As natural disasters and extreme environmental conditions have become more common around the world this summer, scientists have repeatedly pointed to a shared driver: climate change.
Conspiracy theorists point to anything but.
Some have falsely claimed that the record-smashing heat waves hitting parts of North America, Europe and Asia are normal, and that they have been sensationalized as part of a globalist fraud. Others have made up stories already cloud-seeding planes yes near damrather than heavy rains, caused unusually severe flooding in northern Italy (and in places like Vermont and Rwanda).
The devastating wildfires in Maui this month have given rise to ridiculous claims. The social media post that garnered millions of views blamed the fire on a “directed energy weapon” (the evidence: years-old footage that was not recorded in Hawaii). And as Florida prepares this week for Hurricane Idalia, some people online are falsely claiming that such storms are not affected by fossil fuel emissions.
The baseless claims that now regularly follow natural disasters and dangerous weather, contradicting a preponderance of scientific evidence, often seem frivolous and implausible. They persist, however – attracting large audiences and frustrating climate experts, who say the world has little time to avoid a global warming catastrophe.
Claims may begin with blog posts paid for by the oil and gas industry, or from rumors shared among neighbors. Online forums are full of comments in many languages which rejects both the science behind fossil fuel emissions and the authority of scientists. Sometimes, leading politicians and pundits reinforce them – Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, for example, called climate change a “hoax” in the first major debate last week.
“This is really one of the worst challenges we have to face,” said Eleni Myrivili, the chief heat officer for the United Nations human settlements program, who also works on heat issues for the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.
After holding a similar role for the city of Athens, which has been threatened by a series of fires this month, Dr. Myrivili that climate misinformation is “one of the most painful things because it’s like adding insult to injury.”
Outright climate deniers are a minority: 74 percent of Americans believe global warming is happening, compared to 15 percent who don’t, according to a survey conducted in the spring of Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. However, while 61 percent understand that humans are mostly to blame – the consensus of most of the scientific community – 28 percent say the phenomenon is a natural evolution.
Experts say the tactics and tenor of climate denial have evolved. For decades, the oil and gas industry has spent billions of dollars conducting a coordinated and highly technical campaign to sway public opinion against climate science, and then climate action. Recently, conspiracy theorists and extremists have operated in a more decentralized manner, generating revenue through fraudulent clickbait about global warming.
“These two universes of actors have collided with each other in the online space and basically found a marriage of convenience,” said Jennie King, head of climate research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that studying online platforms. “You have the informal and the formal, the traditional and the very digital now occupying the same ecosystem and elevating it to new extremes.”
The consequences of global warming are complex. Natural disasters and extreme weather would still occur without it, albeit on a smaller scale, for example. That helps fuel a lot of false narratives, says Susannah Crockford, an environmental anthropologist at the University of Exeter in England.
Dr. Crockford, who studies climate denial, said he sympathizes with the desire to create explanations that shift responsibility from climate change to a boogeyman like arsonists or “the elect.”
“Blaming a specific enemy makes the fight easier – you just have to get rid of the bad guys who are doing it, and then the problem goes away,” said Dr. Crockford.
Climate Action Against Disinformation, a coalition of dozens of groups fighting misinformation, has analyzed claims about wildfires over the past three years. In a report last month, the organization showed how such claims are being recycled and adapted for the zeitgeist. The Black Lives Matter movement and antifa protesters were scapegoats when wildfires broke out in California, Oregon and Washington in 2020. As Canada dealt with its own wildfires this summer, the Prime Minister was unfoundedly linked Justin Trudeau on eco-terrorist activity.
On Maui, fears that rogue developers had moved in after the fire quickly turned to unsupported claims that wealthy real estate investors caused the fire. Videos of Hawaii’s governor saying the state could acquire land in Lahaina to protect it for locals is manipulated and offered as fraudulent proof that his plan was to buy land to create a technologically advanced “smart city.”
A YouTube video shared the baseless claim that Oprah Winfrey had something to do with starting hell on the island, hoping to take the land away from the native residents. As proof, the host of the video, Ms. Winfrey recently bought a large plot of land on Maui (she has lived part time on the island for 15 years) and that her possessions escaped the inferno this month (her home is miles away from the nearest fire). The host added another should-have-been red flag: During an interview about the fire, Ms. Winfrey to show enough sadness.
Ms. Winfrey did not respond to a request for comment.
County officials on Maui have warned for years about the risk of climate change causing more frequent and intense wildfires. Experts later suggested that the Lahaina fire was fueled by worsening drought conditions, low humidity and storm surges associated with a storm hundreds of miles away.
Global warming, however, has not been a factor in the false theories that have sprung up through social media. One TikTok user said “some people caught pictures of the lasers coming down and starting a fire in Maui.” As evidence, he shared two photos: one from SpaceX Instagram account shows the launch of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket from California in 2018, one is from a five-year-old photo posted on Facebook after a controlled flare from an oil refinery in Ohio. (Other photos claiming to have captured a “direct energy weapon” at work in Maui show transformer explosions Chile and Louisiana.)
Climate activists worry that social platforms and technologies like artificial intelligence will help create and accelerate the spread of misinformation about natural disasters and extreme weather.
This year, researchers found ads from retailers, electronics manufacturers and airlines accompanying YouTube videos falsely claiming the rainforest is too humid to burn or that the world is cooling. (YouTube has said it is removing ads from videos that deny climate change.) A report this month from Pomona College found that, within six months of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, nearly half of the users who regularly discussed the environment were no longer active.
Scientists and other experts on climate change have been besieged by personal attacks, including claims that they are shills for a globalist cabal or other shadowy forces, Ms. King of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The breakdown of trust in experts traps everyone in a “discussion antechamber,” arguing about credibility rather than acting.
“The danger is not that people hold unpleasant views of themselves,” he said. “More than our inability to have a good faith conversation about these absolutely critical issues for years to come.”