Researchers with the Center for Countering Digital Hate , a US nonprofit group that studies disinformation online, examined more than 32,000 search ads on Google’s US site, paid for by major fossil fuel companies, targeting 61,000 different climate-related queries over the past two years.
“When we find content that crosses the line from policy debate or a discussion of green initiatives to promoting outright climate change denial, we remove those ads.”The study mainly focused on the world’s largest oil and gas firms — BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and Aramco — all of which have recently posted huge quarterly profits, benefiting from surging fossil fuel prices that have boosted inflation globally.
Flaring releases a cocktail of carbon dioxide, methane, and soot which pollutes the air and contributes to global warming. And Saudi oil company Aramco — one of the biggest carbon emitters in the world — has taken out Google ads calling itself “one of the lowest carbon emitters in our industry.” “We look carefully at the context in which claims are made, differentiating between content that states a false claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that claim,” he said.
Google’s ad product allows advertisers to pay the company to place an ad at the top of the search results for certain keywords.