Essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Guardian, climate deniers have influenced teens by infiltrating youtube with disinformation videos.
Third of UK teenagers believe climate change exaggerated, report shows
YouTube criticised for amplifying lies about the climate with disinformation videos watched by young people
Helena Horton Environment reporterTue 16 Jan 2024 22.00 AEDT
A third of UK teenagers believe climate change is “exaggerated”, a report has found, as YouTube videos promoting a new kind of climate denial aimed at young people proliferate on the platform.
Previously, most climate deniers pushed the belief that climate breakdown was not happening or, if it was, that humans were not causing it. Now, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) has found that most climate denial videos on YouTube push the idea that climate solutions do not work, climate science and the climate movement are unreliable, or that the effects of global heating are beneficial or harmless.
Researchers from the CCDH gathered a dataset of text transcripts from 12,058 climate-related YouTube videos posted by 96 channels over almost six years from 1 January 2018 to 30 September 2023. They also included the results of a nationally representative survey conducted by polling company Survation which found 31% of UK respondents aged 13 to 17 agreed with the statement “Climate change and its effects are being purposefully overexaggerated”. This rose to 37% of teenagers categorised as heavy users of social media, meaning they reported using any one platform for more than four hours a day.
…
Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the CCDH, said: “Scientists have won the battle to inform the public about climate change and its causes, which is why those opposed to climate action have cynically switched focus to undermining confidence in solutions and in science itself.”
This mentality has seeped into UK politics, with rightwing politicians having campaigned for years to persuade the public that net zero is unachievable and too expensive, and that technologies including electric cars and heat pumps do not work. The prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has said recently that climate solutions are too expensive and rowed back on net zero commitments.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/16/third-of-uk-teenagers-believe-climate-change-exaggerated-report-shows
What can I say? It’s not our fault if reality gives us plenty of evidence to refute nonsensical climate claims.
I mean, who can forget the hilarious cost blowout and failure, when German greens tried and failed to install a heat pump in their own headquarters?
Or the crazy energy price hikes, inflicted by politicians who claimed renewables are the cheapest form of power?
And let’s not forget the Chicago Tesla graveyard this weekend, caused by Tesla’s failing in the cold – nope, nothing to see here folks.
The fact is green solutions don’t work, and climate change isn’t a problem. It was always only a matter of time before teenagers realised this, and started rebelling against fake adult climate doomsday messaging.
Update (EW): The report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate is available here. The report appears to call for stepping up censorship and demonetisation of any content which criticises climate “solutions”, as well as content which criticises climate science. There’s a picture of Anthony Watts on page 20 of the report;
The New Climate Denial
How social media platforms and content producers profit by spreading new forms of climate denial.
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2023 was the hottest year on record. Once unprecedented wildfires, floods, unbearable heat, and droughts are becoming normal to billions of people worldwide.2 It is difficult to deny the simple fact that our climate is changing in predictable and yet, still, even now, shocking ways. The awe we feel when Mother Nature bellows with rage can only be matched by our fear that her final judgment will be catastrophic for our species.
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.
In this Enlightenment battle of truth and science versus lies and greed, those on the side of science appear to have succeeded in persuading the public that anthropogenic climate change is a reality, which is why those who seek to undermine climate science have shifted strategy.
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.
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Read more: https://counterhate.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/CCDH-The-New-Climate-Denial_FINAL.pdf
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No point scrapping a null hypothesis that the climate is always changing with the anthropogenic climate dooming hypothesis without a fix and here’s the fix folks. Proceed with fix and it becomes clearer and clearer the fix doesn’t work and is horribly expensive unlike what was promised.
What’s the point rational folk conclude. Naturally by juxtaposition they’re going to be inquisitive about the reasoning behind the dooming given they’ve been had with the fix. Oh looky here there’s evidence the dooming was cooked up on rather flimsy facts and exaggeration.
It was always their looney prescriptions that would bring the watermelons undone.
If the medicine isn’t working, don’t change the prescription without first re-examining the original diagnosis…
Strange, I thought scientists used the scientific method to falsify conjecture.
Apparently, scientists now have other social agendas outside of their educational skill sets.
In 1968, Andy Warhol said ” “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Perhaps that’s not enough time to emulate chicken little.
Always remember the first rule of engagement with the paid advocate for Man Made Climate Change.
Never click on a Guardian article it gives them undeserved circulation and click count.
Reading the precis of their nonsense output provided by independent reviewers is fine and much appreciated. It shows us how distanced from reality the Guardian/BBC are from actual science and actual data.
With only 33% of teenagers aware of the political nonsense that is called Climate Change, we still have some work to do. We have to get the truth into the receptive minds of the younger generation.
The good news is, people re finally waking up to the wrongs and the costs imposed on them by fraudsters, grifters and the rest of the Climate Alarmist fraternity.
The freedom of speech case brought by Michael E Mann against Mark Steyn finally began, yesterday in Washington USA, after 12 years stalling and delay by Mann and his team. That case will decide if fraudsters in the Climate Alarmist movement are open to be criticised or are protected by law from challenge. It will be a historic case that defines free speech for our generation and generations forward.
The stalling tactics of the Mann team is best shown by this fact, even yesterday as trial began they attempted to load the court with 5400 pages of new deposition. The Judge told them to forget it, they had 12 years to prepare and advised three times last year they were ready for trial. Despite that ready for trial they attempt to launch 5400 pages of new depositions on day one of trial proceedings!
Let us hope the trial upholds the right of the little people to speak truth to power.
Expecting judges to know when the “science” is bogus is pure nonsense.
Maybe, but a judge knows when someone is stalling for no good reason (except, perhaps, that they haven’t got a case)!
Pot calling kettle black!
Wait… I just noticed that CO2 was going up a lot slower before any COP conferences.
It seems quite obvious that COPs CAUSE increased CO2!!!
The graph clearly shows that all we have to do is never have another COP and Climate Change will cease to be a problem!!!
Just like we’ve been saying here all along!
“that COPs CAUSE increased CO2″
With the amount of private jets flight all over the place…
… and the massive import of luxury foods and “ladies”, and other hangers-on… etc etc…
… is it any wonder !!
Researchers from the CCDH gathered a dataset of text transcripts from 12,058 climate-related YouTube videos posted by 96 channels over almost six years from 1 January 2018 to 30 September 2023.
Have they nothing better to do? Where did the money come from to pay them to spend their time doing this?
Same place Mann got the money to generate and submit 5400 pages of new depositions on day one of the trial.
I personally don’t know who that is but you can rest assured that the money did NOT come out of Mikey’s own pocket.
One of the main reasons that alarmism is being ignored is the year.
It’s not just that the alarmist claims failed to come true or that claiming every weather event is unnatural is preposterous, it’s also that alarmism has had its day.
For some reason Millennial Fears become prevalent when the calendar reaches a big round number. That’s why the word exists – Millennial.
People think the world will end at a nice clean and tidy place. 1900 was the same. 1800 was the same. And so on… It was especially bad around the year 1,000AD. And it was especially bad around the year 2,000AD.
But the biggest claim of all – that Western Civilization was destroying all life on Earth through trace gas emissions had most institutional support.
And yet the Millennium is over. Catastrophic fears of the end of the world are passé. It doesn’t resonate the way it used to.
Despite constant media bombardment, people are bored.
Climate Change is a Swing Band at Woodstock. A Penny Farthing in the Tour de France.
It’s yesterday’s religion.
and another take on it
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/young-audiences-question-climate-alarmism-prompting-calls-censor-content
Because Greta quietly deleted a doomsday post of hers, it indicates that she is complicit in the
climate change hoax.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/03/14/should-have-gone-to-school-greta-deletes-tweet-predicting-disaster-by-2023
There is no other take on it.
story tip; sort of?
so when science isnt at all science but purely political we see this, for the slightly older ones
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/i-cant-believe-real-science-class-real-university
The rest KNOW it!
The Center for Digital HATE?!?
The title alone is a giveaway that the organization is not interested in facts, such as:
climate solutions do not work, climate science and the climate movement are unreliable, or that the effects of global heating are beneficial or harmless.
“In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data.”
The Center for Digital HATE?!? gave me a good laugh. People with too much time on their hands sleuthing out niceness code violations with their powerful word search algorithms (Google) and reporting on them.
“A third of British Teenagers think Climate Change is Exaggerated”
They don’t know the half of it.
The rising CO2 / COP Conference graph would be more useful accompanied by a graph showing all government spending on climate solutions. I went looking for such a graph (optimistically assuming it actually exists) and didn’t find one. But I did find this handy guideline for teaching kids about global warming with neat animated graphs and thoughtful questions. Thanks New York Times.
Teach About Climate Change With These 24 New York Times Graphshttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/learning/teach-about-climate-change-with-these-24-new-york-times-graphs.html
RE: skeptical kids… glad to hear it. How did that happen?
Somehow I don’t the Center for Countering Hate is recognizing all the “flavors” between old and new denial.