Session 2 assignments

[simonsimson]

0. Please write an Email to Simon Hirsbrunner and Michael Tebbe containing:

   • your Name
   • GitHub Account
   • degree (e.g M.Sc. CompSci)
   • University
   • how you will be graded or whether you are auditing Grading depends on your degree course. FU CompSci Bachelors need differentiated grading, FU CompSci Masters need non-differentiated grading, Auditors are ungraded. People from other Universities/degrees need to consult the regulations.

1. Make yourself acquainted with the issue of climate change by browsing through YouTube videos and comments sections.

2. Choose one video with considerable user debate (number of comments > 50) and write a short commentary (150 words) as a reply on this issue. You might address questions such as: What was especially interesting for you? What is the primary controversy debated by users? Please start your comment with stating the video title and URL.

Possible terms to search for on YouTube are ‘climate alarmism,’ ‘climate lie,’ ‘climate realism,’ ‘climate denial,’ ‘climate skepticism,’ ‘climate engineering,’ ‘geo-engineering,’ ‘chemtrails,’ 'climate modification,' 'Naomi Seibt + climate change,' 'Alex Jones + climate change,' 'Trump + climate change,' 'AFD + Klimawandel,' 'climate change fake,' 'global cooling.'

A note of precaution: This search will possibly lead you to debates with a high degree of false (or 'fake') information and actors using various kinds of disinformation strategies.

3. Comment on (at least) one commentary by another student (a few sentences, content-related)

Due date own commentary: Tue 10 Nov Due date commentary of peer student: We 11 Nov

[jtembrockhaus]

Video Title: Why Some TV Meteorologists Are Still Climate Skeptics (HBO) Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNt-JsBMj4k Views: 87,758 Comments: 838 Published: Feb 17, 2018

Short summary: The video compares two television weathermen's stance on climate change and the importance to discuss climate change during a daily forecast or when talking about extreme weather events. The well-known and respected weather forecaster and tornado expert James Spann’s opinion is that “Natural variability is still the primary driver” in climate change and that “they didn’t hire [him] as a climatologist to discuss these things on air” while the NBC’s News 4 meteorologist Paul Gross who mentions global warming on the air regularly doesn’t think local weather forecasters should shy away from the subject.

Commentary on the users discussion: One topic the commenting users debated was the responsibility of journalists to be unbiased. Since many users appreciate James Spann’s general work of forecasting weather and especially tornados, they were not pleased by the interviewers body language and facial expressions when she asked Spann regarding his doubts that the humans are the main cause of climate change. These users see a clear biased reporting here and are disgruntled about the circumstance that Spann said he's not qualified to give a sure answer and the interviewer is trying to paint the fact that he won't take a position as a bad thing. In the discussion of whether climate change should be addressed by television weather forecasters, many users gave credit to James Spann “not using his TV platform to voice his view, recognizing that it is not the purpose of his job”. These users generally seem to agree with the science about climate change being driven by human activity, but focus on the debate if it should be addressed in broadcasts or not. However, there are many users not focusing on the actual discussion who instead want to deny the human influence on climate change in general and talk for example about a “political ideology, created to generate tax revenue”, “Another Leftwing lunatic trying to force there beliefs onto people” and that “Global warming is 100 percent propaganda”. These types of posts are often empowered by very questionable facts such as “Co2 in atmosphere 0.04 %. humans contribution 0.002%. Termites alone produce more ghg than all human activity combined look it up”.

[adrigru]

Video title: Why humans are so bad at thinking about climate change Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkZ7BJQupVA Views: 1,924,825 Comments: 6,197

Commentary: In the comments section, the users discuss the inability of humans to adapt their lifestyle for the higher good. Some say that despite the visible indications and increased media coverage on this matter, we still haven't done anything. Further comments discuss the argumentation of climate change sceptics: "If climate change is real, why is it snowing outside?". They compare it to the problem of starvation saying that if starvation was real why there is food on every corner. In other words, the sceptics say what they don't experience or see does not exist. Some other user argues that climate change and weather is the same. Therefore it's clear that it changes. Another comment points out the engagement of the younger generation to the topic of global warming while criticising the older people and corporations for not caring enough. In general, the comments focus on the importance of addressing climate change by changing individual people's habits.

Commentary on: Cloudz333 I think Cloudz333 summed up the content of the video as well as the discussion in the comments very well. I was quite shocked by comments stating that global warming is actually good for us. The argumentation was that warmth is better for plants and for people than cold therefore global warming must also be good for us. If was so easy there would be no problem. However, the nature as a system is more complex than that and requires its balance to exist. Moreover, the hot weather in summer was endangering crops in recent years.

[Kosmopy]

Video Title: The Anti-Greta, Naomi Seibt, Talks Climate Realism with Dana Perino Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zrHs3dv7LQ Views: 150,719 Comments: 1639 Published: Feb 28, 2020

About: Dana Perino, a Fox News journalist, interviews Naomi Seibt, a young German activist, known as the ‘Anti-Greta’. Naomi warns of ‘Climate Change Panic’ and supports the thesis that Climate Change is not human-driven.

Commentary: Scanning over a few hundred users’ comments, I could identify three popular topics which were discussed: (1) The role of media in the climate change discourse, (2) the question of who is representing and dominating the climate discourse and (3) the science of climate change. Apart from topic 3, there is quite a huge heterogeneity within the topics. While some commentators describe the journalist as biased and unprofessional – either by not talking long enough to Naomi S. or by talking to her at all, others emphasize her effort to present non-mainstream opinions. Especially potential supporters of Naomi S. start by commenting on the journalist and conclude with a general critique of the (media) system. In topic 2, the questions ‘who is this girl’, ‘why should we listen to her (and other young girls)’, ‘how bright and pretty is she’ and ‘why not listening more to scientists instead of self-promoters?’ are dominant. In topic 3, people try to provide information, links and explanation to show that Naomi S. is wrong. Generally, there is little exchange of information/opinions between comments. Hardly any discussions between users come up. Most comments only refer to the video but do not consider what others have written before. Defamation takes mostly place in comments below comments.

Comment on other videos: jtembrockhaus: I think this video and its comments is another example of how human driven climate change denial is intertwined with media critique. When looking over the comments, I also found some 'meta-comments' which claimed to give an overview of the whole discourse taking place in the comments. This seems like an efficient tool to me to influence the varying visibility of certain opinions.

[ChristyLau]

Video title: Causes and Effects of Climate Change | National Geographic Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4H1N_yXBiA Views: 2,082,496 Comments: 2,398

Commentary: In the comment section, some people take climate change as a normal cycle of glacial and interglacial periods, whilst some other concern a lot about the current situation and try to figure out some practical approaches for rescuing the earth. We can see from the comments, most people believe the climate does have changed, and they do have experienced these changes. They gave examples and make a comparison between the current and past situation. But there are few interactions among these enthusiastic planet savers, even between the holders of two opposite ideas. Besides, I also noticed that some comments targets on one country, or even on one person, like accuse the U.S. president of letting the country get out of the Paris Agreement. These comments attribute the global phenomenon simply to an unclear reason, which turns to be very irresponsible. In general, most of the comments focus more on telling their own experience or expressing their feelings. Though they hold different opinions, there's no obvious debate among them.

Commentary on adeaeede: Adeaeede gave us a quick glance into the comment section of this YouTube video. Besides what she/he has mentioned before, I'd like to complement something which I found in the comments below. There is one sentence being repeated many times by different commentators, that is "If CO2 was black, we would've dealt with this issue a long time ago". Some people believe that's true and realistic, whilst most people doubt. In the later part of this video, the team introduced a project by UCLA and gave some practical suggestion on raising people's awareness and passion to save energy. But in the comments, unfortunately, there's no comment regarding the project result. This surprised me.

[mrtobie]

Video title: Bill Nye Takes On Climate Change Deniers | Machh | NBC News Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7Lu-R4EwQw Views: 42.944 Comments: 1.413 Published: 19.08.2019

Summary: Famed scientist and educator Bill Nye is an outspoken advocate for climate change action. Through elections and scientific innovation, The Science Guy sees a world where climate denialism dies out. (Copied out of YouTube Description)

Commentary: In the commentary section the debate is mostly about how people can possibly deny science. Not only on the subject of climate change but also in general. Climate change deniers are called "ignorant", "dangerous", "fearful" and often the irony of those people is pointed out. On the one hand they are denying science on climate change and on the other they applaud the USA for sending a man to the moon. Since Bill Nye mentiones in the video that climate denial is "almost exclusively for old people" many comments argue that there are also many younger kids that don't belive in climate change. It seems that the audience of this video is mostly in favor of science and see climate deniers critical. Therefore there is not a real debate among them.

Comment on ChristyLau: I agree, that there are many people discussing about approchoaches to handle the situation. But for what I saw, it was beacause they wanted to rescue themselves or the human species. I also saw a little discussion that startet with sommebody claiming that the "boomers" are denying human made climate change because "their generation caused it". Under that comment started a discussion that is very interesting. It doesn't concentrate on the matter, whether there is climate change that we have to adapt to, but if it was human-caused. It is interesting, because there seem to be people, that deny human-made climate change, but a in fear of the climate changing and stating that we have to act.

[satorus]

Video title: Naomi Seibt and Her Journey to Climate Realism Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8dXpe1Pp6Q Views: 203,428 Comments: 2,659 Published: 05.12.2019

Summary: Naomi Seibt describes her journey from a climate activist to a climate realist. She describes how she started out hugging trees and hoping to make an impact, but started to see that this is not helping at all. She claims that climate change science is not a sciene at all today, as 'self-proclaimed' scientists publish claims without proofs. She talks about that climate change alarmism is 'anti-humanitarian' and is undermining all our achievements until now.

Commentary: The commentaries mostly agree with her positions and praise her for speaking the truth. An often recurring topic is that she is actually smart, unlike Greta. Also it is often mentioned that unlike Greta, she is a real person and not just an actress. They also go on about how impressive it is that a young girl like her is speaking up and how it restores their fate in the young generation, as normally older people have to intervene in such cases and bring humanity back on track.

What i found most interesting is, that among all this approving of her words there is one comment who asks if 'we cant get actual scientists to talk instead of having kids at the forefront', which i expected to be looked down upon and heavily criticized. Instead, of course despite many criticizing and denying comments, it provoked some comments about what the problems could be with real scientists speaking and what could be the reasons why they do not want to speak up in media. They also discuss about why the studies are not understood by a large population and how it could be done better. Iwas really suprised that there could be a kind of 'normal discussion' started in the comment section of such a video.

Comment on other videos: mrtobie: i found the part 'On the one hand they are denying science on climate change and on the other they applaud the USA for sending a man to the moon.' interesting as i thought that people who are denying science have a large overlap with the ever growing crowd of 'moon landing deniers'. So i dont know if this is a good way of showing irony in these people because most of them will just then start claiming that the moon landing is also a lie. This point is kind of also shown in the coments below the video, as one of the commentators talks about how in his family his sister claims the moon landing is fake while his uncle is saying climate science is fake. I think this shows a correaltion between these both stances in science sceptics.

[SabinaP17]

Video title: Neil deGrasse Tyson scolds cherry picking climate science Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1MZ8U8C9c8 Views: 1,516,153 Comments: 13,576 Published: 17.09.2017

Summary: In an interview on CNN's "GPS with journalist Fareed Zakaria, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson discussed how climate change contributed to the increase in strength of hurricanes Harvey and Irma in the US (2017) and stressed out the importance of presenting reliable scientific evidence on climate change to the public that is in consensus with the scientific community. As he pointed out, the media and lawmakers tend to select only scientific papers that support their political ideas or belief systems on climate change, even though these studies are singular in their hypotheses or don’t present “an objective truth”. He added furthermore that there is a whole body of research on climate change, as induced by human conduct, which leans in the same direction and points to the same consequences and this large body of settled research that all agree, should not be ignored or dismissed in further debates. From his point of view, the ongoing debate in the US politics over the existence of climate change, has resulted in a waste of time and resources and has failed to come up with actual solutions on how best to tackle it. A further delay in action will result in a bleaker outcome. Finally, he hazarded that it could even be too late to reverse the threat of climate change and its disastrous effects.

Commentary: The opinions of the users on this subject were very divided. The main topic of debate was whether climate change should be “political” or not, with some arguing it was “the worst thing we have done to handle the issue”, others pointing out that you cannot “combat it” unless “politically” and some saying that “climate change was political to begin and we now [are] trying to make it about science”. This whole discussion headed shortly afterwards towards a hasty and full of insults debate on Republicans and Democrats, which party is right or acted correctly and which didn’t, etc. Another sensitive topic of debate was whether presented facts on climate change need to be objective and not “cherry picked”. Many users debated on the reliability of settled scientific studies. While some supported the idea of relying on scientific consensus, which all points to climate changes as caused by humans, others argued that the main body of scientific research is a propaganda too, “a hoax is designed to push many intentions of the global elite, make major profit through carbon taxation but more importantly to centralize power”. Different political systems were brought into discussion, from communism to capitalism, also religion and the end of the world were mentioned. Other topics of debate were whether science can be wrong or not, whether scientific consensus exists, how movies predicting apocalyptic disasters always start with a scientist being ignored, and so on. The mentioned discussions take place mostly in the form of comments to comments. If you scroll though the main comments, they focus exclusively on the video and don't seem to be linked in some way. It was particularly interesting for me to read through users’ comments and notice how they build their arguments. Many of them included conspiracy theories, religious tokens or ideas, left- or right-wing point of views to support their arguments. Few relied on science and scientific research, as a ground for their point of view. Moreover, many comments had nothing to do with the topic of discussion and it was as though their authors wanted to shift the discussion from scientific research towards politics, economics and religion.

Comment on another student's comment: Kosmopy: I find this comment well structured and very informative. The most popular three topics of debate were concisely presented and the main trends of opinion were pointed out. It was also stressed out that the users hardly exchange opinions between comments. Naomi Seibt's point of view about climate change not being human-driven mirrors many of the arguments in the commentaries that I encountered in my video.

[JuliusBro]

Video title: The Problem With Environmental Alarmism Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdDHIsjZ7wY Views: 26,898 Comments: 409 Published: Aug 11, 2019

Summary: In a talk with Ben Shapiro novelist Jonathan Safran Foer makes an argument against radical and panicked measures against climate change, but for well-informed and necessary ones. He compares the symptoms of climate change and the diagnosis by the scientific experts to the symptoms of cancer and its diagnosis by doctors. If the first doctor recommended chemotherapy he would get multiple opinions by other doctors and if, but only if enough of them agreed, he would go through with the therapy. Similarily, 97% of scientific experts agree that there is climate change and therefore people should start to adapt.

Commentary: Since this is a video by the very right-leaning "The Daily Wire", most top-level comments are by conservative viewers trying to discredit Foer or his arguments. There is very little actual debate in the top-level, but in the replies to some of the comments. The arguments of the top-levels can be classified into three broad categories: The first and most used arguments aim to make Foer seem stupid or disingenious, such as saying that his analogy makes no sense or distracts from the problem or by saying that he claims "to have broad ranging input on a contested subject then states 'everything I’ve read' says basically the same thing". The second type of argument actually engages with the arguments of Foer, even if it seems to be in bad faith. An example is that the analogy allegedly does not make sense, as there presumably are financial incentives to doctors to prescribe chemotherapy even when not needed, and as such, there is supposedly also an incentive for scientists to claim climate change is real. Others claim that they "wouldn’t take gambling advice off a betting expert who’s predictions had failed since the 50s. I use this same logic when listening to the "climate experts'". Lastly, there are a lot of comments that are either meant completely as jokes or to distract from the issue, claiming that as long as rich people do not take action against climate change it is all "all an apocalyptic hoax".

Only the second type of arguments sparks any real discussion in the replies, but even then the discussions are one-sided by singular actors arguing against the conservative majority. Interestingly, confronted with some arguments against the ones of the top-level comments, most of the original commenters just either ignore the arguments or shift to an approach more akin to the first type of arguments I mentioned above. Or they outright deny the facts, such as floodings having happened.

Comment on another student's comment: jtembrockhaus: The observation that a lot of these commenters really do not care at all about the actual discussion, but rather about the fact that there is a young woman interviewing this weatherman in a biased way, simply because he is well-known and she is from vice, is stunning to me. It's not just "we do not want bias in media" which is already a rather shaky argument, but also "Do not dare to make this man look bad in any way". A very interesting and emotional comment section, when I've never even heard of this man.

[iraari]

Video title: Tucker vs. Bill Nye the Science Guy Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN5L2q6hfWo Views: 4,475,831 Comments: 50,765 Published: 27 Feb 2017

Commentary: Bill Nye (the quest) starts the discussion with the idea that if the evidence disagrees with your worldview, you deny the evidence and the authorities that provide that evidence (this can, indeed, be seen in this interview). Tucker (the host) continues with the point that the climate has always changed. Nye specifies it's a speed that is a concern. Tucker then asks to what degree climate change is caused by human activity. He wants to know if it's 100% or 74.3%. Nye explains he can't give an exact number, but the speed that climate change is happening is definitely caused by humans. The discussion is gradually becoming an argument in which the parties interrupt each other and cannot come to an understanding. I scrolled hundreds of comments trying to find out what people think about climate change, but all the comments were about how the conversation partners behaved, how Tucker interrupted Nye and refused to hear the answers. Some people wrote that this video was painful to watch and I agree with that. The problems like climate change should be discussed in a manner that would reach out to more people, but instead the strategy the host has chosen distracts from the substance of the issue and discourages discussion. The comments also show that people pay more attention not to the subject, but to their feelings towards the participants in this dispute.

Comment on a comment: satorus wrote a good commentary and found several topics in the discussion. I particularly liked the acknowledgment that s/he was surprised by the quality and reasonableness of some sections in the comments. This shows us all that we should not shut off from people whose opinions do not coincide with ours, but rather try to understand each other's logic.

[Cloudz333]

Video title: Climate "realists" want U.S. to stop spending money on climate change Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKd30j1HX48 Views: 8370 Comments: 73 Published: 23 Apr 2017

Summary: In this CBS Evening News report, a journalist interviews the former president and CEO of the Heartland Institute (a conservative think tank) Joseph Lee Bast, who defines himself a "climate realist". He supports the thesis that the efforts to stop global warming or slowing it down are way disproportional to what the science suggests it would be necessary, and thinks that it's not worth investing money in climate change.

Commentary: In the comment section I was able to identify mainly 3 types of discussions regarding different aspects of the interview.

Since the interviewee is not a scientist, some users consider his statements as unreliable, and therefore probably driven by millionaire oil industry funding. On the other hand, other users respond to these claims by mentioning that the "green business" is also a million dollar industry, and that it could therefore do the same by funding scientific researches to prove otherwise. Another user reiterates and adds that even "big oil companies" are investing in the green industry, and therefore their financing for "global warming skeptics" would not make sense.

Other comments focus more on a report’s statement: „Cold weather kills more people than warm weather". Some responses are in favor of this statement, and it seems that they are not concerning too much about possible consequences of a drastic increase of the temperature, saying that "previous periods of prosperity of human civilization were the warm ones" or that „It's obviously good for plants.And we depend on plants". The counterpart, on the other hand, seems to be more concerned about a possible rise of temperatures and tends to highlight the consequences of global warming that we have already experienced recently, such as the Australian’s fires.

The main discussion addressed in the comments, however, focuses on the possible correlation between human-released co2 and global warming. Many users seem to agree on global warming, but strongly debate whether this warming is caused by humans or not. In the related comments I could not identify any type of evidence or proof that could bring interesting insights for a constructive discussion, which in some cases resulted in political debates.

Comment on another student's comment: adeaeede: I think abbabbab managed to summarize the relevant topics very well among the multitude of comments in the video. I found particularly interesting the aspect described in the comments that talks about the phenomenon in which people tend not to believe on what they don’t see. Regardless of the opinion that one may have about global warming, I personally find this behavior pretty counterproductive because it makes more difficult to form a collective consciousness and therefore sensitize individuals to global issues.

[Moritzw]

Video title: Trump slammed for denying climate change's role in US wildfires Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMXcbWwzeY8 Views: 86914 Comments: 1647 Published: 14.9.2020

Summary

Sky News Starts with a recap on how Trump retweets a denial of climate change. Shows then a discussion about the forest fires by officials where Trump states "It will start getting cooler". Afterwards Sky News mentions the election and presents the opposing view from Candidate Biden. Following is a display of the "reality across hundreds of Miles" by showing lots of smoke polluted air, followed by burned down forestry and homes. An interview emphasizes the loss of homes and Business. Lastly the show a man stating that "the conditions for wildfire shouldn't exist" in that part of the country and state the climbing number of dead while showing rescue personal sifting through the rubble and fire retardant.

Commentary

reading over the comments of the video it shows that there are only a couple of main opinions expressed differently.

1: People who don't believe in climate change and state denial, sometimes accompanied by unverified facts such as "arsonists are responsible, not climate change" 2: people who don't think climate change is solely responsible 3: People who comment on the president or Biden and the upcoming election 4: People who advocate climate change

outliers in the comments mention things like "we need climate change to survive" or quote the bible.

Overall the discussion in the commentary is firstly about climate change and if it has something to do with the fires, secondly about the election and who should be voted into office. There is nearly no discussion about lost lives, the livelihood of the affected people or what could be done to prevent such events in the future.

Comment on other videos: ChristyLau: I agree with your comment on the video comments but i think you should have mentioned that a great number of Commentators state they are watching this video for school. A lot of commentators also noted the mistake in the video (around 0:22, should be labeled H_2O) and some criticized that the meat industry should have been mentioned. A short Summary of the video would have been a good addition to your Comment.

[budmil]

Video Title: The REAL Truth Behind 'Chemtrails' Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEii1_kEoZs Views: 354.139 Comments: 4,967

Short summary: Even though the title might lead us to other conclusions, in a 4min long explanatory video, a guy debunks the chemtrail conspiracy theory in a very harsh and mocking manner, but still fact supported.

Commentary on the users discussion: "How much did they pay this guy to lie? He keeps calling chemtrails 'contrails', which is totally incorrect!" The comment section is just BOOM! Pure source of conspiracy theorists. Seems like every comment is totally opposing what video shows. People are angry with the author and the channel. Comments repeatedly say that the video author is lying, that the video is funny, that they have seen chemtrails with their own eyes. Mostly the author is being accused of being "payed by the government". Comments go so far that they say things like "why would we trust the government when they exposed us to syphilis in the past just to experiment". The video has more dislikes than likes, and I feel that the YouTube recommendation system did its job here.

Comment on another video Reply-to @satorus: Tbh. I haven't heard about this girl before, so just this appearance on the Heartland Institute Youtube channel was very interesting to watch. Feels like the recipe that there has to be a counterweight for everything is always the same: one side has scientist -> the other one introduces its own experts, one side has young Swedish girl as a voice, the other side picks young German girl as a voice. And the comments section is just another tragic example of the divided realities we can live in online due to inhumane approach to technology.

[yaozheng600]

Video Title: Is China doing enough to fight climate change? | DW News Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnudgOC9D5Y Views: 15,591 Comments: 191 Published: 26.09.2019 Summary:
In the form of interviews, the video first focuses on China's newly built Daxing Airport, the world's largest. Leading to air travel is the main source of greenhouse gases. It also compares the percentage of CO2 emissions between China and Germany, leading to the conclusion that China’s carbon emissions will continue to rise. Commentary on the users' discussion:
The theme of the audience debate is the title of the video: Is China doing enough to fight climate change? The audience's views are mainly divided into the following points:

1. As a largely agricultural country, China’s carbon emissions are indeed incredible, while Germany, as an industrial country, has very little carbon emissions. So Germany did better than China.
2. The host is misleading the audience and focuses on the percentage of carbon emissions rather than the carbon emissions per capita. And taking China’s new airport as an example is too one-sided, probably because of jealousy.
3. No matter which country it is, it needs to make more efforts to fight climate change, and big countries (such as the United States and China) need to do more.

After reading the comments, I am interested in: the majority of commenters have their own ideas, rather than drawing a conclusion that the video wants you to draw. In general, the likes and dislikes in this video account for half of them, and discussions among people with different views are also very intense, and most of the discussions are based on data and examples. Most of the topics discussed were about China's carbon emissions. A small part was about Beijing Daxing Airport and Berlin Brandenburg Airport. All in all, I think most debates are scientific, they gave their arguments and reasons as well.

Comment on another video: SabinaP17: I think your comment is very structured and comprehensive. I agree with your description of how commenters organized their arguments. This not only allows us to see how different people’s views are but also what arguments he is based on, whether it is politics, religion or science. This helps me to distinguish between interesting and not interesting information(for me).

[Alioio]

Video title: AfD-Physiker sprengt Klimahype mit einer Grafik! – Dr. Christian Blex (AfD) URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGVUV2tpR5g Views: 68.172 Comments: 725 Published: 27.10.2020

About: A german politician holds a speech at a regional parliament about the history of climate change. He is presenting a diagram to the audience where temperature changes of the past 11T years is visualized as an area chart on a printed piece of paper.

He is referring to warmer periods in the history and is pointing out that climate change was normal in the history. While doing so he sharply criticize and attack the opposition .

Commentary:

As there were only 725 comments I was able to fly over all comments and read most of them. What was noticeable very quickly is that the majority of the users are showing their empathy and appreciation with the speaker in the video without discussing any details of the diagram which was the speakers main argument. Most of the these users are commenting with a few words or emojis and I had the impression that they confirm each other. What was noticeable too is that the commenters take over terms which the speaker in the video also uses and is established in his party like "altpartein", "links-grün", "mainstream medien".

In most of the comments a thread with answers with 3 to 30 comments were formed. What I have noticed is that in this threads like described before the users are confirming each other without discussing any detail of the diagram critically. I have noticed on user "Androlan01" who responded in many of these threads and shared a link (https://jottesgedanken.wordpress.com/2020/01/15/wie-leugnen-luegen-funktioniert-schoenwiese/) where it is described that the diagram is showing approximated climate data till 1960. But the climate change caused by human had started to showing a noticeable impact since around 100 years ago. In none of the threads I saw that someone reacted to this link with counter-argument.

Overall conspicuous for me was that there were only a handful threads where a real discussion with argument and counter-arguments were present. For example between the user Jonas who criticize the false interpretation of the diagram and shares some scientific resources and the user Sensibelchen who counter-arguments the sources Jonas shared. But I had the impression that these counter-arguments where less factual as for example he is doubting the source because of the religion belonging of the author in the source.

Comment on another video: jtembrockhaus: The comment is very well summarizing the comments section of this video. There are many comments where the biased report about James Spann's not clear positioning about human made climate change is criticized but as jtembrockhaus pointed out, there are also many users who are not focusing on the actual discussion. By reading the comments in this video I recognize similarities with the comments on the video I summarized. The commenters do not discuss in a constructive way.

My opinion about the video is that it is notable that the reporters are not 100% unbiased. But I find it is sometimes hard to differentiate between a biased report and critical questioning in reports. In my opinion one should respect that James Spann is focusing in his job on reporting weather and protect people against storms. Although he shares the opinion that the climate change is mainly natural I had the impression that he is not denying the human made climate change at all but is questioning at which degree it is caused by human.

[Rahaf66]

Video Title: Climate Change Activists vs Skeptics: Can They See Eye To Eye? Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EFHZfISGp4 Views: 1,774,864 Comments: 22913 Published: 28.07.2019

Three climate change activists and three skeptics were brought together to debate their differences and similarities. The main points of the discussion are the reality of climate change, the responsibility of human activities for it, and how the concern on climate change could be against human rights and freedom.

Commentary: The majority of the commentaries criticized the arguments of the skeptics. Regarding climate change as a natural cycle, some commentaries mentioned that people believe in the scientific truths that they would like to believe, and the important difference between “I have heard” and “I have studied”. On the other hand, many commentaries used emission reduction due to the lockdown as evidence of the role of human activities in this issue. As the interview is in the USA, hundreds of people were displeased by considering climate change as a political issue and mixing the concept of sharing and an eco-friendly lifestyle with communism and socialism.

Since the skeptics found making changes, looking for new resources and the rationalizing consumptions are against free choice which is one of the human rights, there were some ironic comments like ”It is my right to destroy the environment”, whereas others discussed climate change as a global concern affect other basic human rights especially in the developing countries where some people do not have even clean drinking water.

Comment on another video: satorus: The commentaries emphasize the truth of the gap between science and people's consciousness. I think people tend to follow and see what they agree with rather than what brings them another view. " Finally a young girl with common sense " !!

[raupy]

Video title: Die Lüge vom menschengemachten Klimawandel! - Michael Espendiller - AfD-Fraktion im Bundestag URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtlOUMEz4y8 Views: 71.300 Comments: 948 Published: 16.01.2020

About: It's a four minute long Bundestag speech from AfD politician Michael Espendiller. He is commenting on a proposal for mobility research that was made by the government parties and that the AfD doesn't support. He says that the human made climate change is a lie, so that the Great Transition towards green energy and green mobility is based on a lie. It will limit the freedom, restrict the economy and destroy the current human lifestyle. He says that the suffering of the weak German automotive industry is caused by the restrictive governmental defined fantasy threshould values that no manufacturer can reach.

Commentary: I could find four categories of comments:

• comments on the speech or the speaker: the speech is brilliant / Michael Espendiller is brilliant (and could even be the next Chancellor) / educated / competent / eloquent / polite / likable / he is a mathematician, so he knows what he's talking about
• comments on the AfD: The AfD is the only party that speaks the truth / that is reasonable / that you can vote for
• Mocking, insulting, aggressive and hateful comments on Claudia Roth (who is sitting in the background, but apart from the beginning of the video you can't see her face, just her colorful blazer): she is a clown / parrot / fat / wearing a tent / not a woman and maybe not even a human / 'Bundeswarze' / has a crush on Michael Espendiller
• comments on the empty hall: Why are the seats so empty? / Where are all the politicians? / We pay for them and they don't even work

I found the amount and degree of mean comments on Claudia Roth really disgusting. It's not at all related with Michael Espendiller's speech. It was awful to read. There is so much hate. I also found it interesting to see that there was almost no one critically thinking about the speech. There were maybe a handful of AfD supporters who said that it's a fact that the climate change is human made and that the AfD should concentrate on other issues. The rest was clapping enthusiastically.

Comment on another comment: @Alioio I could not agree more with your comment. We have a very similar topic (speech of an AfD politician with both very populistic video titles) and I think it's interesting (or maybe not at all and rather typical) that we have made the same observations: "the majority of the users are showing their empathy and appreciation with the speaker in the video without discussing any details".

[Francosinus]

Title: What Will Happen In One Billion Years? URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVVT8EBqK3g Views: 8,549,192 Comments: 18,534 Published: May 19, 2018

About: This video is about how the earth will change and what could happen to earth and humanity in certain time steps. Some things that are mentioned:

• Earth will be hit by an asteroid
• super volcanic eruption
• supernova -> earth extinction
• sea level falls -> no photosynthesis -> no oxygen -> no life on earth

Quite apocalyptic.

Commentary: There are a lot of comments on this video. Almost all of the comments I read are jokes.

• jokes about how the comment section will still be alive in 1 billion years
• Some jokes are about corona and that 2020 is already the end of the world
• a lot don't care because they're already dead by then
• weather forecast jokes (scientists can predict the end of the world but not the weather for tomorrow)

and so on..

I thought I couldn't be surprised anymore by Youtube comments, but the fact of finding almost only jokes on a rather serious video surprised me. I assumed that there would be at least some serious discussion. However that was not the case or I did not read enough comments (and I read a lot). I think that the end of the world is not in sight for people and that is why it is not taken seriously.

Commentary on raupy:
Interesting insight. I think this is a common thing for videos about politics. There are always extremely convinced and loyal supporters, especially with controversial parties. They are sometimes not open for any other opinions. The anonymity on the internet partially reveals the mean side of some people. This is one reason why I didn't chose a political video for this assignment. The first thing I searched for was "climate politics" but the comment section can be really toxic.

[alexkhrustalev]

Video Title: President Trump on Climate Change (C-SPAN) 
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl1Rnz4zNkg
 Views: 129.881
 Comments: 1.864
 Published: 26.08.2019 Short summary:
 Donald Trump was asked about climate change and if he still has skepticism about this topic. He answered that the USA is a very rich country and that makes it possible to care about people. Despite that Donald Trump wants clean air and clean water, he highlights that in the future the USA will be a far superior country in terms of energy production.

Commentary on the users' discussion: 
The majority of comments state that people are not satisfied with Donald Trump’s answer, people make jokes and laugh at his expressions, I.g. “I think I know more about the environment than most people”. There is a few people who just find it funny without a clear negative opinion. Obviously, there are either no comments supporting this opinion or these comments are the minority. Overall, it is clear that people think that Donald Trump has no competency in such a topic.

Response to @Moritzw: I liked your comment, it's well-structured and easy to read. The only thing that I would put differently is that, in my opinion, people mostly talk and make fun about Trump itself and not about elections. Other than that, I got a very good overview of the video's content as well as of the opinions in the comments.

[Erdnaf]

Video Title: Geoengineering: A Horrible Idea We Might Have to Do 
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSu5sXmsur4 Views: 3.584.639 Comments: 18.173 Published: 27.10.2020

Short summary: The Video describes in a sientific way the possibile measures humanity can take to combat global warming by geoengeneering. First it describes large enviromental impacts like volcanic eruptions and how they impact on the climate. In a second step it is shown ho humans can emulate this effect.

Commentary on the users' discussion:

There are some types of comments:

• sarcastic comentary thet everything can be fixed by saing it's fake news
• admiering the beauty of the animations
• people that are scared by the inevibility that is shown in the video

I couldn't read all of the comments but there were only a few who doesn't recognize global warimg as a crisis. If did so, the community engaged in such cases.

Response to @Einnmann :

Good summary of the video and the comment section. I would add that there is also critisism regarding trump as a person, not only trumps politics

[xixuanzh]

Video Title: The Biggest Lie About Climate Change 
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbW_1MtC2So Views: 1.513.473 Comments: 13.004
 Published: 14.03.2019

Summary: The video is about how the topic of climate change is politicized by oil companies such as Exxon: Already in 1970s, Exxon's scientists firstly discovered climate change as the oil price was decreasing. Unfortunately, Exxon decided to ignore scientific evidence and focussed on growing its business further. As climate change gradually became apparent to the public, Exxon started to emphasize the uncertainty of the scientific data around climate change and launched climate denial campaigns. Later, oil companies with hired scientists have successfully made climate change a political issue as a site between right and left.

Commentary: Almost all the commentaries are positive about the video. Users viewed the video mentioned "fact" mostly, which implies that they all believe in climate change. Among the commentaries, there are many comments about climate deniers such as "Its easier to fool people than to convince them they've been fooled..." or "7k fools/flat earthers who disliked this video." There are also many endorsements of the video makers. Some viewers commented that the video did help them to debunk climate denial. It is seldom to see negative commentaries.

I chose the video since the title is a little bit misleading. Climate skepticism may click the video to find arguments to support their belief and fail.

Comment on another video @budmil Though the titles of both of our videos are misleading, what I observed in the comments section is the opposite of yours. Maybe the climate deniers did not want to leave comments to avoid being challenged by climate activists since the climate change believers occupied the comments section.

[milanbargiel]

Video Title: Global warming: why you should not worry 
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwvVephTIHU Views: 316.156 Comments: 4.186 Published: 14.05.2010

About the video: In this video, Richard Lindzen, a former MIT professor of meteorology discusses his view on the consequences of global warming. He argues that even though humans probably do play a role in the warming of the earth, consequences might not be as dramatic as portrayed by fellow scientists. From his point of view, there are uncertainties in the measurement of climate and that existent data is not accurate enough to draw realistic conclusions about future climate developments.

Commentary: I was surprised that a reputable news media such as the Boston Globe publishes a video of the controversial climate skeptic Richard Lindzen without further commentary that places the video within context. The title and the use of cuts in the video are rather provocative and underline the opinionated character of the argumentation. No verifiable arguments are made, Lindzen expresses his general doubts on climate science and the credibility of his fellow colleagues. The comments to the video are diverse, even though climate skeptics are in the majority. Conspiracy myths are reproduced and heavily liked: climate alarmism as a method of controlling the public, central bankers in control, etc.

Comment on video from @xixuanzh Thanks for sharing this video, I also think that the title is well chosen for attracting climate skeptics. As you have pointed out, commenters are rather affirmative of the content, probably the producer AsapScience is rather popular among people who are worried about global warming.

[anastasiia-todoshchuk]

Video Title: Climate Change Activists vs Skeptics: Can They See Eye To Eye? | Middle Ground Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EFHZfISGp4&ab_channel=Jubilee Views: 1,776,206 Comments: 22,915 Published: 28.07.2019

Summary: This video is a very good versatility about climate change introduction. There are 6 different people, 3 of them are climate change activists, other 3 are climate change skeptics. There are a few statements, namely "I believe global warming should be our №1 concern", "I know people who have been affected by environmental regulations", "An eco-friendly lifestyle is expensive", and "I worry about our future". The guests have to agree with these statements or not, and give their reasons for that and opinions. In general, it was very interesting for me to learn new points of view on the climate-changing issue. The new thing for me was about how actions by climate activists may violate human rights and the Constitution.

Commentary: Almost every commentator disagrees with Skeptics' arguments, considering them as egocentric ones. The most controversial issue is whether people have to have the right to choose what to do with the stop climate change measures or they will have no choice. Most of the commentators agreed that money, rights, and freedom won't matter if climate-changing kills everyone.

Response to @Erdnaf I got great pleasure watching video you have commented on. I've read a lot of comments and, as for me, you correctly recognized the types of common comments.

[travela]

Video Title: Alex Jones: Hookers descend on Copenhagen 
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Az05gIzEYM Views: 22.247 Comments: 71
 Published: Dec 7, 2009

Summary: RT (funded by the Russian Government) interviews Alex Jones ("American far-right radio show host, political extremist and conspiracy theorist") in the light of the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen where world leaders were set to discuss and agree on carbon emission cuts and the introduction of carbon taxation. With already biased questions Alex Jones is invited to share his views on the uselessness of the conference. He goes on denouncing the hypocrisy of the event as well as framing human-made climate change as an already exposed hoax by putting forward controversies such as "Climategate".

Commentary: The majority of comments are supportive of Alex Jones as they hail him for exposing the alleged hoax. Some of the commentators agree on the hypocrisy regarding the Climate Change Conference while others go further and dive deeply into the world of conspiracy theories. For instance the abbreviation "NWO", which stands for "New World Order", is used frequently to explain the motives behind the alleged hoax. Namely this describes a conspiracy theory by which there exists a secretive elite which intends "to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government".

Only very few comments argue that climate change is in fact man-made. Most of the comments that are directed against the position of Alex Jones and RT are those that try to point out the hypocrisy of the collaboration of a far-right radio show host and a public television channel of a socialist government. Other commentators take offence about RT describing the USA as "one of the biggest polluters", saying that other countries are just as bad.

Comment on another Commentary: @milanbargiel Not only did Boston Globe post the video without context, but they also did not give the MIT scientist's name nor field of study (which I see you have found out). I would say that the comment section is in fact overwhelmingly on the side of the climate skeptics. And because Lindzen is supposedly an expert in his field it seems like this video makes people feel very smart and disobedient for not falling for the "Climate Hysteria".

[Babellegend]

Video Title: Climate Change Activists vs Skeptics: Can They See Eye To Eye? Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EFHZfISGp4 Views: 1,774,864 Comments: 22913 Published: 28.07.2019

Three climate change activists and three skeptics were brought together to debate their differences and similarities. The main points of the discussion are the reality of climate change, the responsibility of human activities for it, and how the concern on climate change could be against human rights and freedom.

Commentary: The majority of the commentaries criticized the arguments of the skeptics. Regarding climate change as a natural cycle, some commentaries mentioned that people believe in the scientific truths that they would like to believe, and the important difference between “I have heard” and “I have studied”. On the other hand, many commentaries used emission reduction due to the lockdown as evidence of the role of human activities in this issue. As the interview is in the USA, hundreds of people were displeased by considering climate change as a political issue and mixing the concept of sharing and an eco-friendly lifestyle with communism and socialism.

Since the skeptics found making changes, looking for new resources and the rationalizing consumptions are against free choice which is one of the human rights, there were some ironic comments like ”It is my right to destroy the environment”, whereas others discussed climate change as a global concern affect other basic human rights especially in the developing countries where some people do not have even clean drinking water.

Comment on another video: satorus: The commentaries emphasize the truth of the gap between science and peoples consciousness. I think people tend to follow and watch what they agree with rather than what brings them another view. “Finally a young girl with common sense”!!

[adrianapintod]

Video title: Naomi Seibt Joins One America News Network Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcHCretMIZU Views: 6428 Comments: 151 Published: 06.03.2020

Summary: Naomi is interviewed by a journalist for the One America News Network. She claims she is interested in political philosophy and she started looking into the climate change topic in 2019 as this topic has been heavily politicized. She refers to the way the Europe and US cover the green issue as they are spreading panic and blames them that young people are terrified of their future and explains she wants to spread hope to her generation by showing that people are not destroying the planet with CO2.

Commentary: Looking at the comments section most of the people support her. Overall, users express joy, congratulate her for her approach to climate change, and praise her conviction when speaking highlighting her age. Some express she should not be called the anti-Greta but the well-educated and informed Naomi. They compare intelligence Naomi's with Greta's alluding that Naomi's is superior. Other comments suggest a debate between Greta and Naomi about climate change. Other users get off the topic of climate change to comment on their good English, fluency, and accent. It is weird how a comment from a user who wants to express support to her is based on the way Naomi dresses and how the Poka dots blouse she is wearing reaffirms the idea that Naomi is an optimistic and happy person which makes her even more perfect in user's point of view.

Comment on other video: satorus: Similar to the Naomi Seibt video 'Joins One America News Network', the comments are mainly based on comparing Naomi's and Gretta's intelligence. However, there is more debate about climate change itself and the discussion that is generated from the comment in particular on if they should have scientists talking about this issue instead of kids mentioning the pros and cons of this situation instead of trying to express their fanaticism Naomi even if for this she has to resort to subjective arguments such as her way of dressing.

[yuxin16]

Video Title: How climate sceptics tricked thepublic - BBC Newsnight Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lslIyHo6zg Views: 20,724 Comments: 444 Published: Jul 10, 2019

Short summary: The video is generally about how the climate sceptics come out and how itinfluences public concensus on the climate issue.  It starts with the climate gate, which refers to the release ofhacked emails and documents from a number of the world's top climate scientistsin November 2009. The emails and documents revealed that some scientists weremanipulating data and falsifying scientific processes to support their claimsabout climate change. Some involved scientists indicatethat those revealed words and expressions are taken out of original context aswell as being misconstrued. However, based on the questioning from climatesceptics, climategate apparantly destroy the viewers trust in science. The focus began to turn to the credibility of global warming. The public considered UN scientists as guilty of pushing a climatecompaign to scare the public in to a so-called solution like the UN ParisAccord. During the past ten years since climategate, climate scientists andinternational organizations are dedicated into communicating their findings ina more understandable way to the public. But still, there are two centraldiscussions: (1)is climate change happening or not; (2) is it man-made or not.    

Commentary on the users discussion:  Besides those off-topic and emotional expressions, the most controversy debate posed byusers is nothing else than the credibility of scientists. Climate skeptics claimed that "there is no context in science for manipulating or hiding data".  If the scientists being hacked claimed that those pieces of words are "taken out of context on purpose", "why they cannot reveal their (at least even one) original context and show the public why and where they need to hide the data".They assert that since the involved scientists are not able to reply positively, it is fair enough to suspect their purpose (for example,"academic funding") of climate change assertion. The skeptics think that climate issue is "a big money-making scam perpetrated on the public and hitting the poor the hardest". Even under the people who believe in the climate change, when it comes to proposing climate policy or political solutions, those conflicting debates will divide people into opposing camps. The one admits global warning should be blamed to overpopulation and  the following resource depletion. The only way is to stop population growth and therefore the climate will come back to normal. The other group admits the climate change but refuses to accept the proposing climate policies. They consider that the only suggest the scientists will give is to encourage people to live vegan,use public transportation, to live like a ascetic and may impose more taxes on public. Another group of comments state that, whether climate change is true or not is not a central issue. The problem is, if global warming really happens, what actions can we take to face it? They also think it is hard to prove if global warming is true, since "the earths natural shift in weather is taking place which goes in cycles". 

Commentary on other's commentary: adrianapintod: It seems that the comments focus on praising Naomi's intelligence/attitude but don't really say anything on Naomi's opinions/expressions. The general comments are not related to climate change itself. I don't know whether Greta is mentioned in the talk of the video, it is weird that the comments somehow criticize Gretato and praise Naomi, and even compare them both based on their appearance or sometrivial things.

[isaschm]

Video: Climate Alarmism Isn't Rational Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUR0LrSadkg Views: 630.387 Comments: 2.545 Published: 06.09.2019

About: Bjorn Lombog claims that ‘climate alarmism’ ignores data showing that not all climate change is accelerating faster than expected. He uses an apparent downward trend in droughts and strong typhoons, and hurricane doing less financial damage to support his argument. To offset the damage done by climate change, he claims it would be rational to uplift the economy instead of cutting carbon emission.

Commentary: To contextualize the video and its comment section, Bjorn Lombog is a self-proclaimed expert, founded the think tank he is currently presiding over. I found this video through him going on a promotional tour of known right-wing podcasters and show hosts, such as Ben Shapiro and Joe Rogan. PragerU, whose channel this video is posted on, is a private media company, not an accredited academic institution and is known for conservative perspectives on politics. Neither Bjorn Lombog nor the channel are known for being especially extremist, the comment section was comparably chaste as a result. In the tone of the video, some commenters used it to support their climate change ambivalence. Building off of this ambivalence and use of “science” to support the claims, the main theme seemed to a distrust of (global) elites. Mainstream science institutions are used to control the country, the economy and “climate change alarmism” is pushing towards a world government. Another point of contention that seemed to come out more the longer the video remained on YouTube was the platform putting a climate change banner under the video. The comments suggested that YouTube put this banner under many climate change critical videos. Commenters understand the banner as a sign that controversial opinions and independent thinking is no longer allowed on the platform. Commenters seemed to sway between bemusement and anger on the issue.

Commentary to mrtobie: In the comment sections of content that is clearly branded contra climate change denial, people often congratulate themselves for being on the right, enlightened side, distancing themselves from the dark side of science-skepticism. Bill Nye claiming that climate change denial is "almost exclusively for old people" is self-congratulatory in the same way.

[DanielKirchner]

Video: Climate Alarmism Destroyed Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr1t3bTlBvY Views: 3.211 Comments: 54 Published: 10.07.2020

About: Michael Shellenberger, author of a book called "Apocalypse Never", talks about a phenomenon he calls "climate alarmisim", which he claims to be able to "relentlessly stamp out", by falsifying IPCC claims and reports.

Commentary: There seems to be a bit of a disconnect between the content presented in the video and the some of the topics the people talk about in the comments. While the video seems like a promotion for his book "Apocalypse Never", the comments rarely address his book and instead comment with a wide range of anti-scientific claims. Climate change seems to be a made up "scam", undermined only by "propaganda and made-up graphs " (Comment by: Christoph Egger). Many reasons for "inventing" climate change are proposed:

• "It was all about the money. The more alarmed people were the more money would be spent. " (Comment by: Bossy Bill)
• "The leftist/neo-Marxist/identitarian/environmentalist religion, because it is based on belief and psuedoscience, has needed climate alarmism to tie together it's many disparate, nonsensical threads. " (Comment by: Freestyle)
• "The climate change lie is an integral part of the UN's Agenda 2030." (Comment by: Paco)

In general there is no clear line as to who the beneficiaries of making up climate change would be. However, a lot of people seem to distrust big organizations (UN, IPCC, Mainstream Media), who allegedly provide them with "fake news". The comments also seem to be very emotional, and in general there seem to be right-leaning commenters, since there is only critique of "leftists" and "liberal agenda". There is also a small fraction of commenters who claim to be "personally been as green as it is possible to be" (Comment by: I can't think of a witty username), and even agree that the climate is changing for the worse, but disagree on the part humans have in it.

Commentary to Babellegend: This video and comment section are interesting, because the video doesnt have an agenda by itself, but rather tries to give a platform for discussion. The comments are mainly focused on things the people discussing in the video said, and seem to be in favor of climate action / believe human-made climate change