Another Court Throws Out PragerU’s Preposterous YouTube Lawsuit (Slate, Feb 2020)
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"Although these videos are presented as unbiased educational lessons, they promote exclusively conservative, often fringe views. Prager and his friends regularly condemn Muslims, LGBTQ equality, abortion, feminism, gun control, and campaign finance reform, and deny climate change. (The company is partly funded by fracking billionaires.)"
A Course in Climate Misinformation (weather.com, Dec 2018)
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- "Fossil Fuels: The Greenest Energy":
- 1.5M views
- presented by Alex Epstein, for-profit thinktank founder
- using a fake expert like this is common in climate disinfo
- >12 are "pro-fossil fuel and climate-skeptical"
- Wilks Brothers gave millions in early PU donations
- Dennis Prager says PU doesn't get funding from them anymore (as of 2018)
- "Do 97% of Climate Scientists Really Agree?"
- also by Epstein, "founder and president of the Center for Industrial Progress"
- "Epstein presents at least three PragerU videos on energy and climate"
- 3M+ views
- argues "benefits of fossil fuels far outweigh their consequences"
- method of argumentation is "rather sneaky--any perhaps dishonest"
- starts by saying arguing from 97% consensus is illogical, comparing to it anti-vaccine advocates
- Then makes argument "Fossil fuel opponents don’t want you to know the exact magnitude of climate change because if you did, you wouldn’t be scared of climate change, you would be scared of losing the benefits of fossil fuels"
- Cites Jon Cook, author of 97% paper, and argues that the argument really only shows 2% agree
- To make this argument, cites a "400-word blog post that appeared on a website funded by a libertarian nonprofit" by an economist
- Misrepresents methodology
- Read methodology was 1) reading 12k papers (97.1% consensus), and then 2) contacting authors (97.1%)
- Cook says humans cause 100% of global warming +- 10%, and we know this due to multiple avenues of evidence
- "Climate Change: What Do Scientists Say?"
- Richard Lindzen, climate contrarian, MIT meteorology 30yr, 200 papers, is presenting
- 6.4m views
- Lindzen defines groups as 1) UN's IPCC, 2) scientists who are not concerned, and 3) politicians+environmentalists+media
- Lindzen messes up the IPCC name
- Lindzen messes up IPCC != "group of people". Rather, IPCC == "organization of governments"
- Lindzen says climate is so complex no predictions can be made. This is untrue--IPCC is very clear"
- In March 2018 "YouTube announced that it would link to Wikipedia excerpts below videos on 'topics that have inspired significant debate'"
- Many PragerU videos tagged
- tagged videos are not preferential. Videos from the IPCC are also tagged. "So even content in line with the consensus on climate change was affected by the new function — as long as it somehow dealt with the topic"
- "But it’s important to recognize, especially in the case of PragerU, whose hosts have been handed down some of the oldest tricks in the book, that climate disinformation isn’t new. You can’t really talk about PragerU without acknowledging the decades-long climate disinformation campaign that preceded it."
- PragerU says 70% of viewers change their minds
Daily Dot mention: As an article on weather.com puts it, written about PragerU’s penchant for using climate change deniers as “faculty” and donors: “Prager University is not a university. And the facts it preaches aren’t necessarily facts. It is named after someone named Prager, though.”
[https://www.dailydot.com/debug/prager-u-benefactors-dan-wilks-sheldon-adelson/ "PragerU consistently expresses skepticism about humans’ role in climate change and the imminence of the crisis. The typically-staid Weather Channel has even branded its denialism 'a course in climate misinformation.'" "videos...that are deliberately deceptive about climate change"
LA Times mention: "The Weather Channel branded PragerU’s challenges to global warming 'a course in climate misinformation.'"
Fracking Titans Spend Millions Proselytizing School Children (rewirenewsgroup, Apr 2015)
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"In a move that should make Prager’s fracking donors happy, the site recently launched a fundraising campaign to support a five-part video series 'investigating the truth behind climate change hysteria.' The series, according to the site, will attempt to 'end the debate between science and sensationalism' in regards to global warming. Another video filed under 'political science' is entitled, Why You Should Love Fossil Fuel."
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"For a video to get produced, Streit said, the committee has to consider the subject matter evergreen: It has to be worthy of a place in the Americanism curriculum. In 2017, those topics included ... the Paris Climate Agreement (presented by the famous climate change dissenter Bjorn Lomborg),"
Avaaz report
editThe Verge: "Three of the top climate change denial videos it highlights come from Fox News and PragerU...Several videos cast doubt on whether greenhouse gas emissions are leading to higher global temperatures — a widely accepted conclusion among climate researchers and the broader scientific community."
Bloomberg: "PragerU, a nonprofit funded partially by energy executives, has released multiple YouTube clips critical of political efforts to curb emissions. A popular video called “What do Scientists Say” only features one scientist: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Richard Lindzen, a climate change skeptic. (A group of Lindzen's colleagues publicly said they disagreed with his views.)" "Since 2018, YouTube has placed a text box beneath videos on climate change linking to a Wikipedia entry." ". Avaaz, a nonprofit that promotes climate activism, released a report earlier last year"
DeSmogBlog: "Not all of the channels promoting misinformation are owned by pseudonymous individuals with fringe ideas. Some come from established media organizations such as Fox News and the conservative media nonprofit PragerU."