Twitter Bots Are a Major Source of Climate Disinformation (scientificamerican.com) 139
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Scientific American: Twitter accounts run by machines are a major source of climate change disinformation that might drain support from policies to address rising temperatures. In the weeks surrounding former President Trump's announcement about withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, accounts suspected of being bots accounted for roughly a quarter of all tweets about climate change, according to new research. "If we are to effectively address the existential crisis of climate change, bot presence in the online discourse is a reality that scientists, social movements and those concerned about democracy have to better grapple with," wrote Thomas Marlow, a postdoctoral researcher at the New York University, Abu Dhabi, campus, and his co-authors. Their paper published last week in the journal Climate Policy is part of an expanding body of research about the role of bots in online climate discourse.
The new focus on automated accounts is driven partly by the way they can distort the climate conversation online. Marlow's team measured the influence of bots on Twitter's climate conversation by analyzing 6.8 million tweets sent by 1.6 million users between May and June 2017. Trump made his decision to ditch the climate accord on June 1 of that year. President Biden reversed the decision this week. From that dataset, the team ran a random sample of 184,767 users through the Botometer, a tool created by Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media, which analyzes accounts and determines the likelihood that they are run by machines.
Researchers also categorized the 885,164 tweets those users had sent about climate change during the two-month study period. The most popular categories were tweets about climate research and news. Marlow and the other researchers determined that nearly 9.5% of the users in their sample were likely bots. But those bots accounted for 25% of the total tweets about climate change on most days. [...] The researchers weren't able to determine who deployed the bots. But they suspect the seemingly fake accounts could have been created by "fossil-fuel companies, petro-states or their surrogates," all of which have a vested interest in preventing or delaying action on climate change.
The new focus on automated accounts is driven partly by the way they can distort the climate conversation online. Marlow's team measured the influence of bots on Twitter's climate conversation by analyzing 6.8 million tweets sent by 1.6 million users between May and June 2017. Trump made his decision to ditch the climate accord on June 1 of that year. President Biden reversed the decision this week. From that dataset, the team ran a random sample of 184,767 users through the Botometer, a tool created by Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media, which analyzes accounts and determines the likelihood that they are run by machines.
Researchers also categorized the 885,164 tweets those users had sent about climate change during the two-month study period. The most popular categories were tweets about climate research and news. Marlow and the other researchers determined that nearly 9.5% of the users in their sample were likely bots. But those bots accounted for 25% of the total tweets about climate change on most days. [...] The researchers weren't able to determine who deployed the bots. But they suspect the seemingly fake accounts could have been created by "fossil-fuel companies, petro-states or their surrogates," all of which have a vested interest in preventing or delaying action on climate change.
We Try Harder (Score:5, Funny)
If you read further down the article, you see that Slashdot Anonymous Cowards came in a close second.
Re: We Try Harder (Score:2)
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Well duh (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Well duh (Score:5, Informative)
From the first article:
Huh, funny how that info somehow missed the /. headline and summary...
Re:Well duh (Score:5, Funny)
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We have a winner.
Re: Well duh (Score:2)
Great, because I'm tired of reading them and are using bots to do it for me.
(Kidding. I wouldn't touch Twitter with a 30 foot cattle prod.)
Re:Well duh (Score:4, Informative)
Not really. A vast army of bots spreading lies is not somehow equivalent to bots not spreading lies. The fact that they're on opposite "sides" is irrelevant especially as the denial side was invented out of whole cloth by idiots who can't accept objective reality when it contradicts their feelings and opportunistic assholes who are happy for the world to burn if the flames personally enrich them.
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I think it's important to ask how many of those bot-tweets were actually being read. Who follows them?
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What's interesting is that this still represents a major skew in the climate 'debate'.
There is a scientific consensus (which is to say, the body of knowledge in climate science) that global warming is real, and that it's caused by humans and our activities. It is not a 50/50 debate; it's not even close. Even the few climate experts that disagree with the overall conclusion tend to agree with a lot of published science. For 50% of the bots to be anti-climate-science is a vastly disproportionate number.
The fr
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Or the opposite. If they can detect which are bots and humans, most humans can detect this also.
However, you can easily claim that "all this is just bots" to discredit the opponent these days, if you're the one in control of the source. Heck its disinformation 101.
Now, I'm not saying being conscientious about the environment is bad. IIRC though, the climate accords are just sponsoring other countries and a not a good deal for the US. You can be better at caring for the environment without going through thes
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And there are at least as much if not more at this point on the other side of the scale. Which is bad. Because this problem is scientific and not ideological.
And "there are too many people on this planet and their consumption is destroying it" is at least as horrifying of an argument as "human caused global warming isn't real, and the planet is actually cooling". As both ideologies lead down the path of mass genocide to sustain themselves.
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Well, there is trillions at stake on the other side too and billions of lives. But that is longer-term and the economic actors cannot do longer-term planning.
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Maybe for the same reason you're posting on a dying platform.
Or, the signature hasn't been updated in 10 years.
Don't use Twitter as a reference (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would anyone use that steaming pile of shit as a reference for anything?
Oh, it's because reporters are lazy Never mind.
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Reporters mostly reference it insofar as politicians choose to use it as their communication medium. Unless you were referring to random bloggers as "reporters", which was the hip thing to do a decade ago, but clearly didn't pan out as anything near a reliable source.
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Strangely, the replacement always ends up being someone who flunked calculus, didn't study English, and didn't study journalism.
Not that education has much to do with it in the first place. Truthfulness is a matter of character. Having to round the educational bases to land the job is part of the pointless credentialism that's infected nearly every industry. Well, I suppose the credentialism does have a point - it makes it easier for people to pass judgement in a split-second without having to do any substa
Re:Don't use Twitter as a reference (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would anyone use that steaming pile of shit as a reference for anything?
Oh, it's because reporters are lazy Never mind.
I didn't see any indication that anyone (especially reporters) was using bot tweets as a reference.
What's happening is that bots are creating a false sense social consensus around climate disinformation.
People see what looks like a robust conversation with everyone saying "global warming is fake!" and they start thinking those people might be right.
Then they start to believe it and the bots have succeeded in shifting the narrative.
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It's because reporters are no longer journalists but twitter professionals. People who do actual research are very rare in modern media.
Completely understandably so. With massive cuts to media budgets in wake of Google et al siphoning massive amount of ad money away from news media in last two decades, budgets for most expensive kind of reporting, actual investigative journalism have been cut across the board. It's much cheaper to just sit on twitter all day and rephrase what everyone else is saying.
And sin
TLDR (Score:1)
TLDR - Twitter ... Disinformation
So is Slashdot (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: So is Slashdot (Score:1)
Re: So is Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
So all climate scientists are leftists? I had no idea they reviewed your voting records before allowing people the data.
The whole point of science is having reproducible results so others can verify.
Re: So is Slashdot (Score:2)
Strangely, getting back to politics fir a second, Al Gore was more of a scientist when he made p
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If the models are improved, that does not "move the goalposts" in any way. Why should anyone want to run a less accurate model if they have access to a better one ?
If your argument is that the models have been manipulated to fit the narrative, then you need to present the evidence for that.
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If your argument is that the models have been manipulated to fit the narrative, then you need to present the evidence for that.
There is no evidence for that, because it does not happen. A lot of money has been invested by the oil companies to try to find that evidence. Instead they found out (decades ago), that the predictions are factually accurate. They then buried those finds and started their campaign of disinformation, which is still running.
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The model predictions may be correct, but the fear mongering I have seen over the last 30 years has always been over-hyped.
At some point when all of the doom and gloom doesn't happen you start to tune out the actual science, because you just can't live in a constant state of fear.
I was told the everglades would be gone by now, that the Seychelles Islands would be gone by now, and so many other scary hypes.
If you want people to take the science seriously and not tune out you need to quit making horrible pred
Re: So is Slashdot (Score:2)
Science is about reproducibility and its sister, falsifiability Computer models begin with billions of data points. If you believe a computer model isn't reproducible it leads me to wonder if you have ever seen a computer. Another reply addresses your other point. You're really arguing like a numbnumb head.
Re: So is Slashdot (Score:4, Informative)
A direct lie. There is both feasibility from historical records and for the last 30 years or so. The real climate data of the last 30 years has been put into the best models from 30 years ago and what turns out is that the already observable effects of climate change fall out with pretty good accuracy. The only "defect" the models had back then is that real-world data was not very accurate. The models have been sound for a long, long time now and their predictions are dire. Sure, it may still turn out there is some miraculous strong effect that has somehow been overlooked and never before has happened in the observable past, but do you really want to bank on that tiny chance, given the alternatives?
You species-suicidal morons have no leg to stand on. You have lies, damned lies and things like you just claimed, nothing else.
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The real climate data of the last 30 years has been put into the best models from 30 years ago and what turns out is that the already observable effects of climate change fall out with pretty good accuracy.
This is only significant if the definition of "best" was set 30 years ago. Otherwise it's cherry-picking at best, and a direct lie at worst.
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Nope. Think again about what you just said.
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30 years of data? Are you one of those nutjobs who thinks they weren't capable of recording accurate temperatures until the 1980s?
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30 years of data? Are you one of those nutjobs who thinks they weren't capable of recording accurate temperatures until the 1980s?
Interpolation and correction approaches have gotten a lot better. Geographic data has gotten massively better. Systematic flaws in measurement series have been identified and corrected. Available computing power is massively better. And some other improvements as well.
Are you one of those people that have no clue what they are talking about?
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So in fewer words, yes.
Re: So is Slashdot (Score:2)
You will be the first against the wall, when natural disasters start causing famines and the protests start.
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Hopefully. Will not really help the rest of us much, though. Most of the damage is done and cannot be fixed.
Source (Score:2)
Who is using Twitter as a source for information? Are High school kids allowed to twitter as a source for facts?
If you rely on Twitter for ANY info... (Score:2)
Yet another example... (Score:1)
If true (Score:2)
AWS should de-platform them.
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Twitter has its own data centers, they just use AWS to cover periods of excess traffic when their own systems are overburdened.
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Why are there so many morons who believe Amazon is the entire fucking internet?
Twitter self host. Somehow they survived all these years without ever being platformed by Amazon.
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amplification (Score:2)
The researchers weren't able to determine who deployed the bots. But they suspect the seemingly fake accounts could have been created by "fossil-fuel companies, petro-states or their surrogates," all of which have a vested interest in preventing or delaying action on climate change.
No kidding?
Yes, if you are a tiny minority, you somehow need to make your voice heard, appear to be more than you are. If you have a bit of money, getting some custom bots set up is the obvious choice.
Poor oil companies... nobody loves them anymore...
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The researchers weren't able to determine who deployed the bots. But they suspect the seemingly fake accounts could have been created by "fossil-fuel companies, petro-states or their surrogates," all of which have a vested interest in preventing or delaying action on climate change.
No kidding?
Yes, if you are a tiny minority, you somehow need to make your voice heard, appear to be more than you are. If you have a bit of money, getting some custom bots set up is the obvious choice.
Poor oil companies... nobody loves them anymore...
Well, since they will go into human history as the root cause for the greatest catastrophe ever having happened, what they experience today is minor. That is if there is a human history in a 200 years or so. Does not look good at the moment.
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But what is wanted is to force everybody to do your bidding. That's what motivates your zeal.
Bullshit and an utterly dishonest attempt at manipulation. For the record: I have no "zeal", I have an analysis of the situation. Looking at this world, I decided long ago that I cannot be responsible for imposing this mess on anybody and hence decided against having children. While I do see indicators that human life is not a singular event but part of a chain of reincarnations, simple statistics seem to indicate that there must be other options than this failing installment of the human race here. I do ho
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It's too bad that only the western world is taking your fewer children plan to heart. Most of the rest of the world is having a population explosion as they move into wanting their industrial revolutions as well. So, I really don't think we are going to be able to stop or reduce carbon emissions. It seems to me the only real thing we can do is to focus on carbon capture, otherwise we have to start colonialism round 2 and force our will on developing nations yet again.
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we have to start colonialism round 2 and force our will on developing nations yet again.
We never stopped doing that. We just changed methods. Today it is "market forces", not military forces.
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we have to start colonialism round 2 and force our will on developing nations yet again.
We never stopped doing that. We just changed methods. Today it is "market forces", not military forces.
I agree. Unfortunately, that one does not reduce population density but encourages it.
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It's too bad that only the western world is taking your fewer children plan to heart. Most of the rest of the world is having a population explosion as they move into wanting their industrial revolutions as well. So, I really don't think we are going to be able to stop or reduce carbon emissions. It seems to me the only real thing we can do is to focus on carbon capture, otherwise we have to start colonialism round 2 and force our will on developing nations yet again.
Carbon capture will be half a century or so late. That is if it ever really works on a global scale at all. There are things you cannot speed up by any means. Large-scale engineering that must not have a massive negative climate impact (hence defeating the purpose) is one of them. But yes, you have a point. The problem is the only real perspective at the moment is that we are screwed.
I do see one possibility: Drastic population reduction of the involuntary variant (water, heat, pandemics, etc.), i.e. a seri
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You confuse "virtue signalling" and actually taking personal responsibility for decision you have to make.
So by Twitter's logic... (Score:2)
... we should now de-platform Twitter. ;)
Hell, some drowing island nations might even declare them an enemy combattant and a rogue corporation!
Who cares? (Score:2)
It's even easier than dealing with spam mail. Just don't follow bots, or anyone who retweets them. You'll never know they exist.
Seriously, not seeing the problem.
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It's even easier than dealing with spam mail. Just don't follow bots, or anyone who retweets them. You'll never know they exist.
Seriously, not seeing the problem.
The problem is that most people are not capable of identifying bots or of doing fact checking that deserves the name. You are capable of doing this and getting rid of the bots easily, but that does not solve the problem that for millions, these bots seem to make valid arguments and hence shape their views and opinions.
Avoidable Problem (Score:2)
AFAIK, Twitter has two major operating paradigms: web-based and mobile. Please correct me if this is wrong.
For mobile users, many modern smartphones have now incorporated some form of biometric technology that would allow for facial recognition. So for any new mobile Twitter account, require the first 100 or 250 posts to be authenticated with biometrics. This would require the user to perform the
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Today, you can't post to Twitter without registering and creating an account. There is nothing in the re-Captcha process [for desktop access] that requires you to give away any more of your anonymity than you have already done if you are an existing Twitter user.
The picture might be a bit more complex with mobile app access given the biometric paradigm offered by the hardware platform. But it is important to note that your biometric deta
It can mean only one thing (Score:4, Funny)
Climate change is beneficial to bots.
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Not if they live inside data centers and their cooling costs keep going up.
What I tell you three times is truth (Score:2)
This is basically the principle the despicable people behind this work on. Unfortunately, it seems this is also the level of "fact checking" that many people are capable of: Counting how often they have heard something and taking things they have heard often for the truth.
When is Twitter NOT a source of disinformation? (Score:2)
Climate change: what is it we want again? (Score:2)
We want to slow it down? Ergo it will happen because population will grow, we will continue to consume, we will continue to eject waste no matter how little. Eventually we'll end up at the same place.
We want to stop it? We want everything to stay just as it is now. So 100 years ago there were people who wanted the same thing. If you think 'well we couldn't then because ...', apply the same logic to now.
We want to reverse it? This assumes we understand the whole system that is Earth and everything tha
I welcome our robot overlords (Score:2)
"Twitter accounts run by machines are a major source of climate change disinformation" Did nobody see the humorous irony in this?
Define "major source" please (Score:3)
Marlow's team measured the influence of bots on Twitter's climate conversation by analyzing 6.8 million tweets sent by 1.6 million users between May and June 2017.
1.6 million users sent 6.8 million tweets during a 2 month period? Running the numbers is easy 6.8 divided by 1.6 gives us an average of just a smudge over 4 climate tweets per account.
The summary continues - about 900K of those 6.8M tweets were about the climate, about 10% of the 1.6M users were bots, and they were responsible for about 25% of climate change. So they assess that 160K bot accounts generated about 225K climate tweets? Seriously? That's it?
10% of 1.6M users is 160K bots, and 25% of 900K climate tweets is about 225K tweets from bots.
Looked at another way, 90% of users generated 75% of climate change tweets.
Do "fossil-fuel companies, petro-states or their surrogates" really create bots to just send out a couple tweets/month?
What the researchers proved is that three-quarters of the climate change tweets came from humans, making humans a "major source" of climate change tweets.
The researchers did not say the 6.8 million tweets they analyzed, the 900K tweets on climate change, or the 225K tweets that apparently came from bot accounts were wrong/mis-information, they just identified them as coming from non-human accounts... Are we really comfortable saying that no bot tweets contained accurate information? That climate change activists haven't deployed any bots of their own to combat mis.information?
This reminds me of the incredible influence "The Russians" reportedly had in the 2016 through an extensive ad campaign on social media, which largely consisted of about $100K of Facebook ads.
Re: They are easy to spot (Score:2)
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I think he just doesn't believe a consensus of scientists is irrelevant. You should be looking at a consensus of science. What the science says it was is important. Not what "scientists" say. People stopped quoting the UN climate report when they realized it says things like there is no evidence supporting the belief that extreme weather events are caused by climate change. We still hear this claim called the view of "scientists", but the science does not support that.
So what is the disinformation? Yo
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You can look this up yourself. It is in every version of the UN Climate report ever published.
The UN climate report represents the consensus view of climate scientists. It sounds like you're just complaining about popular press/politicians not being entirely accurate in representing it in the media.
Re: They are easy to spot (Score:5, Insightful)
People are wrong. All the time. Experts are wrong. All the time.
This is why science works. Its most base assumption is that everyone is wrong to some degree, and there is a method called "scientific method" to find out how to be correct than current "consensus of people who are probably wrong to at least some extent".
Yes that is literally science, and why anyone who ever says the phrase "science is settled" is someone who is utterly scientifically illiterate. This phrase is the most anti-scientific statement you can make. Therefore, to argue that "most scientists agree" in context of "this matters for science" is anti-scientific. You can argue that most studies etc support this conclusion. That is the scientific argument. But the moment you make it about the people, you become just as anti-scientific as anti-vaccers, flat earthers and other science deniers.
It's generally sad how many people do not understand this most basic part of science as a process.
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Therefore, to argue that "most scientists agree" in context of "this matters for science" is anti-scientific. You can argue that most studies etc support this conclusion
You might have a point if there was a disagreement between "most scientists" and "most studies", but there isn't.
Nobody claims that science should follow consensus, or even that consensus is important for science. Consensus is only relevant when you want to take a body of scientific knowledge and turn it into something that laypeople can use it to inform themselves and make policy decisions.
Yes, people get it wrong all the time, but we still have to make decisions every day, and consensus is the best tool w
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>You might have a point if there was a disagreement between "most scientists" and "most studies", but there isn't.
Most studies on environmental science have been debunked as false. This is because of complexity of the issue, where newer information demonstrates past information to be inaccurate.
For example, the scientific consensus of 1906s of upcoming global cooling. Scientific consensus on rise of the sea levels of 1990s where we'd have mass global flooding and cities underwater by 2030. Scientific con
Re: They are easy to spot (Score:4)
Finally someone who gets it. The moment someone moves to suppress or silence dissent, the more like an evil dictator they become. Your choices really are a choice between out sciencing them, or becoming the very monster you hate. The minute you think that silencing the contrary arguments, regardless if you argue its justification, you might as well call yourself Vlad and start polonium poisoning your enemies
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Well, there's also a failure to understand what 'consensus' means in the scientific context. It does NOT mean that a bunch of researchers got together and had a vote, and when they finally all vote the same way, that's 'consensus'.
Scientific consensus is the conclusions that we can draw from the body of research taken as a whole. Anthropogenic global warming as a theory has the weight of scientific consensus behind it—it is happening, and the body of peer reviewed research is how we can draw that conc
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>So it's not unreasonable to say, "most climate researchers agree"
It is not unreasonable. It is wrong. On all relevant levels. "Reasonable" is simply a weasel word for zeitgeist of propaganda of the time. It was "reasonable" for Germany to exterminate Jews. It was "reasonable" for Soviet Union to exterminate "bourgeoisie". It was "reasonable" for McCarthy to hunt down communists. I can go on.
In science, this is simply irrelevant, because science is not propaganda. Science is a process of finding truth. Y
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It's not anti-science, you simply choose not to acknowledge what 'consensus' means in a scientific context. It's what the body of knowledge and expert opinion indicate at the time. It does not mean it can't change, that it's not evolving and subject to revision. There is nothing wrong or even weird about scientists that have studied the field to agree that it points towards certain conclusions. They may be wrong, but we're only ever working with what knowledge we have at the time.
You may as well be upset th
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>It's what the body of knowledge and expert opinion indicate at the time.
Former is true. Latter is anti-scientific nonsense. When you clump both together, you demonstrate scientific illiteracy.
Which is the problem I'm pointing out.
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The UN climate report represents the consensus view of climate scientists.
Says who?
The politicians at the U.N. that decide whats in it? Sure, everything in it is backed by a scientist, but there is a lot that is also backed by scientists that disagree but didnt make it in.
Global warming was supposed to reduce the number and severity of hurricanes once upon a time (due to increased wind sheer decreasing vortex formation), one of those cherries the IPCC picked at one point, but no longer picks.
Even if the IPCC reports used some measure of consensus as its inclusion criteria,
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You are pointing at apples and declaring oranges. Listening only to the best-of album while saying the band is the greatest ever, ignoring the fact that only a fraction of the
Re: They are easy to spot (Score:2)
Re:They are easy to spot (Score:5, Insightful)
as if the truth is decided by popular vote or consensus instead of evidence...
The problem with that view is that you need an expert to understand the evidence. Somebody may collect some piece of evidence, for example about the Arctic & Antarctic ice, and then come up with a hypothesis to explain the observations in a scientific paper. But you can't expect laymen (including politicians) to go read that paper, and all other papers, and form a good opinion.
So the obvious solution is that the politician asks a team of scientists to read the paper and translate it into something they can understand. If the scientists don't all agree, then you have to form some kind of consensus view with the most likely explanation.
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But this is not even close to what is being claimed by the consensus of scientists. They are being massively surveyed on a non-scientific question.
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Re: They are easy to spot (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it was **NOT** the "scientific consensus of his time", he was tried by the church for violating the official dogma. Galileo was using data and observations, the church was using "divinely revealed knowledge". One of these things is not like the other.
Re: They are easy to spot (Score:2, Offtopic)
The Galileo/Copernicus thing presents a super important lesson about science: for many many years the geocentric model, while wrong, predicted the motions of celestial bodies *better* than the heliocentric, which was actually correct.
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I expect laymen to read papers and form opinion on topics which interest them.
Why would you expect such an absurd thing? Most people don't actually enjoy reading, the majority of those who do mostly enjoy reading fiction.
that's how society worked in the days before mass propaganda.
Do you mean in the days before the printing press? Or are you talking about the days before speakers forums in ancient Greece?
Our citizens are more than capable of finding, assessing, understanding and concluding their views on information
I think the Qanon hysteria has pretty conclusively proven this false, if the prevalence of mega-churches and tele-evangalists hadn't already done that.
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Can you point me towards any climate skeptics that don’t mention god? I’m taking about that former NASA dickhead who always gets brought up.
Re:They are easy to spot (Score:4, Informative)
Re:You’re a Political Dissident (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Reap what you sow (Score:4, Informative)
But that paper, from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, found there were an equal number of bots that both supported and cast doubt on climate science.
Need we say more. Nope, we don't. As if the Slashdot article was posted by a bot too - it fails to reflect this particular nugget.
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Common sense. If one side is using bots the other side has to respond or they'll be drowned out.
Now... remind us again which of the two "sides" has the most money to lose if something is done about climate change, ie. if change the status quo.
After that, remind us which side is doing all the lobbying.
Clue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Reap what you sow (Score:4, Interesting)
A pox on both of your houses
Playing both side. (Score:3)
Common sense. If one side is using bots the other side has to respond or they'll be drowned out.
Interesting hypothesis but nope.
Past investigations (see all the reporting about trollframs in Russia) turned out that usually "both sides" of bots actually belong to the same organisation.
The point of the farm isn't to push a specific view. Their point is to sow discord by artificially blowing up a conflict.
There are no two different sides, just the same trolls trying to give the impression of conflict and of controversy.
Now... remind us again which of the two "sides" has the most money to lose if something is done about climate change, ie. if change the status quo.
The side which take advantage of the general chaos to gain influence and power.
I am no
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Which ones got the most views/likes. The number of bots and posts don't matter as much as the number of views their posts got.
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% of bots, but what % of total tweets? And besides, that was from a different study with different findings, not the one that is the primary topic of discussion in this article.
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There are no "mainstream climate beliefs". There are solid, well-established scientific facts and there are people that make a lot of money continuing to lie about them. And there are useful idiots like you.
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And there are useful idiots like you.
Why the hostility? anyone who does not know the science (the vast majority) is just believing. I mad no claim if their right or wrong. Assuming that the current mainstream is true, the most effective way to do deal with it is just say "this is the law now deal with it" and the non-believers will moan about it but have no choice. The fact is, the only people who "know the facts" are the scientists. Everyone else either "believes" or "does not believe".
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Oh, good grief, this stupidity again? Climate scientists (of which there were very few in the 1970s) were not proclaiming 'Global Cooling' was going to be a problem, the press was. Some reporter at Newsweek accidentally learned about Milankovich Cycles and that we were overdue for the next cycle of cooling to start. Sulfur dioxide from burning coal was increasing the albedo of the planet and had measurably cooled the climate (acid rain remediation hadn't started yet). They conflated the two things, took
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Yeah! Flat earth too!
All those Globe Earthists are just the religious orthodoxy, not like us free thinkers.