(USA Today) Climate Change Denial On Facebook, Youtube, Twitter And Tiktok Is ‘As Bad As Ever’

USA Today - Jessica Guynn

The climate is changing, but misinformation about it on the major social media platforms is not.

Climate change falsehoods, hoaxes and conspiracy theories are still prevalent on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube despite pledges to crack down, a new report says.

Social media posts and videos denying climate change, disputing its causes, or underplaying its effects not only can still be found on these platforms, they are often missing warning labels or links to credible information, according to Advance Democracy, a research organization that studies misinformation.

Climate scientists say they’re frustrated by the lack of progress in stemming the tide of climate change misinformation. For years, they’ve urged social media companies to identify, flag and take down the misinformation and the accounts that spread it.

►'The future of this planet is at stake': Report pressures Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to battle climate lies
►Climate change misinformation: Facebook says it cracked down on climate change lies. Then came false power outage claim during Texas winter storm

Last year, Twitter added a new climate topic to direct users to credible information on climate change. Facebook expanded information labels on posts about climate change to direct users to its “Climate Science Information Center” and YouTube stopped running ads denying climate change.

But, says Michael Mann, director of Penn State University's Earth System Science Center and author of “The New Climate War,” “it’s as bad as ever.”

John Cook, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at Monash University who advises Facebook, says the proliferation of climate misinformation on social media reflects the torrent of misinformation coming from a combination of science denial and skepticism about climate policy and renewable fuels and technologies.

"One element of climate misinformation that seems to be particularly prominent on social media is culture war type posts that attempt to paint people concerned about climate change as belonging to some separate social group intent on impinging on people’s freedoms," Cook said.

"This is a particularly damaging form of misinformation as it exacerbates public polarization on climate change, making progress more difficult."

‘Climate fraud,’ ‘climate change hoax’ still popular on Twitter

Last May, Advance Democracy found hundreds of thousands of posts on Twitter denying climate change. A week later, Twitter added a new climate topic to direct users to credible information on climate change.

Advance Democracy says the number of posts with climate change denial terms such as “climate fraud,” “climate change hoax,” or “climate cult” increased after the climate topic was introduced and averaged 679 a day in the second half of 2021. Climate change denial spiked during the U.N. COP 26 climate summit, Advance Democracy found.

Three of the 5 accounts that received the most engagements in 2021 for posts denying climate change referenced “Grand Solar Minimum,” the false belief that the Grand Solar Minimum, a period of low solar activity, will cool the planet and cause the next ice age.

►Not so harmless: How sharing on Facebook may help spread misinformation

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

In all, there were some 231,800 posts using climate change denial terms from approximately 77,540 accounts, Advance Democracy says.

“We recognize that more can be done on services like Twitter to elevate credible climate information, and we continue to evolve our approach,” Twitter spokesperson Elizabeth Busby said in a statement.

Climate change denial posts still lack labels on Facebook

Internal documents provided to USA TODAY and other news organizations by whistleblower Frances Haugen showed that Facebook is a primary source of climate information for users.

Last May, Facebook said it would expand informational labels on some Facebook posts about climate change in the U.S. The labeled posts would link to its Climate Science Center.

Advance Democracy says 7,290 posts using climate change denial terms generated 800,760 interactions (meaning reactions, comments and shares) in 2021. Two of the most popular posts in the U.S. in the second half of 2021 were not labeled.

►Fact check: Human-generated CO2, not water vapor, drives climate change
►Fact check: Scientific consensus says humans are dominant cause of climate change

“We combat climate change misinformation by connecting people to reliable information from leading organizations through our Climate Science Center and working with a global network of independent fact checkers to review and rate content,” Facebook spokesman Kevin McAlister said in a statement.

“When they rate this content as false, we add a warning label and reduce its distribution so fewer people see it. We also take action against Pages, Groups, and accounts that repeatedly share false claims about climate science.”

YouTube 'information panels' missing from videos

According to YouTube guidelines, when a viewer searches or watches videos “prone to misinformation,” an informational panel should appear with background information from independent third-party sources. YouTube also prohibits ads that promote climate change misinformation.

Advance Democracy says no information panels popped up on video searches for 10 key phrases associated with climate change denial but did turn up an ad from Amazon linking to books that deny the existence of climate change.

YouTube says it surfaces videos from authoritative sources in search results and puts informational panels under videos.

“In general, our systems don’t recommend or prominently surface content that includes climate change misinformation,” YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez said in a statement. “We’re always working to expand and improve how we connect viewers to authoritative content about climate change.”

It also removed ads flagged in the Advance Democracy report for violating its policies on climate change denial.

TikTok videos generate 1.53 million views

Videos using hashtags associated with climate change denial generated 1.53 million views. The videos were not labeled. TikTok’s guidelines do not specifically address climate change misinformation.

A small percentage of the hashtags associated with climate change denial was being used for countermessaging, Advance Democracy found. A search for #grandsolarminimum turned up no videos dispelling the hoax.

TikTok said it removed the accounts and content that violated its policies after USA TODAY inquired.

"Our community values authentic content, and we do too, which is why we work with accredited fact checkers to evaluate content and limit the spread of false or misleading information when we identify it,” company spokesperson A.B. Obi-Okoye said in a statement.

Links

• Eight ways to make your climate change social media posts matter – from a communication expert 
• Social media is reducing climate change debates to your views on veganism
• As Climate Change Fries the World, Social Media Is Frying Our Brains
• Climate fight 'is undermined by social media's toxic reports'
• Social Media Is Polluted With Climate Denialism
• Challenges in Climate Change Communication on Social Media

(AU The Guardian) ‘Just A New Fossil Fuel Industry’: Australia To Send First Shipment Of Liquefied Hydrogen To Japan

The Guardian - Royce Kurmelovs

Morrison government hails engineering milestone but researchers raise concerns and say it could increase emissions

The purpose-built Suiso Frontier will ship the first load of liquefied hydrogen from Western Australia to Japan in the coming days. Photograph: Yuka Obayashi/Reuters

Australia will export its first load of liquefied hydrogen made from coal in an engineering milestone which researchers say could also lock in a new fossil fuel industry and increase the country’s carbon emissions.

Under the $500m Hydrogen Energy Supply Chain (HESC) pilot project, hydrogen will be made in Victoria’s LaTrobe valley from brown coal and transported aboard a purpose-built ship to Japan, where it will be burned in coal-fired power plants.

Carbon capture and storage will be used in an attempt to reduce the carbon emissions associated with making the hydrogen and supercooling the gas until it forms a liquid before it is loaded aboard the Suiso Frontier vessel. The first shipment is due to depart from Hastings in the coming days.

The project is being led by a Japanese-Australian consortium including Japan’s J-Power, Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Shell and AGL.

Green hydrogen beats blue on emissions and financial cost, Australian study finds. Read more

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, said on Friday the development was a “world-first that would make Australia a global leader” in the budding industry.

“A successful Australian hydrogen industry means lower emissions, greater energy production and more local jobs,” Morrison said in a statement.

“The HESC project puts Australia at the forefront of the global energy transition to lower emissions through clean hydrogen, which is a fuel of the future.”

Morrison also announced an additional $7.5m to support the next stage of the project, which has a goal of producing 225,000 tonnes of carbon-neutral hydrogen each year and an additional $20m towards the next stage of the CarbonNet project which aims to produce commercial-scale carbon capture and storage.

According to government estimates, this will reduce emissions by 1.8m tonnes a year.

But Tim Baxter, a senior researcher for climate solutions at the Climate Council, said the assumptions were questionable as the reliance on “fossil hydrogen” meant government needed to “come back with a zero emissions hydrogen plan”.

“Hydrogen derived from fossil fuel sources, like what is being shipped out of the LaTrobe Valley, which is derived from some of the world’s dirtiest coal, is really just a new fossil fuel industry,” Baxter said.

“Fossil hydrogen is a whole new fossil fuel industry, regardless of whether carbon capture and storage is attached to it. It results in extraordinary greenhouse gas emissions. It’s not a climate solution.”

Though “clean hydrogen” has become central to the government’s emissions reductions plans, hydrogen produced by fossil fuels is more expensive, will release more greenhouse gas emissions and comes with greater risk of creating stranded assets.

Show Dr Fiona Beck, an engineer with the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, said Friday’s announcement did mark an engineering milestone as it showed it was technically possible to liquefy and store hydrogen for transport, as this was more difficult to do than with LNG.

However, Beck, a co-author of a recent peer-reviewed paper published in the Journal of Cleaner Production that examined the emissions that will be created out of the proposed Japanese-Australia hydrogen supply chain, said if hydrogen made with fossil fuels became the norm, Japan would be transferring its emissions to Australia.

Japan, which has limited options for onshore wind projects, has been looking for ways to reduce its CO2 emissions. One way is by burning ammonia, which is made with hydrogen, in its coal-fired power plants – which are also powered with Australian coal.

Under current CO2 accounting standards by which emissions are measured, Japan would slash its emissions while shifting them across to Australia owing to the CO2 emissions involved in creating, processing, transporting and shipping the hydrogen.

“If you’re importing hydrogen made from coal, essentially the emissions are going to be worse in Australia rather than it would be by just taking that coal and burning it in Japan,” Beck said.

“There’s no policy pressure or economic reason why Japan would buy low-emissions hydrogen when it gets the same benefit by buying cheap, high-emissions hydrogen.”

Beck said that while current government planning stated its intention to reduce emissions associated with creating hydrogen “there’s very few actual mechanisms to do this”.

“Unless Australia has some strong policy to keep its carbon emissions down, we could see a rise in emissions in Australia due to this hydrogen trade.”

Links

• WA’s offshore gasfields pay almost no royalties and stoke carbon emissions, report finds
• Fracking in Lake Eyre basin ‘would derail Queensland’s emissions plan’
• Global emissions implications from co-combusting ammonia in coal fired power stations: An analysis of the Japan-Australia supply chain
• Australia puts fossil fuel company front and centre at Cop26
• Australia urged to support Asian Development Bank plan to end fossil fuel financing
• Why is Australia building a $600m gas power plant as world experts warn against fossil fuels?
• Do Angus Taylor’s carbon capture and storage claims stack up?
• China’s coal production hit record levels in 2021

(AU Canberra Times) Kids Anxious About Climate Change Threat

Canberra Times - Tracey Ferrier, AAP

The spectre of climate change is having a very big impact on children, says a psychologist.

Australian children are dealing with rising anxiety about climate change but how damaging that is can depend on how adults frame the problem, new research suggests.

Psychologist Tara Crandon is completing a PhD in climate anxiety among adolescents at QIMR Berghofer's Medical Research Institute and recently analysed international research on global warming and the mental health of young people.

She says it's clear that Australian kids, and children the world over, are "looking pretty far into the future" and the spectre of climate change is having a very big impact on them.

"There is evidence that's coming out about young people feeling like they are having to make future choices based on climate change," she says."For example, feeling like they can't have children because of what that would mean for the planet and for their child's future."

There appears to be a relationship between the way parents, teachers and even politicians talk about about climate change and whether children feel empowered to help fight the problem, or hopeless and overwhelmed by it.

"I work with a lot of children and adolescents and before I even started this research, I was recognising and noticing that a lot of young people were coming in and speaking about climate change but in different ways," Miss Crandon says.

"Some young people feel like that anxiety can drive them, that it empowers them and they feel a sense of hope that they can do something about it. They feel motivated to do that.

"But for other young people, they are overwhelmed and that anxiety is taking over their emotions and their thoughts."

Miss Crandon later discovered that authors of research papers from around the world have been documenting the same phenomenon.

"They were also finding that climate anxiety can be impairing and overwhelming for some, but for others can motivate some helpful responses.

"So it's not necessarily an issue to be climate anxious. In fact it's quite rational and expected. The problem really comes when young people don't know how to deal with that anxiety."

In an attempt to work out why some young people ended up feeling motivated and empowered while others felt frozen, Miss Crandon began to look at potential influences.

A few things stood out, including how parental views and educational experiences can influence children and teenagers.

"When the message is impending doom, a catastrophe, an apocalyptic event ... and whether that's from parents, on social media, or government, community or friends that will contribute to anxiety," Miss Crandon says.

"But on the flip side, if those same messages are rooted in hope, if they are around tangible strategies young people can implement in their daily lives, if they are around climate change as a collective issue, not something we have to deal with alone, those kinds of messages might be more helpful for young people."

Other influences at play included geography and how closely young people were tied to their homelands through culture and spirituality.

Miss Crandon says one key take home message is that how climate change is communicated to the younger generations really matters, and that adults with influence should be thinking about that.

"We don't want to give the message that it'll all be fine, and nothing's going to happen," she says.

"But they should be rooted in hope and give young people something they can take away and do."

In December, Mission Australia released its annual youth survey, which ranks the issues and concerns that are foremost in the minds of Australians aged 15 to 19.

Of more than 20,000 respondents, one quarter said they were extremely concerned or very concerned about climate change.

The QIMR Berghofer paper has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Links

• A look into the emerging field of climate anxiety
• Nature Climate Change: A social–ecological perspective on climate anxiety in children and adolescents
• How to cope with anxiety about climate change
• Mission Australia 2021 Youth Survey
• Psychologist Tara Crandon
• QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute