Identifying and rooting out climate change denial
- The contributor of this op-ed is a member of WikiProject Climate change and has been a Wikipedian for over eight years.
On November 19 last year, BBC News published an investigation into climate denial on non-English Wikipedias.[2] It showed Wikipedia is rife with climate myths. BBC journalist and climate disinformation specialist Marco Silva described the denial as 'alive'. Classical climate denial—denying warming occurs, or denying humans are the primary cause—has been on the wane for a while.[3] Within the English Wikipedia, climate denial has become exceedingly rare. The last time the climate change discretionary sanctions were used was in 2019, and that was against somebody exaggerating the dangers of climate change, as if the reality isn't scary enough!
Is it true that it's still alive and kicking within Wikipedia? My hypothesis is that most of these non-English articles are the ruins of a period in which climate denial flourished. Climate denial is dead, but still rotting.
- ^ @MarcoLSilva (19 Nov 2021). "I've been investigating how good a job @Wikipedia does at explaining climate change. As it turns out, in some of its non-English versions, denial and scepticism are still very much alive" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ Silva, Marco (19 November 2021). "Climate change: Conspiracy theories found on foreign-language Wikipedia". BBC News.
- ^ Milman, Oliver (21 November 2021). "Climate denial is waning on the right. What's replacing it might be just as scary". the Guardian.