Essay on Climate Change Disinformation

Throughout the last four decades, the fossil fuel industry has waged a well-organized and well-funded campaign to discredit the research linking global climate change to human emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

These misinformation campaigns have caused data to get muddled, called climate scientists’ integrity into question, and cast doubt on the scientific agreement on humans’ involvement in climate change.

Climate Change Disinformation

Internal papers from fossil fuel behemoths Shell and Exxon detail such misinformation operations. According to industry papers reviewed during a 2019 U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing, oil firms understood that burning fossil fuels was changing the climate as early as the 1980s.

However, with the help of certain experts, these corporations set out to mislead the public, dispute well-established science, and thwart efforts to restrict emissions.

Researchers are always testing new approaches to resist misinformation strategies as they evolve. One strategy to counteract climate disinformation is to debunk false claims by fact-checking them.

Another method, which social media platforms are increasingly adopting, is to add warning labels to messages that flag them as potential disinformation, like the labels that Twitter and Facebook (which also owns Instagram) began adding in 2020 regarding the US presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Simultaneously, Facebook was chastised for changing its fact-checking standards, which critics claim allows climate disinformation to proliferate. In 2019, the social media behemoth chose to omit postings that it deems to be opinion or satire from fact-checking, possibly opening up a significant misinformation gap.

Get academic writing on the topic by clicking here. Read more academic topics by clicking here.