Alex Jones

Extreme Weather Events are the New Frontline of Online Climate Denial – Report

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Original article by Adam Barnett republished from DeSmog

Social media posts by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones received 408 million views – more than emergency services and mainstream media combined.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Credit: Credit: Gage Skidmore / Flickr (CC-BY-SA-2.0)

Climate science deniers are flooding social media with false claims during extreme weather events, drowning out reliable information and putting lives at risk.

A new report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which researches and campaigns against online hatred and disinformation, finds that anti-climate figures are increasingly spreading false information about wildfires and hurricanes fuelled by climate change.

CCDH looked at some of the most popular misleading social media posts spread by influential climate science deniers between April 2023 and April 2025, using DeSmog’s climate disinformation database to identify the most prominent deniers.

Analysing Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube, it found that three quarters of the most popular misleading posts about extreme weather events focused on hurricanes and wildfires.  

These posts received hundreds of million of views across the two year period, spreading doubt about the causes of the disasters and even maligning the work of emergency responders.

The wildfires in Los Angeles (LA), California, earlier this year, which killed at least 30 people and destroyed thousands of homes, accounted for 38 percent of the posts. Hurricane Helene, which hit south-eastern U.S. in September 2024 and caused more than 250 deaths, accounted for 14 percent of the posts.

Baseless claims made by U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones during the LA wildfires received 408 million views on X. Jones claimed without evidence that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was “confiscating food” and that the fires were a “globalist” plot.

These posts received more views on X than the information distributed on the platform by 10 key emergency response accounts – including FEMA, the fire department, and local government – and the 10 largest U.S. news outlets.

Those behind the false information were “preventing informed debate and risking lives during crisis events,” the report states.

CCDH also found that online platforms often boosted these false claims, while almost all of the posts were allowed to remain on the platforms without being fact-checked.

It follows an investigation by Media Matters last month finding that half of the top 10 most popular online shows – including those hosted by ex-mixed martial arts fighter Joe Rogan and disgraced former comedian Russell Brand – spread misinformation or false narratives about Hurricane Helene.

“While families mourned and first responders combed through wreckage after climate disasters in Texas and California, social media companies shamelessly exploited these catastrophes for profit. The rapid spread of climate conspiracies online isn’t accidental, it’s baked into a business model that profits from outrage and division,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH. 

“When distraught people can’t distinguish real help from online deception, platforms become complicit in the suffering of innocent people.”

Wildfire of Disinformation

The report notes that accurate information is being buried by false claims in online spaces.

UK accounts also played a part. A video by the right-wing broadcaster GB News posted in January entitled “The truth behind the LA Fires: DEI and Left-wing policies burned LA” dismissed the role of climate change in the disaster – calling it “bogus nonsense”. 

A study by scientists at the World Weather Attribution found that climate change made the LA wildfires 35 percent more likely.

The CCDH report said that “superspreader” Alex Jones – who in 2022 was ordered to pay $1.3 billion (around £964.6 million) to the families of the Sandy Hook school shooting after claiming it was a hoax – had “drowned out credible information on LA wildfires”.

“When inaccurate information spreads in an acute weather crisis, it can put lives at risk, misleading people about the danger they are in”, it notes. “It can also endanger first responders, disrupt life-saving decisions, and mislead people about the aid that they need.”

The Role of Social Media Platforms

The report also notes that false claims are being boosted by online platforms.

Eighty-eight percent of the posts identified on X were from “verified users” as were 73 percent on YouTube, and 64 percent on Meta platforms. Whereas X’s blue verification stamp was previously given to those who were considered to be high-profile or a public authority, the badge can now be bought by anyone. 

One in three misleading YouTube videos recommended more climate denial content next to them.

The platforms also profited from this misinformation. YouTube placed adverts next to 29 percent of its misleading extreme weather videos. Five of the accounts on X spreading false information about extreme weather were signed up for the site’s paid subscription services.

Meta also shares advertising revenue with three accounts that have spread misleading information – including MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, and Fox News host Laura Ingraham – via a programme that allows users to make money from ads shown alongside their videos.

X has been accused of boosting extreme, false, and hateful content since tech billionaire Elon Musk – a far-right sympathiser – took over the platform in October 2022.

Following Donald Trump’s victory in November’s U.S. presidential election, Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg also announced that his platforms would abandon the use of independent fact-checkers.

Continue ReadingExtreme Weather Events are the New Frontline of Online Climate Denial – Report

Critics Say Trump Got ‘Nothing Right’ About Causes of LA Wildfires

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Then-U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a briefing on wildfires with local and federal fire and emergency officials in Sacramento, California on September 14, 2020. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

One observer blasted MAGA’s “conflagration of lies and disinformation.”

Progressive critics were left shaking their heads this week as Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his MAGA allies absurdly blamed the Los Angeles County wildfires on everything from an ichthyophile governor to diversity policies—while ignoring what experts say is the true cause of the deadly infernos.

On Wednesday, Trump took to his Truth social media platform to falsely accuse Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom—whom he repeatedly called “Newscum”—of refusing “to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water… to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.”

Newsom’s office responded to Trump’s accusation by correctly noting that “there is no such document as the water restoration declaration.”

Trump also accused Newsom of wanting “to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water,” a red herring and false statement given that the state’s plan to protect the endangered delta smelt actually involved increasing the amount of fresh water flowing into its habitat.

Jeffrey Mount, a water policy expert at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, toldMSNBC newsletter editor Ryan Teague Beckwith on Thursday that Trump got “nothing right” in his post.

Summarizing his interview with Mount, Teague Beckwith wrote:

Without getting into too much detail, here’s what did happen… During Trump’s first term, his administration sought to divert some of the water coming into a river delta near San Francisco to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, among others. They came up with a plan for the water, which Newsom challenged in court. The Biden administration later negotiated a new plan with California on how to divvy up the water.

This is basic stuff, so the fact that Trump describes this as Newsom refusing to sign some kind of document that never existed should give you a sense of how disengaged he is with his own policy.

Meanwhile, MAGA acolyte and soon-to-be Department of Government Efficiency co-leader Elon Musk used his X social media network—formerly Twitter—to amplify racist posts disparaging Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, an antisemitic diatribe by defamatory conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, implicitly sexist and homophobic attacks on Los Angeles’ fire chief, and his own frequent aspersions of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.

https://twitter.com/mikey_biz/status/1877417097615044718?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1877417097615044718%7Ctwgr%5E537fbddc0da64a570956ccbd3e213e91345fba37%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Ftrump-california-wildfires

Slate web editor Nitish Pahwa condemned MAGA’s “conflagration of lies and disinformation.”

“Just one day after Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram would no longer be fact-checking informational posts, and mere months after nonstop online hoaxes obstructed federal efforts to assist North Carolinians in the recovery from Hurricane Helene, we’re getting an early-year preview of how the United States is going to experience and respond to these rampaging climate disasters throughout the near future,” Pahwa said.

“In the vacuum left by mainstream TV networks that did not at all mention climate change in their fire coverage, bad-faith digital actors swooped in with their own takes,” Pahwa added. “Climate change doesn’t just boost record weather events—it boosts the snake-oil salesmen, too.”

Climate experts and defenders weighed in with science-based explanations for the increase in extreme weather events like the Los Angeles County wildfires.

As Common Dreamsreported earlier Thursday, Aaron Regunberg, Public Citizen’s Climate Program senior policy counsel, noted that “a recent study found that nearly all of the observed increase in wildfire-burned area in California over the past half-century is attributable to anthropogenic climate change.”

“This devastation is the direct result of Big Oil’s conduct,” Regunberg asserted.

As Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn said, “This is exactly the sort of disaster that Exxon’s own scientists predicted more than 50 years ago, but they spent billions to keep us hooked on fossil fuels.”

According to the U.S. National Park Service, the area burned annually by California wildfires has increased fivefold since the 1970s.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingCritics Say Trump Got ‘Nothing Right’ About Causes of LA Wildfires