New Scientist - USA (2021-11-20)

20 November 2021 | New Scientist | 25

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The columnist

Global climate action

must be just, says

Graham Lawton p26

Aperture

Striking photos cross

the fine line between

ocean and air p28

Letters

How to solve the

growing problem

of space debris p30

Culture

Take a trip through

the world of animal

intoxication p32

Culture columnist

Jacob Aron prepares

an alien world for

colonisation p34

T

HERE is a kind of climate
pollution that we can’t see
clearly. It isn’t in our rivers,
lands or skies, it is in our minds.
When climate disinformation
goes unchecked, it spreads
like wildfire, undermining the
existence of climate change
and the need for urgent action.
Like the biosphere that sustains
us, the health of our information
ecosystems is vital to our survival.
As an artist, I feel a responsibility
to create new ways of seeing the
disinformation that has come
to define the age of fake news.
Social media sites are honed
to grab our attention. Using
sophisticated algorithms, the
corporations behind them decide
what billions of people see around
the world, dictated by what keeps
you hooked, but also by what the
companies paying social media
sites choose to put in front of you.
Powerful corporate actors
deploy clever influence campaigns
via ads targeted at specific users
based on what social media firms
know about those people. Major
oil and gas companies have spent
billions of dollars over the years
persuading consumers about
their green credentials, when only
1 per cent of their expenditure
in 2019 was on renewable energy.
This is known as corporate
greenwashing. Still, fossil fuel
firms maintain that their climate
policies are “responsible” and
“in line with the science”.
To expose the scale of corporate
greenwashing online, I was part
MIof a team that recently launched
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Eco-Bot.Net. Co-created with

artist Rob “3D” Del Naja of the

band Massive Attack and Dale

Vince, a green entrepreneur,

Eco-Bot.Net’s AI-powered website

ran throughout the COP26 climate

summit, exposing climate change

misinformation by releasing a

series of data drops for heavily

polluting sectors, including

energy, agribusiness and aviation.

Academic definitions of climate

disinformation and greenwashing

were used to unearth posts

across Facebook, Instagram

and Twitter and visualise them

on our website. Eco-Bot.Net then

flagged greenwashing ads and

posts on the original social media

site with a public health warning.

By digging into our data,

journalists have already revealed

that companies are targeting

specific demographics in order

to influence public perceptions

about climate change – and even

alter government policy.

One data drop focused on the

100 biggest fossil fuel producers,

companies that have been the

source of 71 per cent of global

carbon emissions. It found

that 16 of these companies ran

1705 greenwashing and climate

misinformation ads globally on

Facebook and Instagram this year.

In total, they spent more than

£4 million creating influence

campaigns that generated up

to 155 million impressions.

Social media companies could

end most of the harms from

climate disinformation on their

platforms if they wanted to.

Flagging systems were swiftly

introduced to warn users of posts

containing disinformation about

covid-19. The scientific consensus

on human-caused global warming

has been resolute for decades,

so why can’t a similar flagging

system be implemented for

related disinformation?

It is true that Twitter and

Facebook have both introduced

climate science information hubs,

but these are little more than

PR exercises that fail to directly

tackle climate disinformation

on any kind of scale.

This epidemic of climate change

disinformation on social media

is eroding collective ideas of

truth. The surrealist painter René

Magritte saw the purpose of art

as one that attempts to “see what

is hidden by what we see”. In this

post-truth age of disinformation,

we hope that the public, the press

and policy-makers will be able to

use our data findings to see what

is hidden by what we see online.

For the first time, we can witness

the endemic scale of corporate

greenwashing. The era of climate

denial and delay is largely over –

except, as Eco-Bot.Net has

revealed, on social media. ❚

Toxic information

Misinformation about climate change is polluting social media.

That’s why we have built an AI to try to expose and stop it, says Bill Posters

Bill Posters is

an artist and

disinformation

researcher