Some of the UK’s top scientists are struggling to deal with what they describe as a huge rise in abuse from climate crisis deniers on Twitter since the social media platform was taken over by Elon Musk last year.
Since then, key figures who ensured “trusted” content was prioritized have been sacked, according to one scientist, and Twitter’s sustainability arm has vanished. At the same time, several users with millions of followers who propagate false statements about the climate emergency, including former US president Donald Trump and right-wing culture warrior Jordan Peterson, have had their accounts reinstated.
Climate scientists say the change has been stark and they are fighting to make themselves heard over a “barrage” of often hostile comments.
“There’s been a massive change,” said Mark Maslin, professor of Earth system science at University College London and the author of popular books including How to Save Our Planet. “I get so much abuse and rude comments now. It’s happening to all of us, but I challenge the climate deniers so I’ve been really targeted.”
Maslin says he used to have regular meetings with Sean Boyle, Twitter’s former head of sustainability, who was laid off in Musk’s mass cull of staff shortly after he took over in April last year.
Maslin said that Boyle discussed the platform’s work to develop ways of ensuring that trusted information was pushed to the top.
“They were using climate change as a good test bed, because it was fairly clear who the good and bad actors were, but he was sacked and Twitter became the wild west,” Maslin said.
Maslin said he would stay on the platform and push back against conspiracy theories with scientific evidence.
“I want people to understand there are solutions,” he said. “There is a real need for us to be on social media defending the truth, however nasty the responses get.”
Not all scientists have found standing up to regular hostility an easy feat. Doug McNeall, a statistician working on climate change at the Met Office Hadley Centre at the University of Exeter n the UK, said he had blocked or muted many accounts on Twitter even before Musk’s arrival.
“I got to the point where it was definitely affecting my mental health,” McNeall said.
“I spent years debating quite strongly with climate skeptics, including people I assume were paid, but there can be a real personal cost interacting over a long time with people who are abusing you,” he said.
McNeall said it was hard for scientists to work out how to cut through the false information on Twitter.
“I just can’t tell if people are seeing disinformation or getting good scientific information about what is happening,” he said. “That’s really worrying.”
Ed Hawkins, professor of climate science at Reading University, who has 94,000 Twitter followers, said he had seen a “huge increase” in tweets from climate-denier accounts, often involving conspiracy theories or long-debunked topics.
“A larger fraction of the comments are personal and abusive,” Hawkins said. “Any mildly popular tweet from a climate scientist is now targeted for a barrage of replies.”
Hawkins has noticed that many denier accounts have paid subscriptions to Twitter and therefore appear higher up in the replies.
“It appears to be a coordinated effort [by climate change deniers] to make it appear as though climate denial is more prevalent than it really is,” he said.
Richard Betts, chair of climate impacts at Exeter University and head of climate impacts at the Hadley Centre, said: “Outright hostility has increased in recent weeks. It’s mostly just people saying you’re talking rubbish. They don’t want a conversation.”
A survey of 468 international climate scientists published by campaign group Global Witness last month found that prominent scientists were the most likely to face abuse, with half of those who had published at least 10 papers reporting they had suffered online harassment as a result of their climate work. One in eight female scientists who reported abuse had been threatened with sexual violence.
Twitter was approached for comment, but did not respond.
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
As the new year dawns, Taiwan faces a range of external uncertainties that could impact the safety and prosperity of its people and reverberate in its politics. Here are a few key questions that could spill over into Taiwan in the year ahead. WILL THE AI BUBBLE POP? The global AI boom supported Taiwan’s significant economic expansion in 2025. Taiwan’s economy grew over 7 percent and set records for exports, imports, and trade surplus. There is a brewing debate among investors about whether the AI boom will carry forward into 2026. Skeptics warn that AI-led global equity markets are overvalued and overleveraged
RSS