Facebook starts debunking myths about climate change in its information hub

Facebook launched a new information center last year in an effort to connect people to science-based climate information. The Climate Science Information Center came after Facebook took a lot of flak from Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Tom Carper, Brian Schatz, and Sheldon Whitehouse for a "loophole" in its climate fact-checking program.

Now, the information hub has received new improvements and is expanding to more countries. Facebook announced today that the center now has a new section where false claims about climate change are debunked. The new destination highlights common climate myths such as how global warming contributes to the reduced population of polar bears and false claims about the harmful effects of too much carbon dioxide for plants. Facebook has teamed up with experts from the George Mason University, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, and the University of Cambridge to quash these claims with current facts.

Facebook is also expanding the information center to Belgium, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Spain, South Africa, and Taiwan starting today. It's already available in the U.S., France, Germany, and the UK. In case the hub isn't available in your country yet, the service will soon connect you to the UN Environment Programme when you search for climate-related terms to help you find authoritative information about the climate crisis.

In addition, the social networking site is now labeling posts about climate change in the UK with a banner that brings users to its climate information hub. The feature will go live in other countries soon.

The new features mark Facebook's latest effort to remove lies about climate change from its platform, similar to how it addressed COVID-19 myths last year with the launch of its COVID-19 Information Center. However, it remains to be seen how the company will handle posts containing op-ed articles about climate change with little scientific basis, which was the main point of contention by a number of legislators last year.