An important community was structured from the summer of 2022, with more than 10,000 accounts identified. According to a study, the majority relayed pro-Kremlin propaganda in the war in Ukraine, many have been antivaccin and close to the extreme right.
by Audrey Garric
“The climate has always varied”, “there is no consensus on global warming”, “it is a variation in solar activity” … the counterparts on the climate flourish More than ever on the canvas. According to a
To achieve these results, four scientists from the Institute of Complex Systems Paris Ile-de-France (CNRS) have screened two years of exchanges on Twitter, in 2021 and 2022. Their study is part of Climatoscope project
which has analyzed, since 2016, more than 400 million tweets about climate change on the social network at the blue bird.
“Previously, France was much less affected by the climatoscepticism than the United States. But between 2021 and summer 2022, the activity of” denialist “accounts was multiplied by six”, notes David Chavalarias, first Author of the study, research director at the CNRS and director of the Institute of Complex Systems.
By “denialism”, the mathematician intends to rejection of facts which benefit from a consensus within the competent scientific community. In its August 2021 report, the intergovernmental group of experts in climate development (IPCC) showed that the role of human activities, and in particular the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), was “unequivocal” on global warming.
“A process is engaged”
Despite this consensus, researchers from the Institute of Complex Systems reveal that a large French climatosceptic community was structured from the summer of 2022 on Twitter, during a triple news: multiplication extreme events (heat waves, fires, drought, etc.), the convergence of the challenges of global warming with those of the security of oil and gas supply due to the war in Ukraine, and finally the holding of the conference World on the climate, COP27, in November in Egypt, with a strong weight of the fossil industries. This is also the period when the American billionaire Elon Musk, after bought Twitter, decided to close moderation services and undertook to restore suspended accounts.
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