Misinformation about climate change has proliferated online in 2022, according to researchers who point in particular to the impact of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which reinstated many banned accounts.
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“What really surprised us this year was the resurgence of language reminiscent of the 1980s: expressions like ‘climate hoax’ and ‘climate scam’, which deny the phenomenon of climate change”said Jennie King, who works at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a London-based think tank.
Among the most popular false claims, that according to which CO2 does not play a role in climate change or that which would like that global warming is not caused by human activity, detailed the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) , a coalition of associations, in a report.
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An analysis of Twitter posts, carried out for AFP by two computer scientists from the City University of London, counted 1.1 million tweets or retweets using climatosceptic terms in 2022.
This is almost twice as much as in 2021, according to researchers Max Falkenberg and Andrea Baronchelli, who noted that misinformation about climate change peaked in December, a month after the COP27 summit and the Twitter takeover by billionaire Elon Musk.
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The American group Center For Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) pointed the finger at Elon Musk, who restored many banned Twitter accounts and opened the possibility of paying for a certified account.
“Elon Musk’s decision to open up his platform to hate and misinformation has caused an explosion of climate misinformation on the platform”said Callum Hood, head of research at CCHR.
A quarter of climate-skeptical tweets come from 10 accounts
The American billionaire had however himself alerted in August 2022 to the dangers of global warming, which he had described as “major risk”.
The use of the hashtag #ClimateScam (“climate scam”) exploded on Twitter from July 2022, according to analyzes by CAAD and CCDH. For weeks, it was even the most suggested search term on the site for people typing in the word. ” weather “.
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A quarter of all climate-skeptical tweets come from just 10 accounts, including the leader of Canada’s right-wing populist party Maxime Bernier and Paul Joseph Watson, editor of conspiracy theory site InfoWars.
TikTok and Youtube also concerned
Other social networks are also affected. On TikTok, views of videos using hashtags associated with climate change denial increased by 4.9 million, according to Advance Democracy (ADI).
The search for videos often returned advertisements for climatosceptic products. Elena Hernandez, a spokeswoman for YouTube, told AFP that the ads were later removed. Questioned by AFP, TikTok and Twitter did not wish to speak.
“Conspiracy is a very effective ideological software”
Conversely, on Facebook, ADI found that the number of such publications had decreased compared to 2021. In its report, the CAAD specifies that climatosceptic content is regularly associated with other false information, on fraud. elections, vaccinations, the Covid pandemic, migrations…
“We are definitely seeing an expansion of conspiracy theories. The climate is the new divisive subject in the debate of ideas”underlines Jennie King, of the ISD.
Call to reduce the audience of climatosceptics
The vast majority of world scientists agree that humanity is warming the planet by burning fossil fuels.
“It is certain that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, the oceans and the land”said the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its 2021 report, calling for reducing CO2 emissions as much as possible, in order to avoid the worst consequences of this warming.
“We encourage platforms to think about the very real consequences of climate change”insists Callum Hood, of the CCDH. “Those who repeatedly spread blatantly false climate information must not have the audience they have now”.
