[TheClimate.Vote] January 24, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

Richard Pauli richard at theclimate.vote
Sun Jan 24 10:53:14 EST 2021 

/*January 24, 2021*/

[disinformation battles  ]
*Twitter Bots Are a Major Source of Climate Disinformation*
Such accounts can distort online conversations and potentially diminish 
support for climate policies
By Corbin Hiar, E&E News on January 22, 2021
Twitter accounts run by machines are a major source of climate change 
disinformation that might drain support from policies to address rising 
temperatures.

In the weeks surrounding former President Trump’s announcement about 
withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, accounts suspected of being bots 
accounted for roughly a quarter of all tweets about climate change, 
according to new research.

“If we are to effectively address the existential crisis of climate 
change, bot presence in the online discourse is a reality that 
scientists, social movements and those concerned about democracy have to 
better grapple with,” wrote Thomas Marlow, a postdoctoral researcher at 
the New York University, Abu Dhabi, campus, and his co-authors.

Their paper published last week in the journal Climate Policy is part of 
an expanding body of research about the role of bots in online climate 
discourse.

The new focus on automated accounts is driven partly by the way they can 
distort the climate conversation online.

“Twitter bots have been this growing force of evil over a half a decade 
now,” said John Cook, a professor at George Mason University’s Center 
for Climate Change Communication who was not involved with the study.

Unscrupulous actors “have realized how powerful and influential 
misinformation can be,” he said. “Twitter bots have been a part of that.”

Marlow’s team measured the influence of bots on Twitter’s climate 
conversation by analyzing 6.8 million tweets sent by 1.6 million users 
between May and June 2017. Trump made his decision to ditch the climate 
accord on June 1 of that year. President Biden reversed the decision 
this week.

 From that dataset, the team ran a random sample of 184,767 users 
through the Botometer, a tool created by Indiana University’s 
Observatory on Social Media, which analyzes accounts and determines the 
likelihood that they are run by machines.

Researchers also categorized the 885,164 tweets those users had sent 
about climate change during the two-month study period. The most popular 
categories were tweets about climate research and news.

Marlow and the other researchers determined that nearly 9.5% of the 
users in their sample were likely bots. But those bots accounted for 25% 
of the total tweets about climate change on most days.

The bots were also more prevalent in discussions on climate research and 
news. Other areas of focus for the bots were tweets that included the 
term “Exxon” and research that cast doubt on climate science. One such 
tweet highlighted a Nobel laureate in physics who falsely claimed 
“global warming is pseudoscience.”

“These findings indicate that bots are not just prevalent, but 
disproportionately so in topics that were supportive of Trump’s 
announcement or skeptical of climate science and action,” the paper said.

The proportion of bot tweets was smaller on the days immediately 
surrounding Trump’s decision on the Paris Agreement, the researchers 
found. That’s because, they believe, people who don’t often tweet about 
climate change did so at that time and the bots were unable to quickly 
respond to the flood of climate chatter.

The researchers weren’t able to determine who deployed the bots. But 
they suspect the seemingly fake accounts could have been created by 
“fossil-fuel companies, petro-states or their surrogates,” all of which 
have a vested interest in preventing or delaying action on climate change.

Other researchers who study climate conversations on Twitter have found 
an even greater prevalence of bot-like accounts. A paper published last 
year in the Proceedings of the International Conference SBP-BRiMS 2020 
estimated that 35% of the accounts that tweeted about climate during the 
2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland were bots.

But that paper, from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, found 
there were an equal number of bots that both supported and cast doubt on 
climate science.

Regardless of which side they’re on, bots are an impediment to curbing 
the flow of climate misinformation, said Cook, the George Mason professor.

“It is important to shut bots down,” he said in an interview. “It’s 
really just a matter of social media platforms taking responsibility and 
aggressively taking down what are flagged as definite bots. To me, 
that’s the bare minimum that Twitter should be doing.”

The reason Twitter and other platforms haven’t taken that step, Cook 
said, is because there are financial incentives to ignore the problem.

“Generally speaking, misinformation is good business,” he said.

“Misinformation is more likely to be clicked and liked because it tends 
to be more sticky,” Cook explained. “And the business model of social 
media platforms are likes and clicks and shares: The more an item gets 
interaction, the more money a platform makes.”

False claims about the coronavirus and the presidential election were 
some notable exceptions to that rule. Only public pressure will change 
the calculations social media companies make around bots and climate 
misinformation, he added.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 
2021. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment 
professionals.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/twitter-bots-are-a-major-source-of-climate-disinformation/

- -

[From the Journal Climate Policy]
*Bots and online climate discourses: Twitter discourse on President 
Trump’s announcement of U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement*
Thomas Marlow ORCID Icon,Sean Miller &J. Timmons RobertsORCID Icon
Published online: 15 Jan 2021

    ABSTRACT
    In the early days of social media, social scientists speculated that
    it could support democracy because large media conglomerates could
    not dominate it. Regarding climate change, research documents the
    influence of the fossil fuel industry in climate denial discourses
    in the traditional media. Therefore, a similar hope emerged that a
    more democratized platform would see less polarization in belief
    about climate change's scientific basis. However, online public
    opinion about climate change continues to be extremely polarized,
    and the social forces behind it are not well understood. Here, we
    examine the role of one proposed mechanism for the systemic
    polarization and spread of disinformation in online discourses - the
    automated social media bot. This article pioneers the use of bot
    detection software on climate change discussion on Twitter, using
    automated monitoring of 6.8 million tweets. We examine the period
    around the time of U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of
    U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on June 1, 2017. We find
    that the announcement generated an immediate online social movement
    response with very low suspected bot presence. Prior to and
    afterwards, however, suspected bots were responsible for
    approximately 25% of original tweets. Additionally, we find that
    suspected bots were more frequent in some topic areas than others,
    including denialist discourses focused on research questioning the
    reality or importance of climate change.

*Key policy insights*
On an average day during our study period, automated bots produced an 
estimated one-quarter of all original tweets referencing climate change 
and global warming.

Bots were more active in some discussion areas than others - including 
climate denialist messages.

President Trump's announcement of the U.S.'s planned withdrawal from the 
Paris Agreement generated an immediate online social movement response 
with very low suspected bot presence.

For social media to deliver on its promise of a decentralized and 
democratic forum, automated accounts need to be identified, 
marginalized, and removed.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14693062.2020.1870098?journalCode=tcpo20


[Old news from AP from 2019]
*George Mason tightens donor rules after uproar over Koch*
Mason has been the biggest beneficiary in recent years as the Koch 
Foundation has increased philanthropy to universities nationwide.
https://apnews.com/article/807149f5a8044bf49e24deadffac72fd
- -
[from DeSmogBlog]
https://www.desmogblog.com/koch-and-george-mason-university



[desperado -  article translated from Spanish edition using AI technologies]
*Bill Gates Wants to 'Cover the Sun' to Help Counter Global Warming*
According to a Forbes post, the billionaire is funding a project that 
would help dim sunlight.
January 22, 2021
"You can't cover the sun with a finger", but maybe with science and 
technology yes. According to Forbes , Bill Gates is funding a project 
that would dim sunlight in order to "cool" the Earth.

The research called " Stratospheric Controlled Disturbance Experiment " 
(SCoPEx for its acronym in English) is carried out by scientists from 
Harvard University and has the purpose of achieving that the sunlight is 
reflected outside the atmosphere of our planet...
more at - https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/363963
- -
[Source material]
*SCoPEx: Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment *
SCoPEx is a scientific experiment to advance understanding of 
stratospheric aerosols that could be relevant to solar geoengineering. 
It aims to improve the fidelity of simulations (computer models) of 
solar geoengineering by providing modelers with experimental results 
vital to addressing specific science questions. Such simulations are the 
primary tool for estimating the risks and benefits of solar 
geoengineering, but current limitations may make the simulations look 
too good. SCoPEx will make quantitative measurements of aspects of the 
aerosol microphysics and atmospheric chemistry that are currently highly 
uncertain in the simulations. It is not a test of solar geoengineering 
per se. Instead, it will observe how particles interact with one 
another, with the background stratospheric air, and with solar and 
infrared radiation. Improved understanding of these processes will help 
answer applied questions such as, is it possible to find aerosols that 
can reduce or eliminate ozone loss, without increasing other physical 
risks?

At the heart of SCoPEx is a scientific balloon, fitted with repurposed 
off-the-shelf airboat propellers. The repurposed propellers serve two 
functions. First, the propeller wake forms a well mixed volume (roughly 
1 km long and 100 meters in diameter) that serves as an experimental 
‘beaker’ in which we can add gasses or particles. Second, the propellers 
allow us to reposition the gondola to different locations within the 
volume to measure the properties of the perturbed air. The payload can 
achieve speeds of a few meters per second (walking speed) relative to 
the surrounding air, generally for about ten minutes at a time.

The advantage of the SCoPEx propelled balloon is that it allows us to 
create a small controlled volume of stratospheric air and observe its 
evolution for (we hope) over 24 hours. Hence the acronym, Stratospheric 
Controlled Perturbation Experiment. If we used an aircraft instead of a 
balloon, we would not be able to use such a small perturbed volume nor 
would we be able to observe it for such long durations.

SCoPEx builds on four decades of research on the environmental chemistry 
of the ozone layer in the Anderson/Keith/Keutsch groups. SCoPEx will use 
or adapt many of the high-performance sensors and flight-system 
engineering experience developed for this ozone research. Analyzing 
these experiments will improve our knowledge beyond what is currently 
available within computer models or is measurable with confidence under 
laboratory conditions...
https://www.keutschgroup.com/scopex

- -

[video on SCoPEx]
*SCoPEx, Harvard University - New Frontiers in Climate Change Research*
Dec 2, 2020
WebsEdge Science
SCoPEx is a scientific experiment to advance understanding of 
stratospheric aerosols that could be relevant to solar geoengineering. 
It aims to improve the fidelity of simulations (computer models) of 
solar geoengineering by providing modellers with experimental results 
vital to addressing specific science questions. Such simulations are the 
primary tool for estimating the risks and benefits of solar 
geoengineering, but current limitations may make the simulations look 
too good. SCoPEx will make quantitative measurements of aspects of the 
aerosol microphysics and atmospheric chemistry that are currently highly 
uncertain in the simulations. It is not a test of solar geoengineering 
per se. Instead, it will observe how particles interact with one 
another, with the background stratospheric air, and with solar and 
infrared radiation. Improved understanding of these processes will help 
answer applied questions such as, is it possible to find aerosols that 
can reduce or eliminate ozone loss, without increasing other physical risks?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_qkmavwE54&feature=emb_logo



[climates have never been affected by political speech]
*Australia PM says no timeline to achieve zero carbon emissions*
Carbon emissions blamed for Australia’s hotter and drier condition, 
increasing the risk of more droughts and bushfires.
Australia’s government is in no rush to sign up to a target of net zero 
carbon emissions by 2050, although it recognises the importance of 
working towards that goal, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in an 
interview published on Saturday.

Morrison’s conservative government, in a surprise change of policy last 
month, said it would achieve its 2030 carbon emissions pledge under the 
Paris climate agreement without counting carbon credits from 
over-achieving on its previous climate targets...
- -
More extreme heat expected
He added that the timeline to commit to a zero-net-emissions target will 
depend on “where the science is at and where our assessment is based on 
the technologies”.

According to the latest climate report from the country’s weather bureau 
published in November, Australia is expected become hotter and drier, 
increasing the risk of drought and extreme weather events such as the 
bushfires that devastated swaths of its southeastern region in 2019.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM)’s latest State of the Climate report 
blames carbon emissions for the increase in extreme heat, noting that a 
hotter Australia will affect the lives and livelihoods of everyone who 
lives there.

Australia’s climate has warmed on average by 1.44 degrees Celsius since 
national records began in 1910, the report said. The country experienced 
its warmest year on record in 2019, and the seven years from 2013 to 
2019 all ranked among the nine warmest years ever, the BoM said.
Australia as a whole is also reporting more “extremely warm” days with 
43 reported in 2019, more than triple the number in any of the years 
prior to 2000.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/23/australias-pm-reluctant-to-commit-to-2050-carbon-emission-goals


[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - January 24, 2007 *

"CBS Evening News" provides a sneak preview of the 4th IPCC report.

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/climate-change-cause-effect/  [CBS has 
removed this file -- so we really don't know if this is true]


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