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How Climate Change Deniers Rise To the Top in Google Searches (nytimes.com)
If you searched for the words "climate change" into Google, until earlier this week, you could have gotten an unexpected result: ads that call global warming a hoax. "Scientists blast climate alarm," said one that appeared at the top of the search results page during a recent search, pointing to a website, DefyCCC, that asserted: "Nothing has been studied better and found more harmless than anthropogenic CO2 release." Another ad proclaimed: "The Global Warming Hoax -- Why the Science Isn't Settled," linking to a video containing unsupported assertions, including that there is no correlation between rising levels of greenhouse gases and higher global temperatures. These references were first reported by The New York Times (the link may be paywalled). From a report: America's technology giants have come under fire for their role in the spread of fake news during the 2016 presidential campaign, prompting promises from Google and others to crack down on sites that spread disinformation. Less scrutinized has been the way tech companies continue to provide a mass platform for the most extreme sites among those that use false or misleading science to reject the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Google's search page has become an especially contentious battleground between those who seek to educate the public on the established climate science and those who reject it. Not everyone who uses Google will see climate denial ads in their search results. Google's algorithms use search history and other data to tailor ads to the individual, something that is helping to create a highly partisan internet. A recent search for "climate change" or "global warming" from a Google account linked to a New York Times climate reporter did not return any denial ads. The top results were ads from environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund. But when the same reporter searched for those terms using private browsing mode, which helps mask identity information from Google's algorithms, the ad for DefyCCC popped up.
[...] The climate denialist ads are an example of how contrarian groups can use the internet's largest automated advertising systems to their advantage, gaming the system to find a mass platform for false or misleading claims.
[...] The climate denialist ads are an example of how contrarian groups can use the internet's largest automated advertising systems to their advantage, gaming the system to find a mass platform for false or misleading claims.
""He who controls the medium controls the message. He who controls the message controls the masses."
The NY Times hates competition.
Google is a for-profit advertising company. You say they present ads from people who pay them to do so? And they tailor your search results to make you think they're the best search engine so you look at more ads? Shocking.
Either legislate unbiased search and advertising and give up the pretence of pure capitalism, or eat your dogfood and quit complaining.
Every company uses "tech", so unless you're talking about buying buggy whips from the Amish, let's call a spade a spade.
Advertising companies take money and spread lies. Get over it. Google does it on your searches. Facebook does it on your friendships.
The NY Times is a source of curated information.
Google is an index of the internet. The internet is a cesspool. Google is an index of a cesspool.
The AGW zealots posted this right when everyone else is too busy shoveling global warming out of their driveways.
Have gnu, will travel.
Bring back kuro5hin.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Last Week MsMash posted a story about how cheap Green Electricity was in Germany all the while never bothering to mention the cost to the consumer was $0.30/KWH
Seems there's plenty of shit to go around but as usual some people don't think their shit stinks.
I don't deny climate change or the man-made CO2 volume. What I deny is that I give a fuck. I might have cared before it became an SJW pet issue and another reason for the far-left to shake their finger in my face.
So you're going to screw over the planet and a lot of humanity to shake your finger in the face of "the far-left"? (actually, everybody but the far-right).
The extremists on both sides made it partisan.
No, the major corporations with a vested interest in a fossil fuel economy made it partisan.
The international idea that Americans should compensate the rest of the word for emitting CO2 earlier than them.
Not just Americans, also Europeans, Canadians, Australians, Japanese, and even Columbians. And the retribution for historical emissions is one way to frame it... if not for the obvious inconsistency with Japan's large contribution.
A better way to frame it is when there's an important job to do you suck it up and get it done. And if that involves wealthy countries lending assistance to poor countries who otherwise don't have the economic capacity to carry out those measures then you do it.
If my grandparents had a white picket fence and a CO2 monster V8 Corvette, then GOOD. I'm glad they weren't living in fucking mud huts and collecting wives.
And no rant against SJWs is complete without a completely unnecessary negative stereotype with just enough deniability so it isn't obviously racist.
I stole this Sig
Now and then during those 800,000 years (and more) the earth's climate has changed rapidly due to anomalous events. The Industrial Revolution is one of them.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
If you think this article is a politics article rather than a science article, you might be looking for a place like Free Republic, or InfoWars.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
there are a lot of people making a lot of money and fame
Who's making a lot of money? If they are so famous, how come you can't name any of them?
The big money is on the denialist side. The Koch brothers made $6B last year.
This. Climate scientists are not making lots of money. They survive on modest-sized grants to do their research. Competition for grants is significant. Not a great way to get rich.
And before the deniers reply with apoplectic rants about how scientists are compromised by their need to compete for research money, let's remind ourselves that science, like all human endeavours, has its flaws and bad actors, but it has adopted a self-correcting discipline that seeks and reviews experimental/observational validation for its claims. Over time, our knowledge of the natural world improves thanks to science. And that happens despite the bad-faith actions of deniers who try to discredit it with false or irrelevant arguments.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
This is a problem with partisanship. That you would adhere to a position you know to be illogical simply for the sake of being consistent with your party of choice is sad. This attitude among elected officials is what drives partisanship and gridlock in Washington.
I'm a person that would be described as liberal, but I don't support gun control. Just because I think the NRA and many other anti-gun control people are stupid and annoying doesn't change my position. I'm also dismayed by some of the over-sensitivity on college campuses and in the media, but using pejoratives like "SJW" is divisive and does nothing to persuade others of this opinion.
Climate change matters. Not for the political victories of one party or another, but for the future of humanity. I don't want my children or maybe some day grandchildren to grow up in a world facing global catastrophe. Why would anyone want that? Political expediency doesn't justify immorality.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
It's not that anyone's gaming the system, it's just that Google thinks that if you hide your identity or personal information, you must be a loony paranoid conspiracy theorist and so it just gives you what it thinks you want; loony paranoid conspiracy theories.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
When one isn't an expert in a certain field and lacks the time/ability/desire to become an expert in said field, it's only logical to defer to expert opinion. No one has the ability to be an expert in every field, so everyone has to do this if they want to have a somewhat coherent understanding of the world. Relying on scientific consensus is something everyone does to arrive at logical conclusions. Even scientists.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
The ones profiting off Climate change are the sleazy politicans that use it as a bludgeoning weapon and scam companies like the solar roadway bullshit, which in turn is used by the deniers as a weapon to prove they're right as "only scammers support the hypothesis".
And then we all burn to death in the end because nobody was actually interested in fixing the shit.
You do know that none of those recorded cycles have seen temperature changes anywhere close to this rapid? The evidence is evidence of the effect of man's activity on the climate, not the opposite.
The only way you can claim that man made climate change isn't happening is by cherry picking a few studies on the subject.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
... or more likely, freeze.
Oh of course we're not, quit lying. We're ranked a distant second to China who puts out twice our output for CO2. If you're also asking about air quality and pollution, we're the eighth best. (IEA is my source, but I don't have a link handy, sorry)
You know how they figured out the warming and cooling for those ice cores, idiot?
Thermodynamics. A planet doesn't warm and cool without reason. Along with the cyclical Milankovich cycles, anomalous events recorded in the cores correlate strongly with atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.
Which makes sense if had a clue about physics. In physics there's a concept called the mean free path. It's why the ozone layer that makes up a tiny fraction of our atmosphere is capable of preventing our planet from being a sterilized ball of rock. That same concept also explains why trace gases can have noticeable affects on our planet, such as those greenhouse gases that prevent our planet from becoming a snowball.
Chemistry. Physics. Thermodynamics. The atmosphere adheres to them just like everything else. There are no special set of rules that say conservation of energy is never violated EXCEPT when it comes to climate.
BTW, you can download and examine the model source code. They're built on the same physics and chemistry you use every single day without it ever even crossing your tiny little mind.
Educate yourself so the next time you don't sound like a blathering moron.
~X~
You should ask your favourite editor at Breitbart or Russia Today to start a Tech news section.
And please stay there. Your crocodile tears over how [insert name of news site here] has become so utterly useless and lame and how, oh it’s so unfortunate, but everybody should stop reading it unless it ceases and desists from publishing anything critical of [insert name of party or politician] and be so unfairly biased against [insert name of loony conspiracy theory here]... are not welcome in discussion about news topics. Host your own blog and invite your fellow trolls to compete for the most disruptive comment over there.
Or write to the editors of the site so they can have a good laugh, instead of bothering its readers.
Nice dogmatism, broham!
Obligatory XKCD, although it only goes back 22k years:
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Perhaps the GP can post some data from earlier where there is a sudden spike like we saw in the last century.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I have 800,000 years of direct, measurable evidence that the earth's climate cycles between warming and cooling, and that we are, in fact, in the fifth such cycle.
Ah, a new theory. Here's a basic sniff test: In all the cycles over the past 800 000 years, what caused the climate to change?
And what is causing it to change this time?
You, on the other hand, have what-if models that account only for unending warming, something which hasn't happened in 800,000 years.
The only models I've seen suggesting an unending warming cycle are those used by denialists. Which is to say, if you can't adequately explain the current warming, then you cannot rule out a never ending warming cycle. So: what is causing the current warming event?
And the direct satellite evidence?
Faked.
The future chinese brought back transmitters from the future to send signals because there are no satellites because, the truth is, there is no space. Space, and the moon, are a vast liberal conspiracy. That's how the whole thing started: Fourier surmised that the reason the earth's temperature was so different from the moon's is because of the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but he would say that, because he is a zombie Knights Templar who is/was/will be in league with the time travelling chinese.
I have 800,000 years of direct, measurable evidence that the earth's climate cycles between warming and cooling, and that we are, in fact, in the fifth such cycle.
Exactly. And we are currently in the cooling part of the cycle,
But the temperature is going up.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
But it doesn't change for magical reasons. There are physical processes behind those changes. That is exactly what climate scientists study.