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CREATIVITY

Bury climate denier BS in scientific facts with this new Twitter tool

Protect Our Winters is using Twitter and Slack to enlist your help to combat misinformation.

BY Jeff Beer1 minute read

As we all know, Twitter can be an absolute cesspool. And that really cranks up when it comes to an issue like climate change.

With the UN Climate Summit this week and the Global Climate Strike last Friday, the real climate denying tinfoil hat brigade has unfortunately been on high alert. This is a problem, not least because, for example, a University of California study published in August found that climate deniers get 49% more visibility in the media and online compared with actual scientists. Only 3% of the content regarding climate change on Twitter is from an expert scientific source, according to 2018 research by Oxford University.

To contrast and combat the spread of climate misinformation, the Canadian division of Boulder, Colorado-based climate advocacy organization Protect Our Winters has created a tool that allows people to respond actively to climate deniers with scientific facts.

Created by agency Sid Lee, The Fact Avalanche tracks false climate claims, then alerts participants by email or SMS to respond en masse with ready-made climate facts provided by universities and other partners, including the University of Waterloo’s Interdisciplinary Centre on Climate Change.

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https://youtu.be/IuCbNyiejGU

For companies looking to get involved, users are also able to add the tool’s notifications to their Slack channel, so you can combat climate deniers in between conference calls and that final warning about clearing out the work kitchen fridge.

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