Why people still fall for fake news about climate change

[Brenda]

This really is an excellent article.

https://lailluminator.com/2023/12/19/fake-climate-change/
BY: KATE YODER, GRIST - DECEMBER 19, 2023 5:00 AM

In 1995, a leading group of scientists convened by the United Nations declared that they had detected a “human influence” on global temperatures with “effectively irreversible” consequences. In the coming decades, 99.9 percent of scientists would come to agree that burning fossil fuels had disrupted the Earth’s climate.

Yet almost 30 years after that warning, during the hottest year on Earth in 125,000 years, people are still arguing that the science is unreliable, or that the threat is real but we shouldn’t do anything about climate change.

Conspiracies are thriving online, according to a report 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.

While political identity can explain some resistance to climate change, there are other reasons people dismiss the evidence, as Bloomfield outlines in her upcoming book “Science v. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators.”

[mahina]

1. because fossil fuel companies have shoveled money, at scale. misleading people on purpose to hold off accountability,

for decades right up till today

[Brenda]

2. Yep, that's true, mahina

hope you are doing well

“It’s really hard to think about someone who hasn’t been exposed to climate skepticism or disinformation from fossil fuel industries,” said Emma Frances Bloomfield, a communication professor at the University of Nevada, Los Vegas. “It’s just so pervasive. They have talking heads who go on news programs, they flood media publications and the internet, they pay lobbyists.”