The Google Guide to Global Warming

If you had little to none knowledge about climate change and wanted some facts, you would probably turn to Google. Curious to see what you would turn up, the Yale Forum on Climate Change & the Media recently conducted an interesting experiment. They did

nearly 100 Google searches for terms related to climate change, such as “global warming,” “climate change,” “greenhouse effect,” “anthropogenic global warming,” “climate change news,” “global warming hoax,” and “climate change myths.”

Next, The Yale Forum examined the websites that appeared on the first page of results for each search string, 980 webpages in all. The sites were classified based on the type of information offered, such as support for the scientific consensus, news about the topic, or skeptical claims.

Guess what?

The results suggest that often, Google leads people to accurate information about climate change.

9 Responses to “The Google Guide to Global Warming”

  1. Gaythia says:

    Given that in the Yale research cited above, “often, Google leads people to accurate information about climate change”   seems to be defined as:  “Fifty-two percent of the 980 sites contained clear statements in line with the vast majority of peer-reviewed climate science evidence.”; how “often” should we be optimistic about these results?
    This work does offer some instruction as to how anti-science websites have put more thought into being search engine optimized than ones created by credible mainstream scientific institutions.   They seem to be adept at co-opting key terms.  Thus, searches for “science change facts” leads to a climate change denial website and one for “evidence of global warming” leads to one that is creationist.
     

  2. Tom Gray says:

    Define: “accurate”

  3. Tom Gray says:

    As Einstein is supposed to have said it only takes one paper to prove a scientific statement incorrect. The utility or “correctness”  of the climate hockey stick is not determined by the number off papers for or against it.
     
    Are Newton’s Laws accurate?

  4. Tom Fuller says:

    I guess we’ll end up like China after all. All the news that’s been fitted for print.

  5. Tom Fuller says:

    Let’s see if da Google buries the Scientific American article on Richard Muller. Although it’s too late for Joe Romm–his head exploded. All that’s left is his sharkskin suit and $600 shoes. Hey, wait–maybe he was rapturized….

  6. That is highly surprising to me and I’m not sure of its validity across the board. Some 5-6 years ago or so I was discussing climate change issues with an aquaintance over email, and when just googling for information I felt bombarded with skewed info.

    It was actually an eye opener to see with my own eyes that the internet was so polluted: What I regarded as scientifically and logically solid sources were almost always outnumbered by nonsense. It was a frustrating experience and was an important driver in motivating me to take up blogging a few years later.

    Things may have changed since then, or it may have been due to us looking for more specific information rather than broad searches for “climate change”, but in any case, it doesn’t jibe with my experience.

  7. willard says:

    The more a source gets links, the more it climbs up Google ranking.
     
    Linking to good sources is more important than editorializing.
     
    This is a linking contest.

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