YouTube Makes Over $13 million off Climate Change Denial

Streaming Platform YouTube said they analysed over 12,000 videos across 96 channels using an AI model crafted specifically to be able to distinguish between reasonable scepticism and false information.

In the past, most climate change deniers would write off climate change as a hoax or a scam, however many are now shifting to a different approach, which attempts to undermine climate science, cast doubt on climate solutions and even claim global warming will be harmless or even beneficial.

The AI distinguished the old approach and the new approach between "old denial" and "new denial", with the latter making up 70 per cent of all climate change denial claims on YouTube.

As a result of this change in tactics, YouTube ads generate millions of dollars from advertising on channels that make these false claims about climate change. The company is making up to $13.4 million a year from ads on the channels that the report analysed, CCDH said.

According to Google's policy, videos promoting false claims that global warming is not real or that it is not caused by burning fossil fuels are banned from generating ad revenue.

A YouTube spokesperson told CNN: "Debate or discussions of climate change topics, including around public policy or research, is allowed."

The spokesperson added: "However, when content crosses the line to climate change denial, we stop showing ads on those videos."

The report found that last year, 70 per cent of climate change denial content on the channels that were analysed focused on attacking climate change solutions as unworkable, portraying global warming as harmless, and casting climate science as unreliable.

The shift in tactics of climate change denial could also help creators get around YouTube's policy banning them from making money on climate change denial content, the report suggests.

Imran Ahmed, chief executive of CCDH, said: "The people that we've been looking at, they've gone from saying climate change isn't happening to now saying, 'Hey, climate change is happening but there is no hope. There are no solutions'."

He added: "This new climate denial is no less insidious... and it could hold enormous influence over public opinion on climate action for decades to come."

Ahmed called on Google to deal with "new denial" content, saying: "We're asking Google to extend their ban on monetization and amplification of 'old denial' content to include 'new denial' as well," adding that other social media companies should also take note of the report's findings.

This could be particularly worrying due to YouTube's demographic consisting of mostly young people aged between 13 to 17 years old, as analysed in a December survey from Pew Research Center.

Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the narrative shift in climate change denial, said the findings were "disturbing".

He describes these new misinformation strategies as the "five Ds of inactivism: deflection, delay, division, despair and doomism".

He told CNN: "It is extremely unlikely that this is the result of organic social media activity."

The leading climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania added: "It suggests that bad actors have made a concerted effort to weaponise social media in a way that is especially targeted toward young people, recognising that they are the greatest threat to the fossil fuel industry status quo, as evidenced by the tremendous impact of the youth climate movement."

By Kaja Traczyk

Kaja Traczyk is a reporter for the International Business Times UK and a Journalism Undergraduate with experience in news writing, reporting, and researching.