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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.

18 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. Capitalism by ceoyoyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  2. These are ADVERTISING COMPANIES by michaelcole · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  3. The difference is... by Kludge · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  4. Really Fake News From Climate Deniers ? by Crashmarik · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Really Fake News From Climate Deniers ? by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What it all comes down to is that you need to have an education to make sense of the news.

      You need an education to function in society. And IMHO, you should not need to pay beyond your means to receive it. And part of that education should be the ability to recognize rational, fact-based statements from skewed opinions laced with logical fallacies.

      There is a difference between fake news and incomplete news.

      This. And I'll go further: fake news is created by fake reporters. It is a deliberate fabrication, intended to enrage or frighten the reader. It is not the same as news with errors or even news with a bias. Incomplete news is still news, but with a disingenuous taint (if done deliberately.)

      This is why fact-checking websites (like snopes or politifact) have a gradual scale on which they rate the truth of statements by public individuals, and not just a true/false assessment. The truth is an absolute, but how someone conveys it can be complicated.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  5. Re:What if I believe but don't give a damn? by quantaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  6. Re:Uh... They are the same? by ClickOnThis · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  7. Re:I'm looking for a good alternative to Slashdot. by GameboyRMH · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  8. Re:What if I believe but don't give a damn? by RazorSharp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."
  9. Re:Well played by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The AGW zealots posted this right when everyone else is too busy shoveling global warming out of their driveways.

    Global Warming -> Climate
    The stuff in your driveway -> Weather

    Learn the difference. That is all.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  10. Re:Well played by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The AGW zealots posted this right when everyone else is too busy shoveling global warming out of their driveways.

    It sure reads like you don't understand the difference between climate change and the weather. The weather is going to become increasingly volatile which means you are going to get more extreme weather patterns (larger range of temperature) thus altering the climate. Ergo climate change. However, the overall temperature of the planet is still going to rise. Ergo global warming.

    Please educate yourself on this very important topic.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  11. Re:Uh... They are the same? by The+Cynical+Critic · · Score: 5, Informative

    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."
  12. Re:Uh... They are the same? by Xyrus · · Score: 3, Informative

    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~
  13. Re:Uh... They are the same? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
  14. Re:Uh... They are the same? by KeensMustard · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

  15. Re:Proven? by KeensMustard · · Score: 4, Funny
    Yes, it's all a vast chinese time travelling zombie conspiracy to take American jobs. There's an easily repeatable test that CO2 behaves exactly as described by Arrhenius, Fourier et, al, but the results are always faked. How? Chinese conspirators travel through time detecting instances where the experiment falsifies the observation of CO2 as a greenhouse gas, and give the experimenters vaccines with mercury. Then the experimenters and their audiences are vulnerable to hypnotic suggestions, so that they think they saw direct evidence to the contrary. They've done this thousands of times.

    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.

  16. Re:Someone said once... by Altrag · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That quote is rather irrelevant, unless you've got a few spare Earths laying around to run experiments on..?

    Assuming you don't, our next best option is to model the data we have as accurately as possible and make predictions based on those models.

    So far all of the models predict "we're fucked if we don't change our ways" even if they don't all agree on how badly or how soon we're fucked, with some even suggesting we're past the point of changing our ways and fucked no matter what.

    There's a reason why the climate scientists (and yes, I feel justified using the generalized term!) report actual data generated from actual models while the deniers tend to go with things like opinion polls -- the deniers just don't have a whole lot of data to work with and much of what they do have is pretty questionable.

  17. Re:Uh... They are the same? by Eunuchswear · · Score: 3, Informative

    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