“The thing to remember is that drought is a very complex phenomenon. For one, drought is not just precipitation. Drought is also soil moisture and streamflow. This is an important distinction, because it means that other processes that may be affected by climate change (e.g., evaporation) can play a role in increasing drought, even if precipitation does not change.”
“The decreases have accelerated since the 1990s and have been part of a consistent suite of changes in the Arctic, including rising atmospheric temperatures, melting land ice, thawing permafrost, longer growing seasons, increased coastal erosion, and warming oceans. Overall, it has been a consistent picture solidly in line with the expectations of the warming climate predicted from increases in greenhouse gases. In particular, modeled sea ice predictions showed marked Arctic sea ice decreases, and the actual decreases even exceeded what the models predicted.”
“The examples are too many to count. Many of those videos and channels remain online today, and they all went under the radar of YouTube’s policies, especially in non-English speaking countries and the Global South. We are glad that the company has made some moves to try to address this problem lately, but based on what we see daily on the platform, we think these efforts are not working“
Google announced that any content, including YouTube videos, that ‘contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change’ would not be able to earn revenue from Google ads. Our quick experiment shows that the policy is not systematically applied.
Thiessen repeated a large number of Lomborg’s claims in his article without fact-checking or verifying these claims by consulting with scientists who actually have expertise on these topics. Unlike scientists, Lomborg writes books and social media posts about a variety of topics, but he does not submit scientific research on these topics to peer-reviewed journals. If Thiessen lacks the scientific knowledge to challenge Lomborg’s claims, he could have done what professional journalists do: reach out to experts to gain insight from them.
The Earth’s climate has been quite stable over the past 11,000 years, playing an important role in the development of human civilisation. Prior to that, the Earth experienced an ice age lasting for tens of thousands of years. The global average temperature was around 4C cooler during the last ice age than it is today. There is a real risk that, if emissions continue to rise, the world warms more this century than it did between the middle of the last ice age 20,000 years ago and today.
During their interviews, the scientists were pressed for judgments on whether the rating we applied was appropriate. Clips from these interviews were then used in Stossel’s new video to attempt to discredit our rating. However, both Zeke Hausfather and Stefan Doerr subsequently discussed the video with us and both agree the rating was appropriate—a fact that Stossel noted in his video.
the international conversation on tree plantings as a solution to reducing CO2 emissions in the atmosphere and mitigating the rise in global surface temperature is mixed, with judgments ranging from helpful to harmful. For example, an article in The Guardian says tree planting “has mind-blowing potential” to tackle climate change, whereas an article in Slate says it won’t stop climate change and may “do more harm than good.”
Instead of presenting life cycle analyses for solar and wind generation or quantifying electric vehicle emissions that could inform viewers, Planet of the Humans misleads with broad claims that are not supported by scientific evidence. Unfortunately, these omissions and inaccuracies substantially shape the conclusions the film presents to its audience.
This panel will address these topics with experts coming from some of the leading experiences in the field that encompasses the communication of climate change for public opinion at large, the use of scientific information in the media, the role of the future and young generations in the climate debate.
