Report: 15 Percent of Americans Deny Climate Change

A new study of X (formerly Twitter) data from the University of Michigan shows that almost 15 percent of Americans still don’t believe that climate change is real, reports Aliya Uteuova in The Guardian. “Using artificial intelligence, researchers analyzed over 7.4m tweets posted by roughly 1.3 million people on the social media platform X (previously Twitter) between 2017 and 2019. The social media posts were geocoded, and classified as ‘for’ or ‘against’ climate change using a large language model, a type of artificial intelligence developed by OpenAI.”

Denial was centered primarily in central and southern states. “Acceptance and belief in global warming is most prevalent along the west and east coasts, correlating with those regions’ high rates of Democratic voters. Still, clusters of denialism exist within blue states, like in the case of Shasta county, California.”

Researchers note that the use of AI in research is still an emergent field, fraught with ethical questions.