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<font size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>January</b></i></font><font
size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b> 17, 2024</b></i></font><font
face="Calibri"><br>
</font> <br>
<i>[ The New Climate Denial -- well organized and heavily funded ]</i><br>
<b>THE NEW CLIMATE DENIAL</b><br>
How social media platforms and content producers profit by spreading
new forms of climate denial<br>
New Climate Denial Cover with title and subtitle. The cover shows a
factory representing traditional climate denial, and wind turbines
representing new climate denial<br>
2023 was the hottest year on record, ever. Billions of people across
the world experienced extreme heat, droughts, wildfires and major
floods.<br>
<br>
Climate deniers can no longer pretend climate change isn’t happening
- so they’ve changed their strategy.<br>
<br>
CCDH’s groundbreaking AI-powered research shows that New Climate
Denial narratives that aim to undermine the climate movement,
science and solutions, now constitute 70% of climate denial content
on YouTube in 2023.<br>
<b> Find out more </b>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://counterhate.com/research/new-climate-denial/#about">https://counterhate.com/research/new-climate-denial/#about</a><br>
2023 was the hottest year on record. Once unprecedented wildfires,
floods, unbearable heat, and droughts are becoming normal to
billions of people worldwide. It is difficult to deny the simple
fact that our climate is changing in predictable and yet, still,
even now, shocking ways. <br>
<br>
And yet, the sensible majority of us who seek to avert climate
catastrophe find ourselves continually having to deal with a tidal
wave of disinformation designed to delay action. These lies,
welcomed, enabled, and often funded by oil and gas tycoons who
benefit financially, are cynically used by political leaders to
explain why they remain stubbornly incapable of taking urgent
corrective action.<br>
<br>
In this report, for the first time, researchers at the Center for
Countering Digital Hate have quantified the startling and important
rise over the past five years in what we call “New Denial” — the
departure from rejection of anthropogenic climate change, to attacks
on climate science and scientists, and rhetoric seeking to undermine
confidence in solutions to climate change. “New Denial” claims now
constitute 70% of all climate denial claims made on YouTube, up from
35% six years ago.<br>
<br>
This study centers on data analysis performed by an AI tool, CARDS,
developed by academics Travis G. Coan, Constantine Boussalis, John
Cook and Mirjam O. Nanko. The AI allowed us to quantify the
frequency of different types of climate denialist claims in text.
CCDH researchers identified the changing tactics of climate deniers
on YouTube by analyzing thousands of hours of transcripts of videos
on the platform from 96 channels dating back to 2018.<br>
<br>
In 2018, outright denialist claims like “the weather is cold” and
“we’re heading into an ice age” were popular among climate
denialists – but as temperatures and evidence of global warming have
increased, those narratives are no longer as effective. Analysis of
4,458 hours or nearly 186 days of YouTube content since 2018 shows
that “Old Denial” claims that anthropogenic climate change isn’t
happening have dropped from 65% of all claims in 2018 to just 30% of
claims in 2023.<br>
<br>
<b>It is vital that those advocating for action to avert climate
disaster take note of this substantial shift from denial of
anthropogenic climate change to undermining trust in both
solutions and science itself, and shift our focus, our resources
and our counternarratives accordingly. <br>
<br>
The narrative shift from “Old Denial” to “New Denial” seeks to
undermine the solutions to mitigating the climate crisis and delay
political action. A failure to shift our strategies would be
enormously damaging. <br>
<br>
This report is a call-to-action to the climate change advocates,
the funders, the politicians doing the hard work to green our
economic models and incentives, to ensure their work effectively
counters what our opponents are doing now, not six years ago.</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://counterhate.com/research/new-climate-denial/">https://counterhate.com/research/new-climate-denial/</a>
<p>- - <br>
</p>
<p><i>[ Download the 56 page study
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CCDH-The-New-Climate-Denial_FINAL.pdf">https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CCDH-The-New-Climate-Denial_FINAL.pdf</a>
]</i></p>
<p><b>Center for Countering Digital Hate</b></p>
<p><b>The New Climate Denial</b></p>
<p><b>How social media platforms and content producers profit by
spreading new forms of climate denial <br>
</b></p>
<p>The Center for Countering Digital Hate works to stop the spread
of online hate and<br>
disinformation through innovative research, public campaigns and
policy advocacy.<br>
Our mission is to protect human rights and civil liberties online.</p>
<p>Social media platforms have changed the way we communicate, build
and maintain<br>
relationships, set social standards, and negotiate and assert our
society’s values. In the<br>
process, they have become safe spaces for the spread of hate,
conspiracy theories<br>
and disinformation.</p>
<p>Social media companies erode basic human rights and civil
liberties by enabling the<br>
spread of online hate and disinformation.</p>
<p>At CCDH, we have developed a deep understanding of the online
harm landscape,<br>
showing how easily hate actors and disinformation spreaders
exploit the digital platforms and search engines that promote and
profit from their content.</p>
<p>We are fighting for better online spaces that promote truth,
democracy, and are safe<br>
for all. Our goal is to increase the economic and reputational
costs for the platforms<br>
that facilitate the spread of hate and disinformation.</p>
<p>If you appreciate this report, you can donate to CCDH at
counterhate.com/<br>
donate. In the United States, Center for Countering Digital Hate
Inc is a 501(c)(3)<br>
charity. In the United Kingdom, Center for Countering Digital Hate
Ltd is a nonprofit company limited by guarantee.<br>
</p>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CCDH-The-New-Climate-Denial_FINAL.pdf">https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CCDH-The-New-Climate-Denial_FINAL.pdf</a></p>
<p>- -</p>
<b>2 Executive Summary</b><br>
<b>This report uses an AI model to measure changes in climate denial
on YouTube</b><br>
<blockquote>• Climate denial consists of attempts to undermine the
scientific consensus on climate<br>
change based on rhetorical arguments.<br>
• We gathered transcripts for 12,058 videos from climate denial
YouTube channels:<br>
• Data was drawn from 96 YouTube channels that have promoted
denial<br>
• videos under analysis are climate-related and from the last six
years<br>
• Videos in our dataset containing denial claims were viewed 325
million times<br>
• These transcripts were categorized by an existing AI model
trained on climate denial.<br>
• Testing indicates the model is 78% accurate in categorizing
claims in our dataset.<br>
</blockquote>
<b>Climate deniers have shifted to a New Denial of climate impacts,
solutions and advocates</b><br>
Climate experts have noted a change in climate deniers’ tactics
over recent years.<br>
Our analysis shows that climate deniers have shifted from Old
Denial to New Denial:<br>
<blockquote>• Global warming is not happening<br>
• Human-generated greenhouse gasses are not causing global warming<br>
• The impacts of global warming are beneficial or harmless<br>
• Climate solutions won’t work<br>
• Climate science and the climate movement are unreliable<br>
• New Denial constitutes 70% of denialist claims in 2023, up from
35% in 2018.<br>
• This is driven by attacks on climate solutions, scientists and
the climate movement.<br>
• Influential deniers including Jordan Peterson and Blaze TV
followed this trend.<br>
</blockquote>
<b>Climate deniers have shifted away from an Old Denial of warming
and its human causes</b><br>
<blockquote>• Old Denial constitutes 30% of denialist claims in
2023, down from 65% in 2018.<br>
• This is driven by a sharp fall in denialist claims that the
climate is actually cooling.<br>
• Experts suggest climate deniers have changed tactics because the
results of global warming<br>
and climate change are evident to the public.5<br>
</blockquote>
<b>YouTube continues to profit from ads served on Old Denial and New
Denial content</b><br>
<blockquote>• YouTube is making up to $13.4 million a year from ads
on the channels we studied.<br>
• YouTube’s policies bar monetization of Old Denial, but do not
cover New Denial.<br>
• We collected evidence that YouTube is still serving ads on both
forms of denial.<br>
</blockquote>
<b>Platforms must update their policies to keep up with New Denial
narratives</b><br>
<blockquote>• Google must update its policy on climate denial
content to reflect New Denial<br>
• Digital platforms must demonetize and de-amplify climate denial
content<br>
• Climate advocates should use this report as a call to action to
address New Denial<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CCDH-The-New-Climate-Denial_FINAL.pdf">https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CCDH-The-New-Climate-Denial_FINAL.pdf</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[ Climate in Crisis - NBC NEWS describes our information
predicament ]</i><br>
<b>On YouTube, climate denialism takes a turn</b><br>
A study of more than 12,000 videos found that efforts to discredit
the climate movement have moved on from whether climate change is
real to focus on skepticism of solutions, activists and scientists.<br>
<p>Jan. 16, 2024,<br>
By Evan Bush<br>
The voices that deny climate change have settled on a new refrain.
<br>
<br>
Instead of rejecting the fact that the Earth is warming, they’re
now focusing on skepticism of climate solutions, as well as
scientists and activists and altogether the idea that climate
change will cause harm, according to a new report from the Center
for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit organization that
researches digital hate speech and misinformation.<br>
<br>
The organization’s analysis suggests that the outright dismissal
of climate change is no longer as convincing an argument, so
climate skeptics are shifting the ideological fight to how
seriously humanity must take climate change or what ought to be
done about it. The report also claims that the content policies of
YouTube’s parent company, Google — which are supposed to block
advertising money from content that rejects the scientific
consensus about the existence and causes of climate change — are
ineffective and ought to be updated. <br>
<br>
“A new front has opened up in this battle,” Imran Ahmed, the
organization’s CEO, said at a news conference. “They’ve gone from
saying climate change isn’t happening to now saying: ‘Hey, climate
change is happening, but there is no hope. There are no
solutions.’”<br>
<br>
Scientists who study Earth systems have agreed for decades that
the human burning of fossil fuels creates an imbalance of
heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere that are warming the world.
Earth has warmed by roughly 1.2 degrees Celsius, on average, since
before industrial times, when fossil fuels began to drive
economies. <br>
<br>
That warming is melting ice shelves, causing sea-level rise and
intensifying the water cycle. In recent years, scientists have
been able to connect individual events, like killer heat waves in
2021 in the Pacific Northwest, to human-caused climate change. <br>
<br>
U.S. public perception of climate change has shifted in recent
decades, but it remains highly politicized, according to the Pew
Research Center. The nonprofit Environmental and Energy Study
Institute said in a report in February that "Americans are
increasingly convinced that global warming is happening,
human-caused, and a serious problem. Americans also increasingly
understand that climate impacts are here and now and would like to
see more government action."<br>
<br>
The Center for Countering Digital Hate is a nonprofit organization
whose stated goal is to “protect human rights and civil liberties”
by holding social media companies accountable. Ahmed said the
organization has been “tightly integrated with the climate
movement.” <br>
<br>
For its analysis, the organization used an artificial intelligence
model to evaluate the arguments used in more than 12,000 YouTube
videos from 96 channels it said featured climate change denial
content, including videos from Blaze TV, a conservative media
channel, and the Heartland Institute, a free-market think tank.
The videos were published from January 2018 through September
2023. <br>
<br>
The “deep learning model” processed YouTube transcripts and sought
to identify whether particular climate denial themes were present,
the report says. Independent evaluators checked part of the text
transcripts and graded the model’s accuracy. The independent
evaluators said it accurately found denial claims about 78% of the
time. <br>
<br>
“We feel very confident that, at scale, this analysis gives us ...
very strong data indicating the trends,” Ahmed said. <br>
<br>
Over more than five years of videos, the researchers said,
arguments suggesting climate solutions won’t work or that climate
advocates in science or activism are unreliable have grown 21.4
and 12 percentage points, respectively. The idea that global
warming isn’t happening at all has dropped by 34.3 percentage
points.<br>
<br>
Outside researchers said the analysis mirrors trends they’ve
observed in recent years. <br>
<br>
John Cook, a senior research fellow at the Melbourne Centre for
Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne in Australia,
developed the artificial intelligence model used by the Center for
Countering Digital Hate. <br>
</p>
<p>Cook’s research has focused on trends in climate contrarian blogs
and conservative think tank websites from 1998 to 2020. <br>
<br>
The research, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal
Scientific Reports, found a similar trend. <br>
<br>
“It’s clear that the future of climate misinformation will be more
and more focused on solutions and attacking climate science
itself,” Cook said in an email. “Misinformation targeting
solutions is designed to delay climate action, while
misinformation attacking climate science erodes public trust in
climate science and scientists.” <br>
<br>
John Kotcher, a research associate professor at George Mason
University’s Center for Climate Change Communication who surveys
Americans’ beliefs and opinions about climate change, said he has
seen similar trends. His polling asks Americans what kind of
questions they’d ask a global warming expert. <br>
<br>
From 2011 to 2023, respondents have grown less interested in
questions like whether global warming is a hoax, whether global
warming is happening, how experts know it’s happening and whether
it will hurt people, polling shows. <br>
<br>
“This is all consistent with the notion that oppositional
messaging has shifted focus strategically — from questioning
whether climate change is actually happening to focusing on how
serious is it as a problem, how bad is it actually and how
effective are proposed solutions to it,” Kotcher said. <br>
<br>
Kotcher said his research suggests that those interested in action
on climate change agree with a set of key facts — that climate
change is real, that humans are the primary cause, that scientists
agree about those two ideas, that it has negative impacts today,
that others care about it and that solutions exist today. <br>
<br>
“Calling a truce on one of those key battlefields — just the
existence of climate change — it does move the needle slightly
farther in what I would argue is the right direction, getting
people to have a more fact-based understanding of the issue,”
Kotcher said. <br>
<br>
The report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate takes aim
at YouTube’s policies on climate misinformation, saying it is
failing to prevent monetization of denial narratives; the report
includes screenshots of advertisements on videos it categorizes as
“old denial,” which outright denies climate change is happening.<br>
<br>
The nonprofit group argues YouTube and Google should broaden the
kind of content that can’t be monetized to include content it
categorizes as “new denial,” which rejects scientific consensus
about the “causes, impacts and solutions” to climate change.<br>
<br>
YouTube has enforcement teams that review questionable content,
including content about climate change. YouTube reviewed the
Center for Countering Digital Hate’s report and agreed that some
of the videos it cited did violate its climate change policies.
However, it said most of the videos complied with its policy. <br>
<br>
“Our climate change policy prohibits ads from running on content
that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the
existence and causes of climate change,” Nate Funkhouser, a
YouTube spokesperson, said in an email. “Debate or discussions of
climate change topics, including around public policy or research,
is allowed. However, when content crosses the line to climate
change denial, we stop showing ads on those videos. We also
display information panels under relevant videos to provide
additional information on climate change and context from third
parties.”<br>
<br>
Evan Bush<br>
Evan Bush is a science reporter for NBC News. He can be reached at
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Evan.Bush@nbcuni.com">Evan.Bush@nbcuni.com</a>.<br>
</p>
<p><b><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/youtube-climate-denialism-takes-turn-rcna133651">https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/youtube-climate-denialism-takes-turn-rcna133651</a></b><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<font face="Calibri"> <i>[The news archive - 2008 ]</i></font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> <font size="+2"><i><b>January 17, 2008 </b></i></font>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> January 17, 2008: Democratic
presidential candidate Barack Obama discusses his vision on energy
and climate change in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle.
Days before the 2008 presidential election--and for several years
afterwards--right-wing websites take segments of the interview out
of context to make it appear as though Obama advocated higher energy
bills. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blog.sfgate.com/chroncast/2008/01/21/last-weeks-interview-with-obama/">http://blog.sfgate.com/chroncast/2008/01/21/last-weeks-interview-with-obama/</a><br>
<br>
<p><font face="Calibri"> <br>
</font><font face="Calibri"><br>
=== Other climate news sources
===========================================<br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><b>*Inside Climate News</b><br>
Newsletters<br>
We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every
day or once a week, our original stories and digest of the web’s
top headlines deliver the full story, for free.<br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://insideclimatenews.org/">https://insideclimatenews.org/</a><br>
--------------------------------------- <br>
*<b>Climate Nexus</b> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*">https://climatenexus.org/hot-news/*</a>
<br>
Delivered straight to your inbox every morning, Hot News
summarizes the most important climate and energy news of the
day, delivering an unmatched aggregation of timely, relevant
reporting. It also provides original reporting and commentary on
climate denial and pro-polluter activity that would otherwise
remain largely unexposed. 5 weekday <br>
================================= <br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><b class="moz-txt-star"><span
class="moz-txt-tag">*</span>Carbon Brief Daily </b><span
class="moz-txt-star"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up">https://www.carbonbrief.org/newsletter-sign-up</a></span><b
class="moz-txt-star"><span class="moz-txt-tag">*</span></b> <br>
Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon
Brief sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to
thousands of subscribers around the world. The email is a digest
of the past 24 hours of media coverage related to climate change
and energy, as well as our pick of the key studies published in
the peer-reviewed journals. <br>
more at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief">https://www.getrevue.co/publisher/carbon-brief</a>
<br>
================================== <br>
*T<b>he Daily Climate </b>Subscribe <a
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