ISD Inst for Strategic Dialogue

oops see other node

via amy w

https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/deny-deceive-delay-documenting-and-responding-to-climate-disinformation-at-cop26-and-beyond-full/

Report authors: Jennie King, Lukasz Janulewicz, Francesca Arcostanzo

Contributing partners: CASM Technology, Conscious Advertising Network, Climate Nexus, Eco.Bot-Net, Friends of the Earth, Purpose, Reset Australia and Stop Funding Heat.

Special acknowledgments to Paula Matlach, Kata Balint, Cecile Simmons, Sara Bundzten and Melanie Smith for their efforts in ISD’s climate “War Room”, monitoring climate mis- and disinformation during COP26.

Published: 9 June 2022

In February 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) took an unprecedented step, citing mis- and disinformation and the “politicization of science” as key barriers to action. For the first time, a document accepted by all Member Governments stated that rhetoric from “vested economic and political interests… undermines climate science” and in turn has driven “public misperception of climate risks and polarised public support for climate actions”. The diagnosis was explicit, and built on a growing body of evidence produced across the environmental and research sectors in recent years: to solve the climate crisis, we must also tackle the information crisis.

Drawing on research compiled over the past 18 months, and especially in the margins and aftermath of COP26, we have clear evidence of the challenge at hand: the failure to stem mis- and disinformation online has allowed junk science, climate delayism and attacks on climate figures to become mainstreamed. Our analysis has shown how a small but dedicated community of actors boast disproportionate reach and engagement across social media, reaching millions of people worldwide and bolstered by legacy print, broadcast and radio outlets. Far from helping to mitigate this issue, tech platform systems appear to be amplifying or exacerbating the spread of such content. Moreover, the taxonomy of harm relating to climate mis- and disinformation has been poorly defined to date, providing an inadequate basis for response.

This report – ‘Deny, Deceive, Delay: Documenting and Responding to Climate Disinformation at COP26 and Beyond’ – is a collective effort to quantify the problem and establish concrete responses for the months and years ahead. Produced by ISD, CASM Technology and the Climate Action Against Disinformation alliance (CAAD), it is a data-driven examination of the landscape, actors, systems and approaches that are combining to prevent action on climate.

For the executive summary, please click here.

Published: 9 June 2022

In this executive summary we outline the most prominent discourses identified before, during and after COP26. These narratives show how the climate conversation has moved from outright climate denialism to delayism and distraction from acting. As these narratives infiltrate general discourse, stances on climate actions are entrenching into broader individual identity and grievance politics, emerging as a new front in the culture wars.

For the full report, please click here. https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Summative-Report-COP26.pdf

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Glossary of Terms

• Part 1: Discourses of Delay

o Hypocrisy and Elitism

o Absolutionism

o Unreliability of Renewables

o Ineffective Electric Vehicles

• Part 2: Understanding the Network - A Structural Analysis of Accounts on Twitter

o Network Overview (Graphika analysis)

o Key Communities (Graphika analysis)

o Key Actors

• Part 3: A Policy Response to Climate Mis- and Disinformation

Policy Ask 1 - Implement a unified definition of climate mis- and disinformation within key institutions

(e.g. IPCC, UNFCCC) and reflect these criteria in tech company Community Standards or Terms of Service

• Definition

• Current actions by platforms

• Indicative examples of content

Policy Ask 2 - Enforce platform policies against ‘Repeat Offender’ accounts

• Repeat Offender Network (Graphika analysis)

• Case studies

o Peter Imanulesen

o John Stossel

o Michael Shellenberger

o Bjorn Lomborg

o Tony Heller

o Patrick Moore

• Key takeaways

Policy Ask 3 - Limit media exemption loopholes within legislation

• Case Study 1: Recommendation algorithms on Facebook (Global Witness analysis)

• Case Study 2: Labelling misleading content on Facebook (Media Matters analysis)

• Case Study 3: A comparison of climate sceptic actors and Facebook’s Climate Science Center

Policy Ask 4 - Improve transparency on climate disinformation trends and the role played by algorithmic

amplification

• Most cited media outlet

o The Daily Mail

o The Guardian

o The Telegraph

o Watts Up With That (WWUT)

o The Wall Street Journal

• In-depth case study: Sky News Australia (ISD and Purpose analysis)

Policy Ask 5 - Strengthen platform labelling on ‘missing context’ and the re-posting of old or recycled

content

• Overview of theAd Tech ecosystem (CAN analysis)

• Case study 1: ExxonMobil (Eco.Bot-Net analysis)

• Case study 2: American Petroleum Institute (Eco.Bot-Net analysis)

Policy Ask 6 - Restrict paid advertising and sponsored content from fossil fuel companies, known front

groups, and/or actors repeatedly found to spread disinformation around climate

• Case study 1: The Daily Mail during COP26

• Case study 2: PragerU opposition to EVs

Policy Ask 7 - Enable API image-based searched to support research on viral disinformation

• Case study 1: Private jets in Glasgow

• Case study 2: Attacks on Txai Surui (Avaaz analysis)

• Appendix 1: Methodology

• COP26 ‘War Room’ - Technical Set-up

o Data collection strategy

o Overview of Beam

o Climate dashboards

• Other analyses

• Network mapping

• Media Matters (Policy Ask 3, Case Study 2)

• Queries/Keyword Dictionaries

...FAR-LEFT There is no broadly agreed definition of the far-left, and the scholarship on radical or far-left actions and groups in contemporary Western societies is much less developed than that surrounding the far-right. Following Cas Mudde and political researcher Luke March, as well as established framing of the far-right (see below), we propose a distinction between left-wing radicalism and extremism. Under this frame, the latter groups would be considered anti-democratic, while the former advocate fundamental political and economic changes without being anti-democratic per se. Radical left groups, actions or networks are typically rooted in Marxist, socialist or anarchist ideologies, and pursue an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and radically egalitarian and anti-fascist agenda, often with an internationalist outlook.

FAR-RIGHT There are no unanimously agreed parameters or traits for the term ‘far-right’, but for the purposes of this report we refer to the well-established framing put forward by Dutch political scientist and right-wing extremist expert Cas Mudde and UK-based academic Elisabeth Carter. This understands the extreme right to be typically marked by several of the following characteristics: nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democracy, and strong-state advocacy or authoritarianism. We use the generic umbrella term ‘far-right’ to cover both radical and extreme right-wing groups, actions, and ideologies. The conceptual difference between right-wing radicalism and extremism is that the former is not explicitly anti-democratic (e.g. far-right libertarian, anti-Muslim groups), while the latter is characterised also by an explicit anti-democratic stance (e.g. openly fascist, neo-Nazi groups). Both share the core ideology of exclusivist nationalism, which openly advocates against the principle of egalitarianism.

LUKEWARMERS / LUKEWARMERISM The term ‘lukewarmer’ originated as a self-description by various authors and bloggers publishing on climate related topics, such as British Viscount and author Matt Ridley, before being picked up by media outlets as a wider narrative trend. Academic research has since defined this term as a basic acceptance of anthropogenic climate change combined with a belief that the threat is exaggerated, impacts will be markedly less than predicted by most climate scientists, or that global warming may even have beneficial effects. A key component of lukewarmerism is to claim that the ‘small and manageable’ effects of climate change render efforts to limit emissions ‘too difficult or expensive’, and that related calls to action are ‘alarmist’...

In recent years we have witnessed a clear evolution in rhetoric opposing the idea of climate change

and related action. While outright denial of climate change is still present and espoused by many

pundits, or found in their former outputs, it has largely been confined to the margins of public

debate. According to various large-scale polls - including a 2021 study of 1.2 million people in 50

countries by UNDP and the University of Oxford - there is a strong public mandate to address the

climate crisis. Denying the reality and impacts of climate change, or the need for corresponding

action, is therefore unlikely to hold sway as it might have done in previous decades. In its place,

narratives have trended towards discrediting any proposal for mitigation, adaptation and transition

arguments sometimes referred to as ‘discourses of delay’ (see Fig. 1).

The ‘opposition playbook’ (i.e. the tactics used by those seeking to undermine action on climate

change) has been forced to adjust to this new paradigm, including by historically polluting industries

and those with vested interests. Even with broad consensus on the issue of climate, there is a long

road ahead to achieving meaningful policy change in line with IPCC warnings and the goals of the

Paris Agreement. By focussing efforts in that gap - between recognition, buy-in and action - actors

who oppose action can maintain the status quo without resorting to the now unpalatable opinions

of the nineties and early noughties. Arguments framed as ‘pro-green’ can still advocate for inertia

or inactivism, often using the veneer of fiscal pragmatism, free market logic and concerns about

individual liberty. In this way, environmentalism has followed policy issues like migration and public

health as a new front in the culture wars, becoming ever-more enmeshed in broader identity and

grievance politics. Whether through conspiracies like ‘climate lockdown’, or by conflating climate

with divisive issues like critical race theory, LGBTQ+ rights and abortion access, the goal of much

climate change mis- and/or disinformation is now is to distract and delay. Yet, with the window to

act deemed “brief and rapidly closing”, such an approach may prove fatal.

Monitoring by Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) over the course of COP26 and beyond

confirms these trends (more information about coalition partners can be found at the start of this

report). We identified four key ‘discourses of delay’ across social media, which continue to achieve

high reach and engagement or set the parameters for debate in contexts globally. These are:

PART 1: DISCOURSES OF DELAY

l ‘Hypocrisy and Elitism’

l ‘Absolutionism’

l ‘Unreliability of Renewables’

l ‘Ineffective Electric Vehicles’ ...

nice grf

1:Taxonomy for ‘Discourses of Delay’ from Lamb, W., Mattioli, G., Levi, S., Roberts, J., Capstick, S., Creutzig, F., . . . Steinberger, J. (2020). Discourses of climate delay. Global Sustainability, 3, E17. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.13

Absolutionism [but india china]

‘Absolutionism’, the second major narrative we identified and analysed, seeks to absolve a given country from taking any climate action by highlighting the perceived failings of another state or multilateral group. In the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Australia and other countries broadly categorised as ‘Western’, this line of argument tends to focus on China and, to a lesser extent, India for making insufficient progress or having weak onward targets. Russia and Saudi Arabia can also be cited, but are far less frequent targets for this line of argument. Analysis of this narrative has featured in previous ISD research across several geographies and is pivotal to delayist rhetoric, not least in the political sphere. Content generally condemns domestic policymaking on principle, claiming such efforts are: i) futile in reducing global carbon emissions (since others pollute more); ii) a form of ‘self-inflicted harm’ that punishes citizens (through loss of livelihoods, rising prices, lifestyle changes etc.); and/or iii) will cede power to geopolitical foes (who benefit from continued fossil fuel use and export)....

[pix w/ kohler box in bkgd]

the most widely shared Facebook post came from a page called ‘Wyoming Energy Families’, garnering over 19k shares and 13k likes. The page is overtly pro-oil, gas and coal and opposed to measures like Biden’s Build Back Better bill or increased use of wind power. Numerous US accounts shared the same image of a random EV charging port with a technical device directly adjacent, which they claimed to be a diesel generator. Such content is now marked as “False Information” by Facebook, highlighting that this is not a diesel generator powering the station, but content remains live on the platform. Other examples include: ● A high-volume public group called ‘Kaitlin Bennett’ with over 100k members and upwards of 400 posts a day, often memes in support of various US conservative talking points (823 shares/2k likes) ● A page labelled as ‘satire/parody’ called ‘No Definite Purpose’ which boasts 55k followers (204 shares) ● A page labelled as ‘interest’ called ‘The Lockdown Left Lunacy’ which has 3.6k+ followers and posts memes around rightleaning talking points. It also contains large volumes of content sceptic of COVID-19, vaccines and related public health measures ..

A viral Bjorn Lomborg video from 2016 was re-shared in various forms by PragerU,a right-wing digital media entity, amassing 2.6m views/1k shares on a single post during COP26. Older posts containing the video were viewed 2.4 million times with 4.8k likes (PragerU on Facebook), 7.1m times (PragerU’s own website) and 1.9m times with 32k likes (PragerU on YouTube). The video claims that EVs have an equal, if not markedly worse, carbon footprint than existing petrol-based vehicles and thus constitute a ‘green myth’...

nice cluster grfs]

major communities

the largest and most vocal cohort in this network are right-wing groups, activists and pundits from the US, UK and Canada. Graphika’s mapping showed these groups were more active in conversations immediately preceding COP26 than dedicated climate sceptic and conspiracy accounts. All clusters tied to the political right-wing combined made up 43.31% of the map, compared with 31.36% comprising those focussed on science scepticism and related conspiracies.

Several top influencers at the core of the network fall into the category of sharing right-wing content: Dinesh D’Souza, Ezra Levant, Rita Panahi and PragerU. These conservative pundits and organisations have successfully built followings in their own right on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and alt-tech platforms. While climate issues are not part of their main content strategy, they nevertheless engage in frequent criticism of their respective governments’ environmental policies, attack or ridicule prominent climate activists, or employ narratives outlined in the previous section of this report. During COP26 in particular, they downplayed the climate emergency and amplified accusations of hypocrisy against politicians and other figures attending the Glasgow summit. The other major group in the network consists of four anti-science clusters.

As highlighted above, they coalesce around geographies, but showed interconnectedness during COP26 around content that extended beyond their local and national issues. It is noteworthy that COVID-19 and climate sceptic accounts overlap both structurally and in the content they share. The network includes several anti-vaccine clusters within the wider anti-science groups. For the purposes of this report, the terms “vaccine-sceptic, “anti-vaccine” and “anti-vaxx” cover a range of attitudes, characterised by distrust of a specific vaccine (e.g. for COVID-19) or immunisation regimes more broadly. “Vaccine sceptics” are not categorically opposed to vaccines, but have reservations to varying degrees about their safety, necessity or inclusion within health mandates. By contrast, “anti-vaxxers” are fundamentally opposed to vaccination as a matter of principle. Their reasons range from suppositions derived from conspiracy theories to the deeply held belief that vaccines constitute a harmful intervention into the body’s biochemical processes, potentially causing long-term damage. The most widely followed accounts in the UK-based Anti-Science/Conspiracy group are a mix of anti-vaccine influencers alongside prominent climate denialist.

industry-linked delegates

versus those representing indigenous communities and other frontline movements).

However, the vast majority of posts in this category came from accounts known

to share right-wing and far-right content, rarely engaging with the substance of

negotiations and instead focussing on COP26 as a symbol of the ‘liberal woke agenda’.

In total we identified 199,676 mentions of this narrative on Twitter (tweets and

retweets) and 4,377 posts on Facebook, which were shared 101,749 times between

10 October and 19 November 2022. Social media activity peaked during the opening

days of the summit, a trend echoed for all narratives analysed below. In the case

of ‘Hypocrisy and Elitism’, volume and engagement were largely spurred by the

arrival of delegates in Glasgow, in particular celebrities, world leaders and other

prominent public figures. Such content declined once negotiations began in earnest,

but for some outlets had already set the tone of their coverage and remained

a consistent theme.

Page 33

The most significant influencers in this category, such as Patrick Moore, Michael Shellenberger,

Bjorn Lomborg, Tony Heller or Friends of Science(see below), are characterised by their primary

focus on creating and sharing climate-related content. They most commonly come from scientific

or academic backgrounds and some were previously involved in the green movement. This allows

them to present themselves as ‘rationalist’ environmentalists and claim greater credibility for their

analysis. It also gives them significant appeal online and the potential to galvanise far broader

audiences, since they are frequently invited by conservative media outlets as ‘climate experts.’ It

should be noted, however, that there are cases where these pundits also delved into other policy

areas or culture wars-type content.

A prime example of this phenomenon is Michael Shellenberger, who contributed to a ‘Woke Religion

Taxonomy’ that presented climate action and several other causes as ‘easily debunked myths and

supernatural beliefs.’ In 2021, Shellenberger also published a book critical of policies he claims

contribute to homelessness in San Francisco, with the subtitle ‘Why Progressives ruin cities’, before

announcing his candidacy as an Independent in the 2022 California Gubernatorial race (against

Democrat incumbent Gavin Newson). This branching-out is reciprocated by accounts that focus on

portraying themselves as ‘rational’ voices against ‘woke’ society.

The remaining key influencers in the ‘Anti-Science’ group fall into this contrarian set, sometimes

branded as the ‘Intellectual Dark Web.’ While their focus is on social wedge issues, climate change

also plays a role in such ‘anti-woke’ messaging. Jordan B. Peterson, the fourth most followed account

in the overall network, falls into this category and has a track record of both climate-sceptic and

climate denialist statements (covered below and in other sections of the report). Peterson’s central

placement in the network emphasises the role such influencers play in amplifying and sustaining

a climate sceptic community. Another member of this group, Peter Boghossian, collaborated with

Shellenberger on the abovementioned ‘Woke Religion Taxonomy...

Description

Dr Jordan BPeterson

Facebook - 1.4m

Instagram - 2.9m

TikTok - 442k

Twitter - 2.2m

YouTube - 4.5m

Reddit: 274k

Quora: 41.9k

Now-emeritus Professor of Psychology

at the University of Toronto, Peterson

initially achieved fame on YouTube for his

polemical takes on culture and liberalism.

He has since become a ‘celebrity

intellectual’ within conservative circles,

sparking controversy on everything from

feminism and gender identity to racial

privilege and university censorship. Over

the course of 2021, Peterson became more

publicly vocal on environmental issues,

amplifying stances by other pundits like

Lomborg and Shellenberger.

In January 2022, Peterson was widely

criticised for inaccurate statements made

about climate science, environmental

modelling and other issues on the Joe

Rogan podcast. This included claims such

as “there’s no such thing as ‘climate’”

because “‘climate’ and ‘everything’ are

the same word”; that “more people die

every year from solar energy than from

nuclear”; and that US carbon emissions

have decreased over the past 20 years due

to fracking. Following pushback from the

scientific community, Peterson tweeted a

thread to his 2.2m followers encouraging

them to read ‘Hot Talk, Cold Science:

Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate’ by

the (now deceased) climate sceptic Fred S.

Singer.As documented by DeSmog, Singer

was a career climate change denialist

and a regular recipient of funds from the

Heartland Institute. In a 2018 episode of

Rogan’s podcast, Peterson joked that he

had learnt ‘how to monetize social justice

warriors’ through his own reactionary

content.

---

d’Souza is a right-wing commentator

and author, who started his career

in the Reagan administration and

mainstream conservative think tanks

the American Enterprise Institute and

the Hoover Institution. Chiefly known

for his controversial views on race, as

well as producing conspiracy-based

content on the cultural left and US

Democratic Party, D’Souza has also

garnered attention for his climate

denialism. This includes comparing

Greta Thunberg to ‘Nordic white girls

with braids’ from ‘Nazi propaganda’

campaigns, and a track record of

stoking outrage about alleged climate

hypocrisy.

Ezra Levant

Facebook - 73k

(personal), 276k

(Rebel News)

Instagram - 3.2k

(personal) / 210k

(Rebel News)

TikTok - 12.4k

(Rebel News)

Twitter - 296.6k

(personal) / 263.3k

(Rebel News)

YouTube - 1.52m

(Rebel News)

A Canadian conservative lawyer

turned media figure. He is the founder

of the right-wing media organisation

Rebel Media, notorious for its extreme

anti-Muslim views. In the past, the

outlet had far-right figures Tommy

Robinson and Gavin McInnes on its

payroll. Levant himself has a long

track record of supporting the fossil

fuel industry in his home province of

Alberta, particularly in his 2010 nonfiction book “Ethical Oil.” .

Former environmentalist turned ‘ecopragmatist’ pundit. Shellenberger co-founded the Breakthrough Institute in 2003 and has been the FounderPresident of Environmental Progress since 2015. He regularly writes about climate and energy for Forbes. His position has been described as a “lukewarmer” towards climate change: He publicly apologised on behalf of environmentalists for a ‘climate scare’ while supporting fracking and the shale gas industry, as well as highlighting the world’s improved ability to withstand natural disasters. He is also a keen supporter of nuclear power, and the 2017 annual report of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association of the US nuclear industry, suggests he was engaged by the group to give media interviews and write op-eds. In 2020, Shellenberger published the debunked climate book ‘Apocalypse Never’, and in October 2021 was featured on Joe Rogan’s podcast talking about ‘Climate Change Alarmism.’

Following COP26, he attacked it as “neo-feudal” pageantry and that it “gathered all of the world’s douchebags in a single conference.”

no lnx

moore: A former President of Greenpeace Canada,who has since been denounced by the organisation for ‘offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues’ and for being ‘a paid spokesman for a variety of polluting industries.’ Greenpeace particularly criticises how Moore uses his former ties to the group to claim legitimacy and expertise, especially his refuted claim that he co-founded Greenpeace. Moore is the author of ‘Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist,’ Director of the C02 Coalition, and Senior Fellow at the Heartland Institute. Notably, his claims denying a climate crisis and portraying global warming as potentially beneficial were shared on Twitter by then-US President Donald Trump after Moore was featured by Fox News in 2019. He has in the past also denied anthropogenic climate change before the US Senate. He also shares his views on climate policy on social media. A twitter thread calling Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a ‘pompous little twit’ and claiming her Green New Deal proposals would cause ‘mass death worse than WW2’ garnered widespread attention.

PragerU’

a tax-exempt, non-profit media company, primarily targeting millennials and Gen-Z audiences online in the US. Their outputs span a range of conservative narratives, with the self-described aim to “promote American values…[as] an alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education”. Its founder, radio host Dennis Prager, has openly claimed that the Green New Deal “will lead to bloodshed, loss of liberty, loss of human rights” and that “climate change is God’s will”.PragerU’s online platform was launched in part through investment from fracking billionaires Dan and Farris Wilks, and regularly platforms other key players in this network such as Bjorn Lomborg, Patrick Moore, Dinesh D’Souza and Alex Epstein. According to their main website, PragerU content has garnered over 5 billion views with 4 million average views daily. It also claims that 60% of its YouTube audience are under 35 and 70% of them’ changed their mind on at least one issue’ after viewing PragerU content (further profiles available via Media Matters for America; DeSmog; New York Times).

key amplifier

scott adams: A cartoonist and author, best known for the popular “Dilbert” comics, Adams has turned into an internet provocateur popular with right-wing audiences. During the 2016 Republican primaries he compared Donald Trump to Jesus and vocally supported him while in office. Despite later criticism around the 2020 Presidential Debate, Adams originally defended Trump’s controversial response to the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville in 2017. As part of Adams’ wider propagation of conspiracies, including predictions that Republicans would be hunted and killed if Joe Biden won the 2020 election, he also engages in climate denialism commentary.

President of the conservative advocacy group Judicial Watch, Fitton has also promoted false claims about the 2020 Iowa caucuses and vote counting during the 2020 US Presidential elections. He was identified as a major amplifier of COVID-19 disinformation by the Federation of American Scientists and linked to the Trump administration’s efforts to portray Antifa as a left-wing terrorist group. Fitton denied that Judicial Watch has a stance on climate change, despite trying to obtain the private communication of climate scientists working for the US government. However, his personal social media profile involves posts calling climate change ‘fanaticism’ and labelling it a totalitarian ideology, together with other topics like critical race theory.

tony heller: Also known by his pen name Steven Goddard, Heller’s main output is the blog Real Climate Science. A debunked claim that the world is cooling and climate scientists falsify the data, which gained prominent exposure in conservative media, has been traced back by Media Matters to Heller’s blog. In 2017, Heller was invited as an expert to a hearing of the Washington state legislature. The same year, he was also a panellist on an event at that year’s CPAC conference. Beyond his climate focus, Heller has also spread other conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook school shooting, former President Obama’s birthplace and the 2020 US Presidential election.

solutions

...In April 2022, the US-based Climate Disinformation Coalition, along with Friends of the Earth, Avaaz, and Greenpeace USA, released an analysis of social media companies’ policies.The 27-point evaluation of Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube found that all companies fell short on adopting definitions and policies to address the issue at scale, and continue to conceal data about the prevalence and impact of climate disinformationon their products or services.

Of the five companies assessed, Pinterest and YouTube were deemed to have taken the most notable steps, including explicit mis-/disinformation policies informed by climate experts - both scored 14 out of a possible 27.Pinterest’s new policy rollout, which directly cites language from the above definition within their community standards, helped raise their score. In contrast, Facebook, TikTok and Twitter fared the worst, receiving 9, 7, and 5 points respectively due to a lack of transparency and detail on how they are holding repeat offenders accountable. The full report shows how social media leadership has largely failed to take action against climate disinformation despite promises to do so. This lack of transparency prevents climate experts, researchers and advocates from monitoring the severity of the problem and uprooting the mis-/disinformation ecosystem at a time when the window for climate action is fast closing.

ask 2 ban repeat offenders

the largest technology companies claim to be tackling disinformation, climate or otherwise, through policies within their Terms of Service or Community Standards. By engaging third-party fact-checkers, the premise is that posts rated ‘false’ or ‘misleading’ will be labelled, downranked and/or removed, and some punitive action taken against the related account depending on the severity of the content and number of ‘strikes’ already recorded. It follows that such measures should be properly enforced and, above all, prevent ‘repeat offenders’ acting with impunity on their platforms. Unfortunately this is not the case, even for the types of disinformation explicitly covered by company policies (e.g. Twitter’s Covid-19 Misleading Information Policy and Civic Integrity and Election Fraud Policy; Facebook’s Covid-19 Misinformation Policy).

As reported by CNN in September: “Some platforms have three-strike policies for specific violations, others use five strikes. Twitter (TWTR) doles out strikes separately for misinformation related to Covid-19 and civic integrity, which could give misinformation spreaders up to nine chances before being booted from the platform. On YouTube and Facebook (FB), expiration timelines for strikes — 90 days and a year, respectively — could provide loopholes for people looking to post misinformation spread out over time, especially when using multiple accounts, experts say. And in some cases, strikes don’t always amount to a ban.”

As in other areas like public health, our research shows that a small group of accounts create the majority of anti-climate content, originate or amplify new lines of attack, and have disproportionate influence on the public debate across social media (see also CCDH’s report on the ‘Toxic Ten’). Many of these accounts have been labelled by fact-checkers as sharing false or misleading content, yet remain live even after repeated flags by our coalition directly to platforms’ internal teams. Such disinformation is often not limited to climate issues, but runs the gamut of ‘culture wars’ talking points: from anti-vaxx and COVID-19 scepticism to conspiracies like the New World Order, unsubstantiated claims of ‘voter fraud’, or Holocaust denial.

In some cases, such as with Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones, high-visibility figures have eventually been banned, although not before they could garner millions of interactions for their content and cultivate profiles on other mainstream and ‘alt-tech’ platforms to maintain an audience. There is also limited consistency across platforms - while Watson has been suspended from Facebook, he boasts 1.1m Twitter followers, 1.9m YouTube subscribers and even maintains an Instagram account with over 40k followers. Meanwhile, articles and posts re-sharing Watson’s content, as well as public fan groups, remain active on Facebook.

...

pPETER IMANUELSEN

An emerging trend appears to be ‘contrarian’ or polemical figures using climate to spread their broader worldview and recruit new followers. This includes vlogger Peter Imanuelsen - Twitter alias @PeterSweden - who featured prominently in our COP26 data collections with posts such as on page 65. Imanuelsen is a controversial figure beyond climate, previously tweeting that “the Holocaust is a lie to further the agenda of the NWO”, that Hitler “had some good points” and that “the globalists (mainly Jews) are the ones bringing in the muslims to Europe”. He has also espoused strong antiimmigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric, as documented by Media Matters in 2018 and more recently by Hope not Hate. The repeated framing of climate action as “communism” or “global tyranny” may also prove a dog-whistle to antisemitic tropes, tying into recent conspiracies like The Great Reset which play on scapegoating of ‘Jewish elites’.

From ISD analysis, Imanuelsen’s major amplifiers span Bitcoin advocates, COVID-19 conspiracists and accounts using the anti-Biden catchphrase ‘Let’s Go Brandon’, many with their own follower counts in the tens of thousands to millions. Notable accounts retweeting his content include a UK actress (519k followers), a Mexican influencer (804k followers), a US-based OnlyFans model (505k followers), an NFT trader (260k followers) and a lifestyle coach (142k followers).

On the political front, his posts have been re-tweeted by figures including Martin Daubney from the right-wing party Reform UK, Dutch right-wing politician Thierry Baudet,former US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Monica Crowley, and Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts. Many of these accounts were most engaged with content around COVID-19, but would likely be exposed to Imanuelsen’s rhetoric on climate in parallel. Brandwatch shows 235,700 retweets or quote tweets of his posts in the period from 25 October - 14 November 2021 (immediately before and during COP26). Applying a filter to look for COVID-19 related keywords (e.g. medical; covid; QR code; mask; hospital) and climate keywords (e.g. climate; power plant; global warming; COP26), we found 85,569 retweets contained the former and 54,454 retweets contained the latter, although some will constitute an overlap.

...jOHN STOSSEL

On the other side of the spectrum is John Stossel. Starting his career as a primetime TV host on ABC’s 20/20 segment, he sparked controversy for using child interviewees to push an anti-environmental stance. Stossel transitioned to Fox Business News from 2009-2016, after which his own production company became one of the top contractors for the Charles Koch Institute. The company secured over $1.5 million in Koch contracts from 2017-2019, in addition to nearly $500,000 of Koch donations to Stossel’s non-profit. He is currently suing Facebook for defamation after a fact checker debunked one of his posts, stating it contained a video with active climate disinformation. This has resulted in a reduction of ad revenue and traffic to his page. However, on Twitter Stossel received the highest average interaction per post among the 16 key accounts monitored. His 9 posts about COP26 drew an average of 905 interactions each - three times greater than the average (though this is likely due to his sparse posting relative to others, rather than any inherent quality of his content.) [twt pix]

On 1 November, as COP26 officially began in Glasgow, Stossel posted a “Paris Climate Fraud” video that amassed over 300,000 views on Twitter. Three days later, he tweeted a video of a panel presentation he hosted in 2019, organised by the polluter-funded and frequently fact checked Heartland Institute. It featured Patrick Michaels, who once guessed that around 40% of his research funding came from fossil fuels; David Legates, whose climate denial led him to be reassigned under the Trump administration; and Willie Soon, who in 2015 was outed by the New York Times for receiving over a million dollars from the fossil fuel industry to produce climate disinformation. This lineup of climate deniers was not new, and the video itself had already been fact checked by ClimateFeedback where it was rated to have “very low” credibility and said to use “imprecise language that misleads viewers about the scientific understanding of climate change”. However, since Twitter lacks a climate disinformation policy that would recognise and action fact checks, the clip could once again gain traction online. On 1 November, Stossel also posted a video to Facebook which has garnered over 900,000 views and frames nuclear energy as “the ONLY technology” which could help mitigate climate change. The clip once again repurposed old content which had already been fact-checked, featuring individuals who create and/or propagate climate disinformation regularly...

stossel has not slowed down with his climate disinformation efforts since COP26. On 30 November 2021, he posted a YouTube video attacking Poynter, the highly esteemed journalism institution that oversees the fact checking organisations used by Facebook (including ClimateFeedback). The transcript of the video was quickly picked up by right-wing and/or polluter-funded outlets like the Daily Signal, Heartland, TownHall and PatriotPost. In it, Stossel interviews other figures known for spreading anti-science misinformation: a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, as well as Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg who are covered in further detail below.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGERProducing 203 climate-focused tweets during COP26, Michael Shellenberger was a key influencer during the summit, garnering over 124,000 interactions for content attacking COP26 or the premise of climate change. On 28 October, before the summit had even begun, Shellenberger shared Bjorn Lomborg’s article in the Wall Street Journal which questioned the impacts of climate change and was retweeted a thousand times. He featured continually in our dataset throughout the event, often achieving some of the highest engagement figures in a given day. On November 11, as negotiations neared their climax, he tweeted a graphic entitled “Woke Religion: A Taxonomy” which was co-authored with academic Peter Boghossian and positions climate change alongside other contentious issues such as racism, gender identity, crime and mental illness. Under the ‘Myths’ column for climate are statements such as “The Earth’s climate was safer in the past”, “We can power world with renewables” and “Human civilization is unsustainable”, while ‘Supernatural Beliefs’ (defined as beyond scientific understanding or known laws of nature) include “Humans causing sixth mass extinction”, “Prosperity doesn’t depend on high energy use” and “Study of ‘tipping points’ is scientific”. In the same diagram, ‘Taboo Facts’ and ‘Taboo Speech’ (things which are supposedly

The taxonomy also implies that oil and gas companies, the Koch Brothers and “climate deniers” have been unfairly cast as villains in the climate debate, while actors like Greta Thunberg, climate scientists and UN officials are uncritically chosen to lead. Shellenberger’s taxonomy was liked over 6.5k times and retweeted over 2k times, including from a number of influential accounts across media and politics. Like others highlighted in this section, he has become central to so-called ‘anti-woke’ networks on social media, who in turn expose their audiences to such climate sceptic or actively misleading content. Posts like the one described above have been shared by figures such as journalist Glenn Greenwald (1.7m followers), former OANN correspondent and far-right activist Jack Posobiec (1.6m followers), Fox News host Bret Baier (1.3m followers) and contributor Brit Hume (1.2m followers), Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw (1.1m followers), conspiracy theorist and ‘alt-right’ agitator Mike Cernovich (847k followers), Spanish People’s Party politician Toni Cantó (425k followers), right-wing content mill PragerU (617k followers), and Sky News Australia host Rita Panahi (284k followers). The breadth and cumulative reach of these accounts is notable, as is their potential to influence public opinion at a transnational level. This further reinforces how a handful of individuals can serve as engines for a wider movement, providing content or lines of attack which are easily repurposed in different geographic contexts.

...BJORN LOMBORG Lomborg has cultivated a strong presence in both legacy and social media, most notably via his regular column in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and frequent platform in outlets across the globe including Fox News, The Daily Mail, the New York Post, Sky News Australia, talkRADIO and Forbes. One of Lomborg’s first columns for WSJ was fact checked by PolitiFact, but this did not prevent their editorial page editor Paul Gigot from interviewing him on Fox News, a clip which Lomborg then posted to his Facebook page. During COP26, an old video of Lomborg was repurposed by right-wing propaganda hub PragerU to attack electric vehicles, garnering millions of interactions on Facebook - this case study is documented fully in Policy Ask 6.

He also appeared in The Washington Post thanks to a column by Marc Thessein (itself fact checked), who is affiliated with a group funded partially by polluters and tobacco companies and has a history of platforming climate disinformation. While the fact-checks may have slowed Lomborg’s spread on Facebook, he still garnered over a thousand interactions for one post alone. Meanwhile on Twitter, where there were no parallel measures to curb reach, Lomborg neared 20,000 interactions for his 60 climate posts over the COP period. The Daily Mail also appeared as a top performing domain in our overall dataset, within which Lomborg’s COP26 op-ed was the second most shared link. Across the monitored timeframe, key amplifiers of Lomborg’s content included Fox News contributor Brit Hume (1.2m followers), talkRADIO host Julia Hartley-Brewer (367k followers), conservative Canadian YouTuber Lauren Chen (325k followers), Sky News Australia host Rita Panahi (284k followers), British MP and member of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group Steve Baker (152k followers), and prominent Polish climate denier Łukasz Warzecha (130k followers).

TONY HELLER A retired computer engineer turned video producer, Heller posted nearly 300 tweets to his nowsuspended account and garnered almost 30,000 interactions during COP26. Heller is commonly known by the pseudonym ‘Steven Goddard’ and formerly contributed to climate denial blog WattsUpWithThat - he has previously described global warming as “the biggest scientific fraud in history”. In addition to content on COVID-19 conspiracy theories, which led to his suspension from Twitter in mid-December 2021, Heller also pushed the debunked conspiracy that temperature records are being manipulated to justify climate action. He has been repeatedly fact-checked for such claims, including by ClimateFeedback and Politifact, but remained a key influencer online during the Glasgow summit. While Heller’s content has earned him temporary suspensions from YouTube and Twitter, previous bans were lifted and do not seem to have affected his general rhetoric - the most recent suspension from Twitter appears to be permanent, but came after he had amassed hundreds of thousands of interactions on topics including COVID-19 and climate change.

PATRICK MOORE Canadian activist Patrick Moore is another individual whose online reach has not been curbed by repeated fact-checks. He presents himself as a Greenpeace “Co-Founder”, although the organisation has strongly distanced itself from any former affiliation and Moore’s more recent stances on climate. He now oversees the CO2 Coalition. Moore self-describes as a ‘sensible environmentalist’, and achieves continually high engagement on Twitter in particular. A week before COP26 began he achieved nearly 45k likes and 16k retweets for one post, sharing a Sky News Australia segment in which the host condemned youth climate activists as “selfish, badly educated virtue-signalling little turds”. His most popular content tends to push back against ‘woke media’ who dismiss those sceptical of the climate crisis/emergency as ‘eco-traitors’. Similar to Shellenberger and Lomborg, Moore’s success is partially dependent on branding himself a pro-climate ‘liberal’, although his content is frequently debunked or rated false by entities like ClimateFeedback, The Tyee and PolitiFact. Despite such comprehensive fact-checks, Moore’s social media presence remains unfettered and high-traction. For example, over 6000 users liked his erroneous claim that COP26 was running on diesel fuel, with nearly 3000 retweets. An official fact-check by the COP Presidency team (commented under Moore’s post) received only 70 likes and less than 20 retweets - a stark reminder of the attention disinformation can gain in the face of verified sources. During COP26 alone, key amplifiers of Lomborg’s content included Jordan B. Peterson (2.4m followers), Rebel News journalist Ezra Levant (353k followers), and conservative Canadian politician Maxime Bernier (186k followers)

...these case studies are by no means exhaustive, but highlight a few key features of the ‘repeat offender’ cohort:

1) The network is mutually reinforcing, with many actors cross-referencing, sharing or making appearances in each other’s content. This creates an impression of consensus and ‘critical mass’ on social media, and confers false legitimacy on individuals in the wider media landscape.

2) Accounts are repeatedly fact-checked without any meaningful response from platforms. Many of the largest tech companies tout their partnership with ‘independent, third-party’ fact-checkers, certified via bodies like the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), to identify, review and take action on questionable content. As Facebook highlights on its website, this model is intended to combat viral misinformation, with a focus on false claims that are ‘timely or trending and important to the average person’. The company also states that ‘pages, groups, accounts and websites that repeatedly share misinformation will face some restrictions, including having their distribution reduced’, among other punitive actions. Our analysts found some instances where fact-checking labels had been applied to content, or where users were directed to more reliable content hubs and sources. However, beyond this lowest-tier measure there is little evidence of any enforcement against known disinformers, even during critical moments like a global climate summit or extreme weather event.

3) Repeat offenders have often spread mis- or disinformation on multiple topics. This is most clearly observed in the number of high-traction accounts sharing misleading claims on climate and COVID-19, but encompasses a wider range of issues - from anti-vaxx sentiment and genocide denial to conspiracies such as QAnon, the Great Reset and electoral fraud. This should provide an even greater incentive for platforms to act, since an effective response against such accounts could have a ‘force multiplier’ effect and mitigate harm in multiple areas

POLICY ASK 3: IMPROVE TRANSPARENCY AND DATA ACCESS FOR VETTED RESEARCHERS AND REGULATORS ON CLIMATE MISINFORMATION TRENDS, AS WELL AS THE ROLE PLAYED BY ALGORITHMIC AMPLIFICATION...

https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/deny-deceive-delay-documenting-and-responding-to-climate-disinformation-at-cop26-and-beyond-full/

june 2022

Deny, Deceive, Delay: Documenting and Responding to Climate Disinformation at COP26 and Beyond

Report authors: Jennie King, Lukasz Janulewicz, Francesca Arcostanzo

Contributing partners: CASM Technology, Conscious Advertising Network, Climate Nexus, Eco.Bot-Net, Friends of the Earth, Purpose, Reset Australia and Stop Funding Heat

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Glossary of Terms

• Part 1: Discourses of Delay

o Hypocrisy and Elitism

o Absolutionism

o Unreliability of Renewables

o Ineffective Electric Vehicles

• Part 2: Understanding the Network - A Structural Analysis of Accounts on Twitter

o Network Overview (Graphika analysis)

o Key Communities (Graphika analysis)

o Key Actors

• Part 3: A Policy Response to Climate Mis- and Disinformation

Policy Ask 1 - Implement a unified definition of climate mis- and disinformation within key institutions

(e.g. IPCC, UNFCCC) and reflect these criteria in tech company Community Standards or Terms of Service

• Definition

• Current actions by platforms

• Indicative examples of content

Policy Ask 2 - Enforce platform policies against ‘Repeat Offender’ accounts

• Repeat Offender Network(Graphika analysis)

• Case studies

o Peter Imanulesen

o John Stossel

o Michael Shellenberger

o Bjorn Lomborg

o Tony Heller

o Patrick Moore

• Key takeaways

Policy Ask 3 - Limit media exemption loopholes within legislation

• Case Study 1: Recommendation algorithms on Facebook (Global Witness analysis)

• Case Study 2: Labelling misleading content on Facebook (Media Matters analysis)

• Case Study 3: A comparison of climate sceptic actors and Facebook’s Climate Sc...

policy Ask 4 - Improve transparency on climate disinformation trends and the role played by algorithmic

amplification

• Most cited media outlet

o The Daily Mail

o The Guardian

o The Telegraph

o Watts Up With That (WWUT)

o The Wall Street Journal

• In-depth case study: Sky News Australia (ISD and Purpose analysis)

Policy Ask 5 - Strengthen platform labelling on ‘missing context’ and the re-posting of old or recycled

content

• Overview of the Ad Tech ecosystem (CAN analysis)

• Case study 1: ExxonMobil (Eco.Bot-Net analysis)

• Case study 2: American Petroleum Institute (Eco.Bot-Net analysis)

Policy Ask 6 - Restrict paid advertising and sponsored content from fossil fuel companies, known front

groups, and/or actors repeatedly found to spread disinformation around climate

• Case study 1: The Daily Mail during COP26

• Case study 2: PragerU opposition to EVs

Policy Ask 7 - Enable API image-based searched to support research on viral disinformation

• Case study 1: Private jets in Glasgow

• Case study 2: Attacks on Txai Surui (Avaaz analysis...

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...

JOHN STOSSEL On the other side of the spectrum is John Stossel. Starting his career as a primetime TV host on ABC’s 20/20 segment, he sparked controversy for using child interviewees to push an anti-environmental stance. Stossel transitioned to Fox Business News from 2009-2016, after which his own production company became one of the top contractors for the Charles Koch Institute. The company secured over $1.5 million in Koch contracts from 2017-2019, in addition to nearly $500,000 of Koch donations to Stossel’s non-profit. He is currently suing Facebook for defamation after a fact checker debunked one of his posts, stating it contained a video with active climate disinformation. This has resulted in a reduction of ad revenue and traffic to his page. However, on Twitter Stossel received the highest average interaction per post among the 16 key accounts monitored. His 9 posts about COP26 drew an average of 905 interactions each - three times greater than the average (though this is likely due to his sparse posting relative to others, rather than any inherent quality of his content.)

On 1 November, as COP26 officially began in Glasgow, Stossel posted a “Paris Climate Fraud” video that amassed over 300,000 views on Twitter. Three days later, he tweeted a video of a panel presentation he hosted in 2019, organised by the polluter-funded and frequently fact checked Heartland Institute. It featuredPatrick Michaels, who once guessed that around 40% of his research funding came from fossil fuels;David Legates, whose climate denial led him to be reassigned under the Trump administration; and Willie Soon, who in 2015 was outed by the New York Times for receiving over a million dollars from the fossil fuel industry to produce climate disinformation. This lineup of climate deniers was not new, and the video itself had already been fact checked by ClimateFeedback where it was rated to have “very low” credibility and said to use “imprecise language that misleads viewers about the scientific understanding of climate change”. However, since Twitter lacks a climate disinformation policy that would recognise and action fact checks, the clip could once again gain traction online. On 1 November, Stossel also posted a video to Facebook which has garnered over 900,000 views and frames nuclear energy as “the ONLY technology” which could help mitigate climate change. The clip once again repurposed old content which had already been fact-checked, featuring individuals who create and/or propagate climate disinformation regularly.

Stossel has not slowed down with his climate disinformation efforts since COP26. On 30 November 2021, he posted aYouTube video attacking Poynter, the highly esteemed journalism institution that oversees the fact checking organisations used by Facebook (including ClimateFeedback). The transcript of the video was quickly picked up by right-wing and/or polluter-funded outlets like the Daily Signal, Heartland, TownHall and PatriotPost. In it, Stossel interviews other figures known for spreading anti-science misinformation: a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, as well as Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg who are covered in further detail below.

MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER

Producing 203 climate-focused tweets duringCOP26, Michael Shellenberger was a key influencer during the summit,

garnering over 124,000 interactions for content attacking COP26 or the premise of climate change p 67-8

On 28 October, before the summit had even begun, Shellenberger shared Bjorn Lomborg’s article

in the Wall Street Journal which questioned the impacts of climate change and was retweeted

a thousand times. He featured continually in our dataset throughout the event, often achieving

some of the highest engagement figures in a given day. On November 11, as negotiations neared

their climax, he tweeted a graphic entitled “Woke Religion: A Taxonomy” which was co-authored

with academic Peter Boghossian and positions climate change alongside other contentious issues

such as racism, gender identity, crime and mental illness. Under the ‘Myths’ column for climate

are statements such as “The Earth’s climate was safer in the past”, “We can power world with

renewables” and “Human civilization is unsustainable”, while ‘Supernatural Beliefs’ (defined as

beyond scientific understanding or known laws of nature) include “Humans causing sixth mass

extinction”, “Prosperity doesn’t depend on high energy use” and “Study of ‘tipping points’ is

scientific”. In the same diagram, ‘Taboo Facts’ and ‘Taboo Speech’ (things which are supposedly

censored from mainstream debate) encompass “Deaths from natural disasters have declined 90% since 1900”, “Renewables are dirty to produce and distribute”, “Fracking reduces carbon emissions” and “Economic development outweighs impact of climate change”. The taxonomy also implies that oil and gas companies, the Koch Brothers and “climate deniers” have been unfairly cast as villains in the climate debate, while actors like Greta Thunberg, climate scientists and UN officials are uncritically chosen to lead....

Page 67

DENY, DECEIVE, DELAY Documenting and Responding to Climate Disinformation at COP26 and Beyond

Shellenberger’s taxonomy was liked over 6.5k times and retweeted over 2k times, including

from a number of influential accounts across media and politics. Like others highlighted in this

section, he has become central to so-called ‘anti-woke’ networks on social media, who in turn

expose their audiences to such climate sceptic or actively misleading content. Posts like the one

described above have been shared by figures such as journalist Glenn Greenwald (1.7m followers),

former OANN correspondent and far-right activist Jack Posobiec (1.6m followers), Fox News host

Bret Baier (1.3m followers) and contributor Brit Hume (1.2m followers), Republican Congressman

Dan Crenshaw (1.1m followers), conspiracy theorist and ‘alt-right’ agitator Mike Cernovich (847k

followers), Spanish People’s Party politician Toni Cantó (425k followers), right-wing content mill

PragerU (617k followers), and Sky News Australia host Rita Panahi (284k followers). The breadth

and cumulative reach of these accounts is notable, as is their potential to influence public opinion

at a transnational level. This further reinforces how a handful of individuals can serve as engines

for a wider movement, providing content or lines of attack which are easily repurposed in different

geographic contexts.

DENY, DECEIVE, DELAY Documenting and Responding to Climate Disinformation at COP26 and Beyond

BJORN LOMBORG

Lomborg has cultivated a strong presence in both legacy and social media, most notably via his regular column in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and frequent platform in outlets across the globe including Fox News, The Daily Mail, the New York Post, Sky News Australia, talkRADIO and Forbes. One of Lomborg’s first columns for WSJ was fact checked by PolitiFact, but this did not prevent their editorial page editor Paul Gigot from interviewing him on Fox News, a clip which Lomborg then posted to his Facebook page. During COP26, an old video of Lomborg was repurposed by right-wing propaganda hub PragerU to attack electric vehicles, garnering millions of interactions on Facebook - this case study is documented fully in Policy Ask 6. He also appeared in The Washington Post thanks to a column by Marc Thessein (itself fact checked), who is affiliated with a group funded partially by polluters and tobacco companies and has a history of platforming climate disinformation. While the fact-checks may have slowed Lomborg’s spread on Facebook, he still garnered over a thousand interactions for one post alone. Meanwhile on Twitter, where there were no parallel measures to curb reach, Lomborg neared 20,000 interactions for his 60 climate posts over the COP period. The Daily Mail also appeared as a top performing domain in our overall dataset, within which Lomborg’s COP26 op-ed was the second most shared link. Across the monitored timeframe, key amplifiers of Lomborg’s content included Fox News contributor Brit Hume (1.2m followers), talkRADIO host Julia Hartley-Brewer (367k followers), conservative Canadian YouTuber Lauren Chen (325k followers), Sky News Australia host Rita Panahi (284k followers), British MP and member of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group Steve Baker (152k followers), and prominent Polish climate denier Łukasz Warzecha (130k followers).

TONY HELLER A retired computer engineer turned video producer, Heller posted nearly 300 tweets to his nowsuspended account and garnered almost 30,000 interactions during COP26. Heller is commonly known by the pseudonym ‘Steven Goddard’ and formerly contributed to climate denial blog WattsUpWithThat - he has previously described global warming as “the biggest scientific fraud in history”. In addition to content on COVID-19 conspiracy theories, which led to his suspension from Twitter in mid-December 2021, Heller also pushed the debunked conspiracy that temperature records are being manipulated to justify climate action. He has been repeatedly fact-checked for such claims, including by ClimateFeedback and Politifact, but remained a key influencer online during the Glasgow summit. While Heller’s content has earned him temporary suspensions from YouTube and Twitter, previous bans were lifted and do not seem to have affected his general rhetoric - the most recent suspension from Twitter appears to be permanent, but came after he had amassed hundreds of thousands of interactions on topics including COVID-19 and climate change.

PATRICK MOORE Canadian activist Patrick Moore is another individual whose online reach has not been curbed by repeated fact-checks. He presents himself as a Greenpeace “Co-Founder”, although the organisation has strongly distanced itself from any former affiliation and Moore’s more recent stances on climate. He now oversees the CO2 Coalition. Moore self-describes as a ‘sensible environmentalist’, and achieves continually high engagement on Twitter in particular. A week before COP26 began he achieved nearly 45k likes and 16k retweets for one post, sharing a Sky News Australia segment in which the host condemned youth climate activists as “selfish, badly educated virtue-signalling little turds”. His most popular content tends to push back against ‘woke media’ who dismiss those sceptical of the climate crisis/emergency as ‘eco-traitors’. Similar to Shellenberger and Lomborg, Moore’s success is partially dependent on branding himself a pro-climate ‘liberal’, although his content is frequently debunked or rated false by entities like ClimateFeedback, The Tyee and PolitiFact. Despite such comprehensive fact-checks, Moore’s social media presence remains unfettered and high-traction. For example, over 6000 users liked his erroneous claim that COP26 was running on diesel fuel, with nearly 3000 retweets. An official fact-check by the COP Presidency team (commented under Moore’s post) received only 70 likes and less than 20 retweets - a stark reminder of the attention disinformation can gain in the face of verified sources. During COP26 alone, key amplifiers of Lomborg’s content included Jordan B. Peterson (2.4m followers), Rebel News journalist Ezra Levant (353k followers), and conservative Canadian politician Maxime Bernier (186k followers).

These case studies are by no means exhaustive, but highlight a few key features of the ‘repeat offender’ cohort: 1) The network is mutually reinforcing, with many actors cross-referencing, sharing or making appearances in each other’s content. This creates an impression of consensus and ‘critical mass’ on social media, and confers false legitimacy on individuals in the wider media landscape. 2) Accounts are repeatedly fact-checked without any meaningful response from platforms. Many of the largest tech companies tout their partnership with ‘independent, third-party’ fact-checkers, certified via bodies like the International Fact Checking Network (IFCN), to identify, review and take action on questionable content. As Facebook highlights on its website, this model is intended to combat viral misinformation, with a focus on false claims that are ‘timely or trending and important to the average person’. The company also states that ‘pages, groups, accounts and websites that repeatedly share misinformation will face some restrictions, including having their distribution reduced’, among other punitive actions. Our analysts found some instances where fact-checking labels had been applied to content, or where users were directed to more reliable content hubs and sources. However, beyond this lowest-tier measure there is little evidence of any enforcement against known disinformers, even during critical moments like a global climate summit or extreme weather event. 3) Repeat offenders have often spread mis- or disinformation on multiple topics. This is most clearly observed in the number of high-traction accounts sharing misleading claims on climate and COVID-19, but encompasses a wider range of issues - from anti-vaxx sentiment and genocide denial to conspiracies such as QAnon, the Great Reset and electoral fraud. This should provide an even greater incentive for platforms to act, since an effective response against such accounts could have a ‘force multiplier’ effect and mitigate harm in multiple areas.