The Brief

Communities big and small are trying to rein in climate change. But many people working on these climate solutions are running into a big obstacle: falsehoods and conspiracy theories about their work. So what does this mean for fighting global warming?

To talk about the current state of climate disinformation, we checked in with three NPR reporters who have reported on climate, disinformation and the media — and they can answer our questions: Climate solutions reporter Julia Simon, media correspondent David Folkenflik, and reporter Huo Jingnan, who writes about conspiracy theories among other things.

This was adapted from a roundtable discussion on All Things Considered.

What kind of false narratives about climate are we talking about?

Julia Simon: Climate disinformation in the past — sometimes paid for by fossil fuel interests — often related to false ideas that global warming is a scam or that the threat is overblown. Those falsehoods are still around, but what we're seeing a lot more of these days are attacks on climate solutions even if we don't always know who funds them. Think attacks on renewables. False ideas that wind turbines cause cancer or cause birth defects in animals. Disinformation may be spreading because solutions are really spreading.

For instance, this weekend we'll have a story about a trend in urban planning called 15-minute cities — designing cities so that you access amenities in a short walk, bike ride or trip on public transport. Now there's a conspiracy theory saying that this is a way to restrict people's movement or to trap people in an open-air prison.

Podcaster Joe Rogan spoke about it on his show last month. "You'll essentially be contained unless you get permission to leave," Rogan said, "That's the idea they're starting to roll out in Europe."

That is false.

Earlier this week the U.K. transport minister Mark Harper used some of the language of conspiracy theories when talking about 15-minute cities at the conservative Tory party conference. "What is sinister and what we shouldn't tolerate," Harper said, "is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops."

It is false that local governments in the U.K. are deciding how often citizens can go shopping.

Huo Jingnan: The false narrative surrounding 15-minute cities is but one part of a larger sprawling conspiracy theory called the Great Reset. The theory goes that a shadowy global elite — often Jewish — wants to strip away ordinary people's freedoms and make us live a life of deprivation. Under this theory, 15-minute cities are a ploy to take away people's freedom to move around.

More about false narratives about climate change:

• An activist group is spreading misinformation to stop solar projects in rural America
• Misinformation is derailing renewable energy projects across the United States
• How rumors and conspiracy theories got in the way of Maui's fire recovery

The buildings of downtown Los Angeles are partially obscured because of smog.

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What is the role of the media in all this?

David Folkenflik: Different kinds of false information spread in different ways. But if you're considering misleading claims about climate — that's predominantly on the right. And that involves an information ecosphere defined by Joe Rogan, as we heard above, but also Alex Jones, Breitbart, the Daily Wire, the Daily Mail, the New York Post, and above all Fox News.

The funny thing is they are at once testers and popularizers of things that have gotten some traction online, and then you hear prominent figures on the right picking up the melody.

Back when he was on Fox earlier this year, Tucker Carlson made utterly unsubstantiated claims about dead whales coming ashore on New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts beaches.

Folkenflik: But you hear versions of it from former President Donald Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — once it passes audition, it makes the rounds.

More about the role of media:

• After a deadly Capitol riot, Fox News stays silent on stars' incendiary rhetoric
• Tucker Carlson built an audience for conspiracies at Fox. Where does it go now?
• Conspiracy theories are having a moment. It's bad for democracy

How does fear-mongering affect the actual implementation of climate solutions?

Huo: It is a distraction from the issues we need to work on. If these narratives ring true to you, you might think that climate activists aren't really talking about climate but about something else, so much so they could be secret agents of the government trying to take away your freedom.

One interesting example of a strawman here is one of the subplots of the great reset conspiracy theory, which is that the government wants to force people to eat insects. Including insects in the human diet has been an idea on the edges of climate circles. The mainstream idea is simply to eat less meat. But it attracted more attention over the years because many news outlets — including NPR — are easily intrigued by the idea of eating something seen as exotic.

And that gets turned into raw material for conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones in March 2022:

Simon: And a muddied information landscape about climate solutions can sometimes complicate the process of getting them enacted, says Jennie King, head of climate research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

"In the end, it actually doesn't matter if 99% of the public believe in climate change," King says, "if you're able to embed real fear and seeds of doubt about the solutions that are on the table you end up with the same outcome, which is no legislative agenda, no meaningful policy proposals, no local action."

More about how fear-mongering affects solutions:

• From 4chan to international politics, a bug-eating conspiracy theory goes mainstream
• Gas stoves became part of the culture wars within a week. Here's why

What sort of impact do these conspiracy theories have on the people in the field trying to work on climate solutions?

Simon: I met with Carlos Moreno, a Franco-Colombian professor who developed this idea of the 15-minute city — these more walkable, bikeable neighborhoods that conspiracy theorists think are preludes to open-air prisons. Moreno says he's gotten death threats, and so have other scientists and researchers.

Moreno says the attacks give his colleagues a reluctance to publish articles about their work. And he says this is what the conspiracy theorists want: to silence them. And we've seen harassment and threats based on conspiracy theories targeting climate scientists and meteorologists for years.

More on the impact of conspiracy theories:

• Maui residents grapple with rumors about the fire and aid as they try to rebuild
• A meteorologist got threats for his climate coverage. His new job is about solutions

Can anything break the cycle of disinformation or rumors?

Folkenflik: It's not in the interest of Fox News and others who benefit financially from stoking outrage and, by and large, also have partisan rooting interests. In a few instances, there have been defamation cases against those media outlets — but those all come from specific people and institutions who claim they've been knowingly harmed and defamation law isn't going to solve the wider issue of spreading false claims about climate research and solutions.

For other journalists and others, it's tricky — you do need to address falsehoods and fact-check them. But by fact-checking, you're also sometimes elevating these ideas that may not get widespread currency. News organizations, including NPR, generally try to balance those imperatives as they plan out coverage.

Huo: When it comes to social media, the platforms can change how they label, recommend and moderate content to change what users see and how they interact with platforms. Studies by researchers who were able to run experiments on Facebook and Instagram during the 2020 election showed that changing the algorithm changes user behavior, sometimes leading to less time spent on the platforms.

There's also a practice called pre-bunking, like a form of inoculation against bad information, which has two strands. One way involves preventatively unraveling specific false claims before they reach a critical mass. Another is essentially news literacy training, to help equip people with tools to evaluate such claims critically. These things have to be done in a way that appeals to the people they're trying to reach, not patronize them, and also acknowledge that known facts sometimes change, as they have for COVID-19.

While we do not have enough experimental studies on altering platform design to draw conclusions beyond specific interventions, experts in the field place hope in them. A lot of people put stock in hearing from those they trust (like friends) and those they admire (like influencers and celebrities). And they need to absorb it in settings where they seek such content out. That said, some major platforms are dialing back how much news they serve up and how much attention they want to spend on moderating. There's no single easy or widely embraced answer yet.

More on disinformation and rumors:

• False information is everywhere. 'Pre-bunking' tries to head it off early
• Seth Rich's killing was exploited on Fox News and online. His parents are fed up
• Fake news: How to spot misinformation

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame announced its 2026 class of inductees on Monday night, a list of eight performers that includes an R&B legend, a heavy metal band and a drummer-turned-frontman whose music dominated mainstream pop-rock in the 1980s.

In recent years, the Rock Hall has expanded its definition of rock icons to include artists from a wider range of genres and backgrounds. The basic rules for induction have remained the same, though:

Artists become eligible for nomination 25 years after the release of their first commercial recording (in other words, artists whose debuts came out in 2001 are newly eligible this year). There are four different categories of inductees:

• Performers whose music and cultural impact has changed the course of rock and roll. 
• Influential musicians whose innovative styles have propelled cultural change, which this year includes key innovative voices in African and Latin music. 
• A "musical excellence" award designated for writers, producers and session musicians who have played a key role in rock history.
• The Ahmet Ertegun award, honoring industry professionals who are not performers but have made a significant impact on the business of music. 

The official induction ceremony will take place on Nov. 14 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. It will be streamed on ABC and Disney+ in December.

Performer Category

Phil Collins
Even though he was inducted into the Rock Hall as a member of Genesis in 2010, it was Collins' solo career, especially a string of hits in the 1980s, that helped turn him into one of the most commercially successful artists of that decade. The drummer-turned-singer is widely known for popularizing the "gated snare" recording technique — which cut off the lingering reverb from the drums — and resulted in an explosive sound that became a signature sound of the era. Collins' career spans over five decades and has earned him a long list of accolades, including an Academy Award for best original song in 2000 for "You'll Be In My Heart" from Disney's Tarzan.

Billy Idol
The British rocker Billy Idol enters the Rock Hall on his second nomination. Known for hits like "Dancing with Myself," "Rebel Yell" and "White Wedding," the bleach-blonde singer's punk rock attitude continues to reach fans around the world more than four decades since the release of his debut solo album.

Iron Maiden
Heavy metal fans rejoice! Iron Maiden is finally being inducted into the Rock Hall on its third nomination. Since the 1980s, the band has been redefining heavy rock with anthemic storytelling, full-throttle instrumentation and spooky iconography. Different iterations of the band's mascot, Eddie, have appeared on Iron Maiden's album covers and merch for decades, becoming a key fixture of a particular strain of teen rebellion.

Joy Division/New Order
After three nominations, Joy Division and New Order are entering the Rock Hall under a joint induction, recognizing the link between the groups. Both bands featured guitarist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris, who were forced to reimagine their sound after the death of singer and songwriter Ian Curtis in 1980. Joy Division's moody post-punk sound, which featured the baritone vocals of Curtis, gave way to New Order's more electronic, dance-driven rhythms, which proved massively popular in the 1980s.

Oasis
Today is gonna be the day that Oasis gets into the Rock Hall. (Well, November 14 will be the actual day.) The Britpop group, led by brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher, has had a resurgence since their highly-anticipated reunion tour last year (which briefly broke Ticketmaster and had fans on both sides of the Atlantic crying their hearts out).

Sade
The English band named for lead vocalist Sade Adu changed the sonic landscape of the 1980s and '90s with its blend of jazz, soul and R&B. The velvety, intimate quality of Sade's music echoes across generations of artists, from Drake to Adele, and has now earned the group Rock Hall inductee status.

Luther Vandross
After starting his career as a background vocalist for stars including David Bowie, Roberta Flack, Stevie Wonder and many more, Luther Vandross became an R&B and soul legend under his own name, thanks to the sheer power of his voice beginning in the 1980s. (He was also a producer for A-listers like Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin and Diana Ross.) With over a dozen studio albums, his influence has reached across generations to stars including Beyoncé, Alicia Keys and most recently, Kendrick Lamar, who named one of the biggest hits of 2025 after him. Vandross will be inducted after his first Rock Hall nomination.

Wu-Tang Clan
You can see the Rock Hall's effort to expand the definition of rock icons in past years particularly strongly when it comes to the hip-hop acts it inducts. At least one act from the genre — including the Notorious B.I.G., Missy Elliott, A Tribe Called Quest and Jay-Z — each year since 2020. Considering Wu-Tang Clan's collective and individual output, which spans more than 30 years and expanded the East Coast's mark on the genre with references to vintage kung-fu movies and dark humor, it's no wonder the Rock Hall is finally giving the Staten Island crew its long-deserved flowers.

Early Influence Award

Celia Cruz
The Cuban singer, widely known as The Queen of Salsa, becomes the first primarily Spanish-language artist to be inducted into the Rock Hall. After rising through the ranks of Havana's music scene in the 1950s, Cruz left her home country in exile and eventually landed in New York City, where she became one of the most prominent voices of the legendary salsa label, Fania Records.

Fela Kuti
At the end of the 1960s and into the '70s, the Nigerian singer and political activist helped create the Afrobeat genre by combining West African highlife with elements of jazz and funk. Known for his electrifying, unconventional live performances, the multi-instrumentalist is the Rock Hall's first African pop star.

Queen Latifah
Queen Latifah was only 19 years old when she released her debut album, All Hail the Queen, in 1989. Female empowerment has been at the forefront of her music and image since the beginning of her career. With songs like "Ladies First" and "U.N.I.T.Y.," Queen Latifah changed the landscape of male-dominated rap; alongside her music career, she has found arguably greater success as an actor.

MC Lyte
Another teenage pioneer in the world of hip-hop, the Brooklyn-raised rapper gained popularity with socially-conscious lyricism that tackled issues including street violence and drug addiction.

Gram Parsons
Gram Parsons played with The Byrds and helped spearhead the band's seminal country rock album Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which came out in 1968 — but he was technically considered a "sideman" and not a full member of the band. That's why Parsons was not inducted alongside his bandmates when The Byrds entered the Rock Hall in 1991. Now, the Americana visionary — who recorded a pair of celebrated and influential solo albums that featured duets with Emmylou Harris and also played with the Flying Burrito Brothers and the International Submarine Band — gets his due for melding folk, Southern twang and rock and roll before his death at the age of 26, in 1973.

Musical Excellence Award

Linda Creed
In the 1970s, Linda Creed wrote and produced love songs that would come to define the sound of Philadelphia soul, including the Stylistics' hits "Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)" and "You Are Everything," both of which were later covered by Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye. After being diagnosed with cancer at age 26, Creed wrote the song "The Greatest Love of All." Whitney Houston's rendition of the song would go on to top Billboard's Hot 100 chart shortly after Creed's death in 1986.

Arif Mardin
Arif Mardin's producer credits span more than four decades and dozens of legendary collaborations, including with Aretha Franklin, the Bee Gees, John Prine and Norah Jones. Born in Turkey, Mardin started working at Atlantic Records in the early 1960s and eventually became an executive and one of the label's most reliable hitmakers.

Jimmy Miller
Jimmy Miller signed a recording contract as a singer before finding his true calling behind the console, particularly for his work with the Rolling Stones across five albums: Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St. and Goats Head Soup. Known for encouraging and harnessing a group's raw, live energy in recording sessions, the producer left an indelible mark on the sound of rock and roll in the 1960s and '70s.

Rick Rubin
Rick Rubin co-founded Def Jam Recordings while studying film and television at New York University. He went on to turn the label into a powerhouse of 1980s and '90s hip-hop, producing and releasing albums by acts including LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Run-DMC and Public Enemy. He later founded the label American Recordings and served as co-president of Columbia Records. Since the founding of American Recordings, and particularly in his work with Johnny Cash, Rubin has become known for his skill in musical subtraction — paring down a recording to its essential elements.

Ahmet Ertegun Award

Ed Sullivan
He began his career as a sports journalist, but in 1948, Sullivan became the host of a television program — originally called Toast of the Town and later renamed The Ed Sullivan Show — that was welcomed into millions of people's living rooms every week. Sullivan's show widely introduced Americans to countless musicians, including Elvis Presley, The Jackson 5, The Supremes and, maybe most famously, The Beatles, whose first appearance on his show, in February 1964, was, at the time, one of the most-watched programs in history.
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The website Your AI Slop Bores Me takes its name from a meme people on social media use to criticize AI-generated content. The site — a fake AI chatbot — has only been around for about a month. But its creator, Mihir Maroju, said it's already received more than 25 million unique visitors and nearly 280 million total hits.

"People are spending hours on the site," the 17-year-old high school graduate in Puducherry, India said in an interview with NPR. "I didn't really expect it to be so addictive."

As with real AI chatbots like Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT, anyone can submit a request for an image or information by typing it into the youraislopbores.me interface. But in this case, the response doesn't come from an algorithm — just another human.

The joy of playing AI chatbot dress-up

More than one third of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT, according to a June 2025 Pew Research study. People are not only deploying AI chatbots for everything from planning trips to doing homework assignments — they are also having fun impersonating them.

"Someone asked me to draw a bat eating a strawberry," said San Francisco-based cartoonist Amy Kurzweil, author of the chatbot-oriented graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story, of her interactions on youraislopbores.me. "That was really fun." The site forces its human users to approximate the speed at which a machine would return a response; there's a 75-second time limit. So drawings, created with a mouse or finger on a trackpad, have a necessarily slapdash look.

Amy Kurzweil created her drawing of a bat eating a strawberry in response to a request on Your AI Slop Bores Me

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In addition to responding to queries, Kurzweil said she's also enjoyed asking questions through the site. "I asked someone what they were reading. They said they were reading Twisted Hate, but they liked Twisted Games more." (Kurzweil said the exchange inspired her to look these titles up — they're part of a romance series by Ana Huang.)

With its old-school Comic Sans MS font — a staple of websites in the late 1990s and early 2000s — the cartoonist said Your AI Slop Bores Me inspires nostalgia for a time when the Internet was, for the most part, a lively, friendly place.

"I do think that people are reaching a point of frustration with the Internet being flooded with non-humans," Kurzweil said. "So I think people are having fun reclaiming some of the magic of the early Internet, just for the little joy of connection."

When NPR's Chloe Veltman asked youraislopbores.me a question about pink pompoms, an anonymous human provided a delightful response.

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Because the digital landscape has changed a lot since the late 1990s, Your AI Slop Bores Me's administrators said they have implemented tools that try to flag and filter out harmful or illegal contributions. "We had a lot of spam and people exploiting loopholes in the site," Maroju said. "Of late, we haven't had those issues.

The users of the site know their questions will be answered by humans. If its URL doesn't make this clear, the two tabs users can select from on the homepage — "human" and "larp as ai" (which means humans get to "Live Action Role-Play" as AI) — certainly do.

When the user doesn't know it's fake

But some parts of the AI-bot-dressup universe, such as Ben Palmer's brand of comedy, operate under different rules.

In a deadpan, 2023 skit on YouTube, the Nashville-based comedian talks about a fake ChatGPT website he set up not long after the real ChatGPT took off.

"Sometimes people end up on the website thinking that they're writing to the actual ChatGPT. But they're writing to me," he explains. Palmer goes on to describe his back and forth with a user in China — where the actual ChatGPT has been banned since 2023 — who unwittingly finds themselves on the comedian's fake version:

"They asked me to write an article on global climate change. And I tried to tell them that this isn't the real ChatGPT; it's a joke. And they wrote back and said, 'This is no joke.' And I gave them the address to the real ChatGPT, and said, 'I'm too lazy to write an article.' And they said, 'I need your help.'"

Palmer goes on to explain how he asks the real ChatGPT to write the requested article, which he then sends on to the user. He finally uses AI to translate the text, also at the user's request, into Chinese.

In an interview with NPR, Palmer said he set up a bunch of fake AI text and image generation sites with URLs very similar to the names of the real AI websites. He says some users would get angry when they realized they were being pranked by a human. But others played along. "They would keep going because they were now being entertained," he said.

The dark side 

The comedian said most of his sites have been pulled down from various platforms. He admitted there's a dark side to disguising himself as a bot. For example, he has declined to fulfill requests for sexually explicit content.

Palmer said his aim is to remind people that the Internet should be a messy, vibrant place — not one overrun by soulless corporations. "I want to see how people react when they think that they're talking to an AI and it goes off the rails," he said. "Sometimes they might surprise you."

"As more and more people embrace AI, it's naturally starting to show up across pop culture," said ChatGPT maker OpenAI in an email to NPR. "We love seeing how people are bringing ChatGPT into their daily lives, and the humor that comes with it is part of what makes that so fun."

San Francisco-based angel investor Brianne Kimmel, who has backed several AI agent startups, concurs.

"Humans pretending to be AI — that's great sketch comedy. But it doesn't mean we're going to use the technology less," Kimmel said. "It just means we recognize that there's a very clear language that's evolving around how we communicate with bots that's distinct from how we communicate with each other."

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