Climate Point: Misinformation from skeptics gets fact-checked
Want the skinny on the rampant misinformation swirling on social media about the impacts of the warming climate and what causes that warming? Or love the nation's forests?
This week reporters broke down the facts behind a couple of inaccurate claims being shared recently on Facebook and covered a White House proposal to protect old-growth trees and the services they provide to the environment.
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to energy and the environment. I’m Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national reporter on Paste BN’s climate and environment team.
More than 110 million acres of forests could be protected under an initiative announced by President Joe Biden’s administration this week.
The plan – to make it harder to cut down old-growth and mature forests – would allow the trees to continue to lock up carbon dioxide, provide wildlife habitat and filter drinking water, reports Trevor Hughes, a reporter on Paste BN’s national climate and environment team.
The plan targets forest across the country from Alaska to the East Coast and would tighten the approval process for logging old and mature forests.
“Our ancient forests are some of the most powerful resources we have for taking on the climate crisis and preserving ecosystems,” said Alex Craven, Sierra Club forests campaign manager.
Just the facts
The effects of erupting volcanoes and misleading posts and videos about climate change were topics over the past week for Kate Petersen, a reporter with Paste BN’s Fact Check team.
One story tackled a video featuring remarks by a skeptic of human-driven climate change, speaking at a political action meeting in 2022. The post, shared more than 3,000 times in two months, claimed human-induced climate change was “a fraud.” But in her Fact Check, Petersen combed through decades of data and talked with experts to debunk the post.
Multiple lines of evidence show humans are contributing to climate change, the story reported, and multiple independent agencies show very similar warming patterns.
Harvard University historian of science Naomi Oreskes told Petersen in an email that the claim in the social post was “preposterous.”
Another Fact Check targeted an inaccurate claim in a Facebook video about the reasons behind glacial melt in Antarctica. NASA reports the ice lost on the ice sheet totals more than 2 trillion metric tons since 2002. That loss is driven by ocean and atmospheric warming and other changes attributable to human activity, Petersen’s story says.
Iceland volcano erupts
After weeks of seismic activity in the surrounding area, a volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula erupted, spewing flaming rivers of lava across the landscape. A ground fissure more than 2.5 miles long opened, around 31 miles southwest of Iceland's capital, Reykjavik. This Paste BN graphic guides readers with an explanatory map of Iceland's volcanoes.
Photo galleries offered fascinating perspectives, and there were numerous dramatic videos.
Read on for more, including a look at what young Republicans are thinking about climate change. Some of the stories below may require a subscription. Sign up and get access to all eNewspapers in the Paste BN Network. If someone forwarded you this email and you'd like to receive Climate Point in your inbox for free once a week, sign up here