Social media is a growing vehicle for climate misinformation

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration

A few weeks ago, delegates from nearly 200 nations met for the 29th United Nations climate summit (COP29) in Azerbaijan, where they discussed how best to reduce emissions to slow dangerous global warming. Meanwhile, a separate global forum was playing out online, dedicated to undermining the conference, promoting oil and gas and denying humans’ role in climate change. 

A new report, published on Friday by international nonprofit Global Witness, found that climate misinformation and disinformation spread unchecked on TikTok during COP29, mostly in user comments on videos. The users they identified denied man-made global warming and rebuked efforts to combat it, claiming that climate change is a “lie” or “hoax.” 

In recent years, social media platforms like X, Facebook and even LinkedIn have emerged as efficient vehicles to spread this type of inaccurate rhetoric as quickly as climate-fueled wildfires. Online influencers and prominent political figures, particularly President-elect Donald Trump, have fanned these flames on social media, a worrisome trend as trust in science and journalists continues in some communities to plummet, experts say. 

The U.N. and other organizations are scrambling to counter climate mis- and disinformation on social media. At the same time, activists and environmentalists are tapping into platforms as a way to connect global climate campaigns, rather than dismantle them.

Climate-Skeptic Influencers: TikTok has policies in place that prohibit inaccurate climate change content from remaining on the platform, and launched a $1 million initiative last year to support creators in developing educational content to “tackle climate misinformation,” according to the company’s website. But when researchers at Global Witness combed through videos posted by major news outlets in English about COP29, they found at least 20 comments that outright denied the existence of climate change. The nonprofit reported these comments to TikTok and the company initially took down only one of them, but later “took action against all the infringing comments,” Fast Company reports. (TikTok did not respond to requests for comment from Fast Company.) 

This tracks with my colleague Bob Berwyn’s recent reporting from the conference, during which U.N. officials launched an initiative to combat climate misinformation at an international scale. Berwyn pointed out that after Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X) in 2022, the tech mogul reinstated accounts that had been banned for spreading disinformation about climate and other topics. Since then, the number of accounts amplifying climate denial have proliferated, with high-profile users reaching millions of people per post. 

And there’s a reason social media celebrities are known as “influencers.” A study published in February found that just a few individuals play an outsize role on what is now X in shaping belief or denial of climate change in the U.S. Using artificial intelligence to analyze social media data from 2017 to 2019, the researchers found that Trump had the biggest influence on climate denialism on that platform, as well as three groups that frequently retweeted him, including The Daily Wire, Breitbart and Climate Depot. 

“During the 2017-2019 study period, the most heavily retweeted post includes one by Trump that questions climate change due to unusually cold weather in the U.S.,” co-author Joshua Newell, a professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan, said in a press release. He added that climate skeptics and believers often form separate “echo chambers” that do not interact with each other. 

An Online Storm: After Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit in September and October, a torrent of conspiracy theories over the cause of the storms swirled on social media. Some people posting claimed that the government created the hurricanes using weather machines, which do not exist, or that solar geoengineering worsened the weather, though the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration clarified that this practice is not taking place at scale anywhere in the world. 

As this disinformation deluge hit, meteorologists were accused of pushing a “climate change agenda” and received frequent backlash or threats from viewers, James Marshall Shepherd, a former NASA weather scientist who is currently director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program, told Yale Environment 360.

“In the past, the harassment was over in a fringe element,” Shepherd, a former president of the American Meteorological Society, told e360. “In this last episode, it was [a] bit more mainstream.” 

Climate-related disinformation tends to spike following extreme weather events or disasters. After wildfires tore through Maui in 2023, outlandish social media posts claimed that laser beams shot by the government ignited the flames—or that TV personality Oprah Winfrey started the fire in a land grab bid, NPR reports.

During the hurricanes and fire, false and misleading claims on social media were amplified by Russian state media and China, research shows. In July, I wrote about a NATO report that outlined the accelerating security threats from climate change, which stressed that these foreign social media campaigns aim to “exploit emotions, sow distrust in official response and otherwise impair Allies’ ability to respond effectively to crises.” 

Oftentimes, environmental disinformation campaigns have been linked to industries that could benefit from this type of chaos. I see it frequently while reporting on whales. Researchers at Brown University recently uncovered a complex network of conservative think tanks and fossil fuel interest groups funding whale activism efforts to combat offshore wind, despite the dearth of evidence that turbines are directly causing animal mortalities. Scientists say the actual main risks associated with offshore wind development exist primarily during construction, including when boats could hit the whales or noise could hinder communication, Science Friday reports. 

In any case, the researchers say that misinformation campaigns could distract from the most pressing threats to whales’ survival: the warming waters that are disrupting their food systems and more frequently pushing the animals closer to human activities like fishing and shipping. 

Environmentalists are calling on social media companies to better moderate climate mis- and disinformation on their platforms, while nonprofits have deployed a variety of tactics to combat global warming myths—from debunking tools to educational campaigns. And in the case of climate change, social media can be a double-edged sword. Over the past decade, climate activists have orchestrated international movements to push governments to slash emissions. Greta Thunberg—the creator of the Fridays for Future movement—has more than 5 million followers on X and has used her platform to document her protests or take on climate denialists, including Trump.