Researchers used AI to analyze over 12,000 YouTube videos with tens of millions of views containing climate misinformation and disinformation. They found that a wave of “new denial” narratives made up 70% of denial claims on the video sharing platform in 2023.
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From claims that renewable energy and electric vehicles will not work to arguments undermining public trust in climate research and scientists, online climate denialism and misinformation are dangerously on the rise and are taking on a new form, according to a new major study published on Tuesday.
The Center for Countering Digital Have (CCDH), a non-profit that monitors online hate speech, used artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze the text transcripts of 12,058 climate-related YouTube videos from the last six years containing what researchers labelled as “new denial” arguments. The study concluded that Google-owned online video sharing platform YouTube is making huge profits from videos containing climate falsehoods, breaching its own policy on climate misinformation.
New denial arguments – which the study argues constituted about 70% of all claims on YouTube in 2023 – focus more on denying the impacts of climate change and undermining solutions rather than on pushing the narrative that global warming is not happening or it is not a direct cause of human activities. They include claims that climate change impacts are harmless or beneficial, direct attacks to the scientific community over the unreliability of climate research, and arguments aimed at discouraging the shift to cleaner sources of energy. Researchers found that the latter category, and particularly claims against wind, solar, electric vehicles (EVs) and other green technologies, dominate the “new denial” by a large margin.
Among the most common false arguments about clean energy are claims that EVs create three times more emissions than gas cars when manufacturing is considered, that transitioning to wind power will devastate wildlife habitats and forests, and that weather-dependent renewables lead to blackouts.
More on the topic: Why Electric Cars Are Better for the Environment
The study concluded that YouTube is potentially making up to $13.4 million in ad revenue per year from the 96 channels analysed in the report, a “drop in the bucket” for its giant owner Google but a huge threat to the future of our planet, as CCDH’s CEO Imran Ahmed put it.
“Outright climate denial has become as untenable as smoking inside a hospital emergency room. But CCDH’s investigation exposes the new tactics that have metastasized in recent years: delay, deflection, and bogus attacks on solutions like offshore wind,” said Charlie Cray, senior strategist at Greenpeace USA.
US Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse called climate denialism a “foul choice,” adding that “the stakes are too high to be – even at this late hour – aiding and abetting polluters’ ‘new and improved’ climate disinformation narratives.”
Past Allegations
It is not the first time that YouTube has come under fire for allowing and profiting from videos and ads that reject mainstream climate science.
In October 2021, Google updated its existing rules on ads on climate change by introducing a new monetisation policy for Google advertisers, publishers, and YouTube creators that would “prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around … climate change,” following the publication of a CCDH report on how Google and Facebook monetized climate denial content.
However, a 2023 study by CCDH and the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition identified 200 examples of YouTube videos containing climate misinformation and disinformation, which collectively serve ads to over 73 million viewers, demonstrating that Google had once again failed to keep its promise.
This week’s study presents further evidence that the company is not doing enough to counteract climate disinformation. CCDH argues that, while existing policies are efficient in preventing monetisation of “old denial” narratives, they fail to cover the new wave of online climate disinformation. According to the watchdog, legal action and financial pressure on tech companies may further push them to take serious action against climate falsehoods, though updating Google’s existing policy to reflect “new denial” arguments should be the priority.
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