“Just sitting back this morning … enjoying the aroma… of my first sips of a hot cuppa of… insults from climate deniers… more proof that: CLIMATE DENIAL IS A LOST CAUSE”. That’s almost a daily refrain on twitter from Canadian Ph.D. chemist and climate twitteratti Gerald Kutney as he engages with climate deniers.
It all started a couple of years ago, when Gerald, then new to the twitterverse, found himself swarmed by the followers of a high profile climate denier. “This isn’t fun,” he thought. “Where are my supporters?” So he decided to invent a hashtag. He came up with #ClimateBrawl because it described how he felt. For reasons he can’t explain it took off.
By December 2019, he was ranked #1 Education & Public Awareness Influencer shaping the climate change debate. For Gerald, the hashtag now represents the mobilization of the community on Twitter to encourage them to combat the challenges of the propaganda of climate deniers.
Why does Gerald bother communicating with the hard core deniers when he acknowledges that they’re not going to be converted? Gerald gives two reasons. First, when you repeat propaganda over and over again some people believe it is the truth, and he doesn’t want that to happen. Secondly, Gerald is really trying to influence the deniers’ followers and other spectators rather than the deniers themselves.
He aims to be active, civil and factual in his interactions, and avoid getting sucked into the all-too-common abuse, because the message is lost when you do that. And for Gerald it doesn’t matter whether the propaganda is coming from a bot or a real person, the key is to challenge the propaganda.
Early on in his twitter journey his tweets would reiterate that climate change is science not opinion, and quote a relevant source. The problem is that science explanation is hard to do well on twitter. So now when climate deniers quote so-called science. Rather than rebut the claim he says ‘prove to me your claim is science – show me the peer-reviewed publication’. This has proven to be effective and puts the onus back on the denier.
When the silent majority on twitter is passive they are helping the climate deniers. So Gerald’s advice is to actually engage the deniers, or if that is too daunting, to support those that are. Retweet the people who are challenging the propaganda, follow them, and tell them that you like what they’re doing.
I admire what Gerald is doing and how he goes about it. I follow Gerald, and I encourage you to follow and support him too, at @GeraldKutney
