Climate change - how arsed are you?

[TheHowieLama]

Using social media data and artificial intelligence in a comprehensive national assessment, a new University of Michigan study reveals that nearly 15% of Americans deny that climate change is real.

Scientists have long warned that a warming climate will cause communities around the globe to face increasing risks due to unprecedented levels of flooding, wildfires, heat stress, sea-level rise and more. Though the science is sound—even showing that human-induced, climate-related natural disasters are growing in frequency and intensity sooner than originally anticipated—climate change is still not wholly accepted as true in the United States.

The researchers used Twitter (now X) data from 2017 to 2019 and AI techniques to understand how social media has spread climate change denialism, analyzing the data to estimate climate change belief and denial rates.

The study, published online Feb. 14 in the journal Scientific Reports, also identified key influencers, such as former President Donald Trump, and how they spread and cement misinformation about climate change by leveraging world and weather events.

Analysis of the geocoded tweets revealed that belief in climate change is highest along the West Coast and East Coast, and that denialism is highest in the central and southern parts of the country, with more than 20% of the populations of Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama and North Dakota consisting of people who do not believe in climate change.

 

The findings show that political affiliation plays the most influential role in determining whether a person believes in climate change or not, with a high percentage of Republican voters having the strongest correlation with climate change deniers.

In addition, the researchers saw a strong connection between climate denialism and low COVID-19 vaccination rates, suggesting a broad skepticism of science.

The study is also the first to identify which individuals on X are influential in shaping belief or denial of climate change and to what extent. In addition, it maps out how denialists and climate change believers have formed mostly separate X communities, creating echo chambers that do not interact with each other.

The findings show Trump as having the biggest influence, as well as three influential groups that heavily retweeted him—The Daily Wire, Breitbart and Climate Depot—in addition to conservative political commentators such as Ben Shapiro.

“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., and another where he casts doubt on a U.N. climate report,” Newell said.

 

Newell notes that the study did not analyze newer social media outlets, such as Truth Social, a primary channel for Trump’s recent social media posts.

“Influencers like Trump are creating their own echo chambers outside of X, which in many ways is even more concerning,” he said. “People tend to selectively credit or discredit evidence based on their beliefs, which is how fake experts come to serve as credible messengers.

“This is the basis of the theory of identity-protective cognition, which helps explain, for example, why Republican voters are more likely to believe tweets from Trump on climate change rather than other, more reliable sources—it is identity-affirming.”

“The information revealed in this study provides a basis for developing strategies to counter this knowledge vulnerability and reduce the spread of mis- or disinformation by identifying the communities most at risk of not adopting measures to increase resilience to the effects of climate change,” Newell said. “We learned that a relatively small number of individuals are highly influential in spreading misinformation about climate change.

[TheHowieLama]

Fury after Exxon chief says public to blame for climate failures

Darren Woods tells Fortune consumers not willing to pay for clean-energy transition, prompting backlash from climate experts

As the world’s largest investor-owned oil company, Exxon is among the top contributors to global planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions. But in an interview, published on Tuesday, Woods argued that big oil is not primarily responsible for the climate crisis.

 

The real issue, Woods said, is that the clean-energy transition may prove too expensive for consumers’ liking.

“The dirty secret nobody talks about is how much all this is going to cost and who’s willing to pay for it,” he told Fortune last week. “The people who are generating those emissions need to be aware of and pay the price for generating those emissions. That is ultimately how you solve the problem.”

“We have opportunities to make fuels with lower carbon in it, but people aren’t willing to spend the money to do that.”

 

Further down we get to the truth:

 

 

Exxon does not “see the ability to generate above-average returns for investors” from established clean energy generation such as wind and solar, Woods said.

“We recognize a need for that. We just don’t see that as an appropriate use of ExxonMobil’s capabilities,” he added.

 

 

 

So what he is saying is that he cannot get customers to pay a premium for Exxon to find an alternative fuel/energy offering that has the ability to generate above average returns for Exxon.

 

 

[polymerpunkah]

We can make more money killing the planet than saving it, so we'll kill it.

 

 

[Gnasher]

Oh well, it does have some plus points.