Climate change misinformation spreads online
carbonbrief.org
carbonbrief.org
Many of us from a educated or stem background mistakenly think people get (large amounts of) information, digest it and then make the socially correct decision. But that isn't what happens. Most people make the decision that suits them personally, they do it within about 5 seconds of realizing a decision is necessary (long before they can have been given any real information). People then use any justification that fits the decision they already made in order to defend that decision.
I actually think most climate misinformation is a result of people's climate denial, not the other way around. People don't want to give up carbon so they spread useful BS that helped them justify keeping emissions. They do this because it makes them feel better about a decision they know has massive negative consequences, just like people share cat pictures: they are not sharing a picture of a cat they actually know, they're sharing "feels". "Feels" in the form of cat pictures spread, so do "feels" in the form of political humour or climate misinformation or vaccine denialism.
It is "feels" that have beaten facts, not lies. That's why more facts are not solving this issue. Climate misinformation is just a small subset of the many examples of this.
What we need now isn't more information or less mis-information (aka moderation of social media). It's celebrities endorsing emissions cuts. A Kardashian driving a Tesla or a photo of a single child that died from a climate driven disaster will convince more people to vote green than 1001 research papers or carefully structured arguments or expert interviews or statistics.
I don't personally see over-alarmist info as being as prevalent or as effective as denialist info, in large part because simply prudently-alarmist info in line with scientific predictions has enough trouble getting traction, this was not the way to rationalize an exclusion of that topic from the article.
It's not even so much that these countries were unprepared - can't say I was expecting a pandemic like that one to happen. So I certainly didn't push, directly or indirectly, my elected representatives to prepare for one. It's the ruthless behavior of people ignoring warnings, casually carrying on as usual until it was too late. Governments had to wave the proverbial stick (read: fines) to get people to act responsibly. At least in France and, I believe, Italy.
So I lost much hope: if we couldn't react in time for COVID-19, we won't react in time for Global Warming. But I like to think of myself as an optimist: maybe COVID-19 could be the warning we need to take Global Warming seriously.
And then here we are. Now COVID-19 is more or less a known quantity, we know better how it spreads, how avoid it, its complications, etc. Masks and ventilators are aplenty. We found some medicines that help. We are better armed to deal with it in hospitals.
So we should be better off? Nope, we are all the way at the bottom of the pit. UK. Sweden. Brazil. Texas. And then Facebook. Twitter. It's getting worse, and it's getting worse faster. We, humans, are doubling down on killing ourselves.
So I'll keep wearing a mask, and traveling mostly by train/subway. But I don't have much hope.