![“Machine learning holds a key to fighting [climate] miscommunication” - Stuck with that?](https://news7g.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/John-Cook-Climate-Denial-780x470.png)
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
After training computers to look for “misinformation” about climate online, John Cook was surprised that people didn’t trust the proposed solutions.
Climate change: How machine learning holds the key to fighting misinformation
John Cook
Postdoctoral Researcher, Monash . Climate Change Communication Research Center“A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get in.”
This Quotes come in many forms. In some variations, the quote involves footwear. In other cases, the truth is struggling to get its pants.
Regardless of the details, sentiment implies a key challenge of misinformation. By the time the meticulous fact-checking work had been completed and the correction had been made public, misinformation had spread far and wide and achieved all sorts of heinous things.
Thus, disinformation researchers witty talk about “fact-checking holy grail”- automatically detects and debugs misinformation in a single drop. Machine learning offers the potential for both speed and scale – the ability to identify misinformation as soon as it comes online, and the technical capacity to deliver solutions at the scale needed to fit the scale. scale of the problem.
But the holy grail quest faces a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Misinformation develops and sprouts new forms. How can you spot a legend before you know what it is or what form it will take?
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Once we trained our machines to detect and classify various misinformation claims, we came up with our model of 20 years of climate misinformation – more than 250,000 articles from 20 popular websites and 33 blogs by conservative thinkers. This is the largest content analysis to date of climate misinformation, helping to build a two-decade history of climate misinformation.
The result was not what I expected at all.
The erosion of public trust in climate scientists
During the past 15 years, I have Exposing misinformation about climate science – myths of the types “it doesn’t happen”, “it is not us”, or “it is not bad”.
It turns out that these are the least common forms of climate misinformation. Instead, the biggest type of misinformation about climate are attacks on scientists and on climate science itself.
Climate misinformation is not about offering its own alternative explanation of what is happening to our climate. Instead, it focuses on casting doubt on the integrity of climate science and eroding public trust in climate scientists.
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But that’s not where misinformation is concentrated – the focus is on attacking scientists and science itself. There is little research to understand and combat this type of misinformation, let alone public engagement and education campaigns to combat their damage.
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John Cook, we don’t need to offer an alternative explanation. We show it’s enough The alarm model of global climate change is wrong.
Cook has a fascinating track record when it comes to climate communication, having produced some interesting visual communication works in his day (see right and below).
But one question he doesn’t ask is, is there any good reason for people to be skeptical?
How many predictions of impending disaster have failed? Instead, how many “cheaper than coal” renewable energy programs have increased electricity bills? Why is energy so expensive in places like California and Europe, if renewables are the cheapest option? Why do greens expect people to continue to believe them, when so much of what they say is just wrong?
Climate communication may just be a move so far.
Ultimately, renewable energy advocates must deliver value. If they can’t deliver, all the “misinformation” AI bots in the world won’t save their precious green revolution, from the spontaneous uprising of ordinary people who are bored. fed up of politicians draining their hard earned tax dollars on useless green. boondoggles pose a painful cost to ordinary people.
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