Climate Change Denialists Flood Twitter With Bot Tweets

[Perknose]

Color me surprised that these troglodytes use scumbag tactics to promote their denial! I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you!

Revealed: quarter of all tweets about climate crisis produced by bots

"An analysis of millions of tweets from around the period when Donald Trump announced the US would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement found that bots tended to applaud the president for his actions and spread misinformation about the science.

The study of Twitter bots and climate was undertaken by Brown University and has yet to be published. Bots are a type of software that can be directed to autonomously tweet, retweet, like or direct message on Twitter, under the guise of a human-fronted account.

“These findings suggest a substantial impact of mechanized bots in amplifying denialist messages about climate change, including support for Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement,” states the draft study, seen by the Guardian.

On an average day during the period studied, 25% of all tweets about the climate crisis came from bots. This proportion was higher in certain topics – bots were responsible for 38% of tweets about “fake science” and 28% of all tweets about the petroleum giant Exxon.

Conversely, tweets that could be categorized as online activism to support action on the climate crisis featured very few bots, at about 5% prevalence. The findings “suggest that bots are not just prevalent, but disproportionately so in topics that were supportive of Trump’s announcement or skeptical of climate science and action”, the analysis states."

 

[Greenman]

I'm looking forward to the day that twitter is entirely bots.

 

[K1052]

Neither FB or Twitter wants to get rid of the fake accounts because it inflates their user base and other metrics they use to sell ads. The day advertisers decide they're both full of shit, which they are, will be when it stops.

FB has uh problems beyond that since the company is essentially in the pocket of people who have ulterior political motives for keeping it this way.

 

[Dulanic]

I look forward to the day when people don't get their news on facebook or twitter... oh wait nm, we're doomed.

 

[thraashman]

I'm looking forward to the day that twitter is entirely bots.

Sometimes I think that might honestly be an improvement.

 

[Blackjack200]

Anyone that uses Twitter regularly knows that hand wringing over this stuff is incredibly silly. There are tons of bot accounts out there tweeting away into the ether and most of it is never seen by real people. They're just grifters or wanna-be grifters that are trying to game algorithms. It's like if climate change denial grifters started a spam campaign and sent millions of emails to whatever marketing lists you can get on the dark web these days. If you could somehow measure that volume and breathlessly say "XX percent of all email traffic was climate change denial bot emails!", would that be any kind of real measurement of their influence?

The Guardian article makes specific reference to two accounts: @sh_irredeemable and @petefrt. The second account has since been suspended by Twitter, but I checked the first account and it has about 16k followers and very low engagement. I strongly suspect that most of those 16k followers are bots themselves. To suggest that that account is influential is laughable. The "Bernie Bro" leftist Twitter accounts that people love to complain about have about 10x that following with huge engagement numbers, and I wouldn't consider them to be influential in a broad sense. Maybe in the narrow slice of Twitter that's focused on US or leftist politics.

Also, the study that The Guardian is referencing isn't even available yet.

 

[ShookKnight]

Anti-climate deniers are cuckolds.

They push the agenda of corporations and businesses... because... why? Because they love to watch other men rail and ruin the most important things in their lives.

Cucks. LOL!! Sad cucks!

 

[sandorski]

Bots are cheap and never question.

 

[Jaskalas]

I bet these bots do a lot more than one topic. It is an example of how pervasive campaigning is on social media.

 

[ivwshane]

Just more reasons why social media is garbage.

 

[JEDIYoda]

In a sense could you not call these forums a form of social media?

 

[ivwshane]

In a sense could you not call these forums a form of social media?

They are but the big difference is the level of interaction and the limited ability of misinformation to be casually passed on.

 

[SP33Demon]

So it's based on a study that hasn't come out yet? And were they... Russian bots, Trump bots, or Chinese bots? Of all the things to get mad about, congrats "Guardian", you just made another hair go gray on Perk's head. Shame on them. State-funded agitprop irritates me, they always have an agenda - just remember that.

 

[JEDIYoda]

So it's based on a study that hasn't come out yet? And were they... Russian bots, Trump bots, or Chinese bots? Of all the things to get mad about, congrats "Guardian", you just made another hair go gray on Perk's head. Shame on them. State-funded agitprop irritates me, they always have an agenda - just remember that.

I see no reason for you to get all TRIGGERED! Just because the study has not come out yet does not negate the findings!!

 

[imported_tajmahal]

Well there's no way i can call myself a climate denier since i don't think there's any doubt that man made emissions and land uses contribute to climate change, but here's an interesting article by Dr. Curry

Plausible scenarios for climate change: 2020-2050 - Climate Etc.

by Judith Curry A range of scenarios for global mean surface temperature change between 2020 and 2050, derived using a semi-empirical approach. All three modes of natural climate variability – volcanoes, solar and internal variability – are expected to act … Continue reading →

judithcurry.com

"Conclusions

Three main conclusions:

• We are starting to narrow the uncertainty in the amount of warming from emissions that we can expect out to 2050
• All three modes of natural variability – solar, volcanoes, internal variability – are expected to trend cool over the next 3 decades
• Depending on the relative magnitudes of emissions driven warming versus natural variability, decades with no warming or even cooling are more or less plausible.

If you prefer your scenarios on the high side, you can include scenarios with RCP7.0 and TCRE=2.4oC, but these values don’t change the fundamental narrative presented here. You can also add 1.2oC to the values in Table 6, to make the numbers look higher. But if you want plausible scenarios, look to my Table 6, which I think bounds the range of plausible outcomes for global mean surface temperature from 2020-2050."

 

[shortylickens]

Bots are cheap and never question.

Theres a joke here about Trump voters but I am too drunk to make it work.

 

[nakedfrog]

I can't wait until the election is over and it goes away again.

 

[brycejones]

I can't wait until the election is over and it goes away again.

IF Trump wins it will take about a month. if the Democrat wins it will take about 3 seconds.

 

[dphantom]

I'm looking forward to the day that twitter is entirely bots.

it isn't now?

 

[Jaskalas]

• Depending on the relative magnitudes of emissions driven warming versus natural variability, decades with no warming or even cooling are more or less plausible.

Ahahahahahaha.....
*cough

What propaganda Curry sells, trying to get you to cling onto the next pause. Before the following Super Nino obliterates the temperature record and establishes yet another new "normal". The ocean is absorbing much of the exess energy from our emissions. Every so often it shares a small portion with us. But make no mistake of the severity of this.

We need to stop it sooner rather than later. The time for denial is past.

 

[imported_tajmahal]

Ahahahahahaha.....
*cough

What propaganda Curry sells, trying to get you to cling onto the next pause. Before the following Super Nino obliterates the temperature record and establishes yet another new "normal". The ocean is absorbing much of the exess energy from our emissions. Every so often it shares a small portion with us. But make no mistake of the severity of this.

We need to stop it sooner rather than later. The time for denial is past.

Thanks for the link, just another opportunity to show i'm consistently correct.

 

[thraashman]

Thanks for the link, just another opportunity to show i'm consistently correct.

You and reality have vastly different definitions of the word "correct".

 

[Jaskalas]

Thanks for the link, just another opportunity to show i'm consistently correct.

You look at that graph, and buy into some propagandist selling you on "cooling"?

 

[Meghan54]

Well there's no way i can call myself a climate denier since i don't think there's any doubt that man made emissions and land uses contribute to climate change, but here's an interesting article by Dr. Curry

Plausible scenarios for climate change: 2020-2050 - Climate Etc.

by Judith Curry A range of scenarios for global mean surface temperature change between 2020 and 2050, derived using a semi-empirical approach. All three modes of natural climate variability – volcanoes, solar and internal variability – are expected to act … Continue reading →

judithcurry.com

"Conclusions

Three main conclusions:

• We are starting to narrow the uncertainty in the amount of warming from emissions that we can expect out to 2050
• All three modes of natural variability – solar, volcanoes, internal variability – are expected to trend cool over the next 3 decades
• Depending on the relative magnitudes of emissions driven warming versus natural variability, decades with no warming or even cooling are more or less plausible.

If you prefer your scenarios on the high side, you can include scenarios with RCP7.0 and TCRE=2.4oC, but these values don’t change the fundamental narrative presented here. You can also add 1.2oC to the values in Table 6, to make the numbers look higher. But if you want plausible scenarios, look to my Table 6, which I think bounds the range of plausible outcomes for global mean surface temperature from 2020-2050."

Fuck "Dr. Curry" and her assertions. Her whole premise is this: We cannot know PRECISELY how much climate change will occur in the future nor how much man has contributed to the change, so just deny/ignore everything. Fuck her and her absurd conclusions.

Of course, her "conclusions" do mirror some beliefs conservatives have in that since we cannot fix (insert social problem here) immediately and completely in one fell swoop, why bother with incremental attempts to fix the problem. Just stupidly ignorant.

 

[Meghan54]

But I guess the upside is I no longer have to winterize any of my outdoor power equipment nor my boat since I've been fishing all winter (unusual.....typically only a day or two the entire winter) and have been having to cut my "grass" (more like clover and weeds that have gained a foothold on the yard now that the actual grass has gone dormant) twice a month all winter. This year I've cut in December once, twice in January, twice in February and it needs it next week.

Neighbor's tulip tree, more correctly a Japanese Magnolia I understand, has been in full bloom all February. Goldfinches are already migrating through, about a month earlier than the last few years.