Environment

The Google Guide to Global Warming

Collide-a-ScapeBy Keith KloorMay 22, 2011 4:45 PM

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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.

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