Extreme Weather, Extreme Content: How Big Tech Enables Climate Disinformation In a World on the Brink

The report details the persistence of climate disinformation across major platforms like X, Meta, TikTok, and YouTube. It identifies key narratives used to discredit renewable energy, the use of extreme weather events (wildfires and hurricanes) to fuel conspiracy theories and incite violence, and the extensive use of Meta's advertising tools by fossil fuel entities for greenwashing and lobbying. The authors argue that platform architectures reward engagement over truth, necessitating systemic policy changes to disrupt the economy of disinformation.

• Climate disinformation attacking renewable energy—specifically wind, solar, and electric vehicles (EVs)—remains remarkably consistent over time, often recycling debunked talking points that claim these technologies are inefficient, dangerous, or prohibitively expensive.
• Anti-climate actors use 'woke-washing' by co-opting legitimate human rights concerns, such as child labour in cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), to discredit the energy transition and renewables writ large.
• A small number of 'super-spreader' accounts drive significant spikes in anti-climate activity; for example, the account Wide Awake Media grew from 322 followers in March 2023 to over 578,000 by November 2024.
• Extreme weather events are weaponised to decouple disasters from climate change, with viral narratives attributing wildfires to arson or 'Direct Energy Weapons' (DEW) and hurricanes to geo-engineering for 'land grabs'.
• Misinformation following Hurricanes Helene and Milton on TikTok led to credible threats of violence against FEMA personnel, with some sponsored posts describing officials as 'enemies of the State' who could be 'shot or hung on sight'.
• Between 24 October 2023 and 24 October 2024, eight fossil fuel entities spent between $14.05 million and $17.62 million on Meta advertising, generating approximately 700 million impressions.
• Fossil fuel advertising on Meta primarily focuses on three pillars: greenwashing (e.g., pushing Carbon Capture and Storage), presenting fossil fuels as essential for energy security, and lobbying against environmental policies.
• Industry front groups are among the highest spenders on Meta; Energy Citizens spent between $5.9 million and $7.3 million, which exceeded the combined spending of the four tracked fossil fuel companies.
• Researcher access to platform data has severely declined, with Meta's deprecation of Crowdtangle and X's prohibitively expensive API pricing hindering the ability to track macro-level climate disinformation trends.

APA

Climate Action Against Disinformation (n.d.). Extreme Weather, Extreme Content: How Big Tech Enables Climate Disinformation In a World on the Brink. https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/CAAD-Pre-COP-Report-2024.pdf

Chicago

Climate Action Against Disinformation. Extreme Weather, Extreme Content: How Big Tech Enables Climate Disinformation In a World on the Brink. n.d. https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/CAAD-Pre-COP-Report-2024.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate Action Against Disinformation |title=Extreme Weather, Extreme Content: How Big Tech Enables Climate Disinformation In a World on the Brink |url=https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/CAAD-Pre-COP-Report-2024.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climateactionagainstdisinformationndextreme, author = {{Climate Action Against Disinformation}}, title = {{Extreme Weather, Extreme Content: How Big Tech Enables Climate Disinformation In a World on the Brink}}, institution = {Climate Action Against Disinformation}, url = {https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/CAAD-Pre-COP-Report-2024.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }