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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.
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.
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."
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."
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.