climate change these days, some are using more subtle tricks to slow down efforts to deal with it. They create “discourses of delay” to stop any real action. This is what Jennie King, who leads climate research and policy at a think-tank called the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, explained.

King also warned that we shouldn’t assume that climate change is something everyone agrees on or that we’ve won all the important arguments.

To fight against this pressure, environmental groups want governments and big tech companies to stop letting fossil fuel companies use paid ads, which they often use to pretend they are eco-friendly.

The CAAD group also says we should make it easier to see how false information spreads and make sure there are consequences for people who keep spreading it.