{"id":61436,"date":"2023-12-18T09:45:22","date_gmt":"2023-12-18T17:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energi.media\/?p=61436"},"modified":"2023-12-18T09:45:22","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T17:45:22","slug":"why-people-still-fall-for-fake-news-about-climate-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/why-people-still-fall-for-fake-news-about-climate-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Why people still fall for fake news about climate change"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was published by Grist<\/a> on Dec. 18, 2023.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Kate Yoder<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In 1995, a leading group of scientists convened by the United Nations declared that they had\u00a0detected<\/a>\u00a0a \u201chuman influence\u201d on global temperatures with \u201ceffectively irreversible\u201d consequences. In the coming decades,\u00a099.9 per cent of scientists<\/a>\u00a0would come to agree that burning fossil fuels had disrupted the Earth\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n

Yet almost 30 years after that warning, during the hottest year on Earth in\u00a0125,000 years<\/a>, people are still arguing that the science is unreliable, or that the threat is real but we shouldn\u2019t do anything about climate change. Conspiracies are thriving online, according to\u00a0a report<\/a> by the coalition Climate Action Against Disinformation released last month, in time for the U.N. climate conference in Dubai. Over the past year, posts with the hashtag #climatescam have gotten more likes and retweets on the platform known as X than ones with #climatecrisis or #climateemergency.<\/p>\n

By now, anyone looking out the window can see flowers blooming earlier and lakes freezing later. Why, after all this time, do\u00a015 per cent<\/a>\u00a0of Americans fall for the lie that global warming isn\u2019t happening? And is there anything that can be done to bring them around to reality? New research suggests that understanding why fake news is compelling to people can tell us something about how to defend ourselves against it.<\/p>\n

People buy into bad information for different reasons, said Andy Norman, an author and philosopher who co-founded the\u00a0Mental Immunity Project<\/a>, which aims to protect people from manipulative information. Due to quirks of psychology, people can end up overlooking inconvenient facts when confronted with arguments that support their beliefs. \u201cThe more you rely on useful beliefs at the expense of true beliefs, the more unhinged your thinking becomes,\u201d Norman said. Another reason people are drawn to conspiracies is that they feel like they\u2019re in on a big, world-transforming secret: Flat Earthers think they\u2019re seeing past the illusions that the vast majority don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The annual U.N. climate summits often coincide with\u00a0a surge<\/a>\u00a0in misleading information on social media. As COP28 ramped up in late November,\u00a0conspiracy theories<\/a>\u00a0circulated claiming that governments were trying to cause food shortages by seizing land from farmers, supposedly using climate change as an excuse. Spreading lies about global warming like these can further social divisions and undermine public and political support for action to reduce emissions, according to the Climate Action Against Disinformation\u2019s report. It can also lead to harassment: Some\u00a073 per cent<\/a>\u00a0of climate scientists who regularly appear in the media have experienced online abuse.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem is the genuine appeal of fake news. A\u00a0recent study<\/a> in Nature Human Behavior found that climate change disinformation was more persuasive than scientific facts. Researchers at the University of Geneva in Switzerland had originally intended to see if they could help people fend off disinformation, testing different strategies on nearly 7,000 people from 12 countries, including the United States, India, and Nigeria. Participants read a paragraph intended to strengthen their mental defences \u2014 reminders of the scientific consensus around climate change, the trustworthiness of scientists, or the moral responsibility to act, for example. Then they were subjected to a barrage of 20 real tweets that blamed warming on the sun and the \u201cwavy\u201d jet stream, spouted conspiracies about \u201cthe climate hoax devised by the U.N.,\u201d and warned that the elites \u201cwant us to eat bugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The interventions didn\u2019t work as hoped, said Tobia Spampatti, an author of the study and a neuroscience researcher at the University of Geneva. The flood of fake news \u2014 meant to simulate what people encounter in social media\u00a0echo chambers<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 had a big effect. Reading the tweets about bogus conspiracies lowered people\u2019s belief that climate change was happening, their support for action to reduce emissions, and their willingness to do something about it personally. The disinformation was simply more compelling than scientific facts, partly because it plays with people\u2019s emotions, Spampatti said (eliciting anger toward elites who want you to eat bugs, for example). The only paragraph that helped people recognize falsehoods was one that prompted them to evaluate the accuracy of the information they were seeing, a nudge that brought some people back to reality.<\/p>\n

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\"Photo
Conspiracy theorists protest at busy roundabout in the village of Martlesham in Suffolk, England, September 18, 2022.\u00a0Geography Photos \/ UCG \/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
The study attempted to use \u201cpre-bunking<\/a>,\u201d a tactic to vaccinate people against fake news. While the effort flopped, Norman said that doesn\u2019t mean it shows \u201cinoculation\u201d is ineffective. Spampatti and other researchers\u2019 effort to fortify people\u2019s mental defences used a new, broader approach to pre-bunking, trying to protect against a bunch of lines of disinformation at once, that didn\u2019t work as well as tried-and-true inoculation techniques, according to Norman.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Norman says it\u2019s crucial that any intervention to stop the spread of disinformation comes with a \u201cweakened dose\u201d of it, like a vaccine, to help people understand why someone might benefit from lying. For example, when the Biden administration learned of Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin\u2019s plans to invade Ukraine in late 2021, the White House began\u00a0warning the world<\/a>\u00a0that Russia would push a false narrative to justify the invasion, including staging a\u00a0fake, graphic video<\/a>\u00a0of a Ukrainian attack on Russian territory. When the video came out, it was quickly dismissed as fake news. \u201cIt was a wildly successful attempt to inoculate much of the world against Putin\u2019s preferred narrative about Ukraine,\u201d Norman said.<\/p>\n

For climate change, that approach might not succeed \u2014 decades of oil-funded disinformation campaigns have already infected the public. \u201cIt\u2019s really hard to think about someone who hasn\u2019t been exposed to climate skepticism or disinformation from fossil fuel industries,\u201d said Emma Frances Bloomfield, a communication professor at the University of Nevada, Los Vegas. \u201cIt\u2019s just so pervasive. They have talking heads who go on news programs, they flood media publications and the internet, they pay lobbyists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bloomfield argues that disinformation sticks for a reason, and that simply telling the people who fall for it that there\u2019s a scientific consensus isn\u2019t enough. \u201cThey\u2019re doubting climate change\u00a0because<\/em>\u00a0they doubt scientific authorities,\u201d Bloomfield said. \u201cThey\u2019re making decisions about the environment, not based on the facts or the science, but based on their values or other things that are important to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

While\u00a0political identity<\/a>\u00a0can explain some resistance to climate change, there are other reasons people dismiss the evidence, as Bloomfield outlines in her upcoming book\u00a0Science v. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators<\/em><\/a>. \u201cIn the climate change story, we\u2019re the villains, or at least partially blameworthy for what\u2019s happening to the environment, and it requires us to make a lot of sacrifices,\u201d Bloomfield said. \u201cThat\u2019s a hard story to adopt because of the role we\u2019re playing within it.\u201d Accepting climate change, to some degree, means accepting inner conflict. You always know you could do more to lower your carbon footprint, whether that\u2019s ditching meat, refusing to fly, or wearing your old clothes until they\u2019re threadbare and ratty.<\/p>\n

By contrast, embracing climate denial allows people to identify as heroes, Bloomfield said. They don\u2019t have to do anything differently, and might even see driving around in a gas-guzzling truck as part of God\u2019s plan. It\u2019s a comforting narrative, and certainly easier than wrestling with ethical dilemmas or existential dread.<\/p>\n

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\"Photo
Protesters march after a demonstration near Heathrow Airport west of London, August 20, 2007.\u00a0Ben Stansall \/ AFP via Getty Images<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
Those seeking to amplify tensions around climate change or spread doubt, such as fossil fuel companies, social media trolls, and countries like Russia and China, get a lot of bang for their buck. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot easier and cheaper to push doubt than to push certainty,\u201d Bloomfield said. Oil companies including Shell, ExxonMobil, and BP spent about $4 million to $5 million on Facebook ads related to social issues and politics this year, according to the Climate Action Against Disinformation report<\/a>. To sow doubt, you only need to arouse some suspicion. Creating a bullet-proof case for something is much harder \u2014 it might take thousands of scientific studies (or\u00a0debunking hundreds of counterarguments one by one<\/a>, as Grist did in 2006).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The most straightforward way to fight disinformation would be to stop it from happening in the first place, Spampatti said. But even if regulators were able to get social media companies to try to stop the spread of conspiracy theories and falsehoods, dislodging them is a different story.\u00a0 One promising approach, \u201cdeep canvassing,\u201d seeks to persuade people through nonjudgmental, one-on-one conversations. The outreach method, invented by LGBTQ+ advocates, involves hearing people\u2019s concerns and helping them work through their conflicted feelings. (Remember how accepting climate change means accepting you might be a tiny part of the problem?)<\/p>\n

Research has shown that deep canvassing isn\u2019t just successful at\u00a0reducing transphobia<\/a>, but also that its effects can last for months, a long time compared to other interventions. The strategy can work for other polarizing problems, too, based on one experiment in a rural\u00a0metal-smelting town<\/a> in British Columbia. After convincing several local governments across the West Kootenay region to shift to 100 per cent renewable energy, volunteers with the nonprofit Neighbors United kept\u00a0running into difficulties<\/a>\u00a0in the town of Trail, where they encountered distrust of environmentalists. They spoke to hundreds of residents, listening to their worries about losing jobs, finding common ground, and telling personal stories about climate change like friends would, instead of debating the facts like antagonists. A stunning\u00a040 per cent<\/a> of residents shifted their beliefs, and Trail\u2019s city council voted in 2022 to shift to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050.<\/p>\n

Both facts and stories have a place, Bloomfield said. For conservative audiences, she suggests that climate advocates move away from talking about global systems and scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change \u2014 a \u201cnameless, faceless, nebulous group of people\u201d \u2014 and toward local matters and people they actually know. Getting information from friends, family, and other trusted individuals can really help.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not necessarily as authoritative as the IPCC,\u201d Bloomfield said. \u201cBut it helps you connect with that information, and you trust that person, so you trust that information that they\u2019re resharing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was published by Grist on Dec. 18, 2023. By Kate Yoder In 1995, a leading group of scientists convened by the United Nations declared that they had\u00a0detected\u00a0a \u201chuman influence\u201d on global temperatures with [Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":61437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[80,14,2517,2563],"class_list":{"0":"post-61436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-featured","10":"tag-information","11":"tag-misinformation"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nclimate change - Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Almost 30 years after a UN warning about climate change, people are still arguing that the science is unreliable.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/energi.media\/news\/why-people-still-fall-for-fake-news-about-climate-change\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"climate change - 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