Mission to Mitigate: Climate Change for the win!

Over the past few weeks we have looked at examples of events were misinformation and disinformation had been a huge issue but we feel like looking at these issues in a current topic would help you see that misinformation can have an impact on anything and a time period doesn’t affect it.

For this post we will have a look at the current issue of climate change and how misinformation can be considered to be undermining the cause.

So what exactly is climate change and why is it relevant? According to the United Nations Climate Action page (https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change) , climate change is the shifts in temperature and weather patterns which happen for a long period. The shifts could be a result of natural occurrences, for example, variations in the solar cycle or as seen in recent times it could be a result of human activity such as bring fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal. Explaining what the burning of fossil fuels does to the Earth, the UN Climate Action states that, “Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures.” Greenhouse gas emissions that are impacting our Earth are carbon dioxide and methane and these gases can come from the running of cars or the use of coal to heat buildings. Other examples of how these gases are released into the air are landfills (methane) and the clearing of land and forests (carbon dioxide).

As climate change is an issue that affects everyone and has governments across the world working together to reduce future impacts an opportunity for misleading posts is created once again as opinions differ from person to person. It does appear that a handful of industries are behind a lot of the misleading posting. Fossil Fuel industries lead the way for misinformative climate change posts.

Instead of producing a post that gives examples of misinformed posts relating to climate change, we want this post to highlight why this matters. One reason why we need to talk about this is due to the fact that millions are being spent on spreading misinformed posts. It is said that major fossil fuel companies and other major polluters and their allies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to the cause of spreading false information. One Analysis found that 16 of the world’s biggest polluters were responsible for creating 1,700 Facebook Ads that contained misleading information. These ads generated around 150 million impressions resulting in a huge $5 million for the platform. This $5 million could have been a massive achievement in the tackling of climate change rather than the spread of misleading information which achieves nothing more than a lack of true knowledge about an issue that affects us all. Climate change will require money to be spent to try and help, for example, the production of vehicles that do not emit as much pollutive gases. There is also the fact that misinformation has been used in marketing plans which are created in aid of helping to sell the public on the continued usage of fossil fuels. An example of this is natural gas trade groups paying Instagram ‘influencers’ to promote why you should cook on gas stoves rather than electric ones. Again, money is being used which could be beneficial to helping our planet be cleaner and helping our own quality of life.

Social media is a ‘breeding ground’ for misinformation to be spread about climate change. We as humans have instincts and trust those we know to keep us informed but this can be hard when we don’t realise that what we are reading is misinformed. We also use social media and interact with different posts that then help algorithms to show us posts that it thinks we will engage with. Again with misinformed posts being rife it can be difficult to distinguish what is true and what is not this can be harmful to what we know and how we react to such issues.

Unfortunately it falls on us as social media users to think twice when reading posts to try and identify whether it is true fact or intentional/unintentional false information. But there are tools out there and our Allegiance Against Misinformation social media sites do have tips on what to do so you are fully prepared to continue using social media as a way of gaining knowledge. As climate change is continuing to be an issue in the world with summits every year, will this issue allow us to spread the word that what we read regarding to climate change can be false and that more needs done? We do believe that climate change can be the turning point in everyone doing more.