At the start of June, MSN, the world’s fourth-largest news aggregator, posted an article from a new climate-focused publication, Climate Cosmos, entitled: “Why Top Experts Are Rethinking Climate Alarmism”.
The article – by “Kathleen Westbrook M.Sc Climate Science” – cited a finding from the “Global Climate Research Institute” that “65 percent of surveyed climate professionals advocate for pragmatic, solution-focused messaging over fear-driven warnings.”
But there were a couple of major problems: the Global Climate Research Institute doesn’t exist, and nor does Kathleen Westbrook, whose profile on Climate Cosmos has now been renamed to ‘Henrieke Otte’.
The article accused those who advocate for climate action of overstating the harms caused by burning fossil fuels. It also promoted the work of Bjorn Lomborg, who has repeatedly called on governments to halt spending on climate action.
This piece was seemingly a breach of MSN’s “prohibited content” rules for posting false information, which MSN partners must abide by to access the aggregator’s huge reach of around 200 million monthly visitors. It was also posted on another U.S. news aggregator, Newsbreak.
Climate Cosmos only has a small pool of contributors, according to its website, yet pumps out multiple stories a day. To do this, it appears to be relying on the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
The first line of another piece, “What the Climate Movement Isn’t Telling You”, appeared to include a prompt – an instruction given to an AI platform.
It read: “I’ll help you write an article about ‘What the Climate Movement Isn’t Telling You’ with current facts and data. Let me search for the latest information first.”
“As technology advances, integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into our operations offers exciting opportunities to enhance the journalism at Climate Cosmos,” reads the AI disclaimer on site’s “about us” page. It also states: “we clearly disclose when AI-generated content is used”. However, Isacson’s piece included no such disclosure.
The article falsely claimed that humanity is on course to stay within the temperature goals set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, using this as a launchpad to attack the climate movement for allegedly failing to “reflect these new realities”.
Recent predictions suggest that the global average surface temperature is likely to increase to by anywhere between 1.9C and 2.9C by the end of the century, well above 1.5C limit set by the Paris Agreement.
This appears to confirm the concerns of technology experts who have warned that AI “has the potential to turbocharge climate disinformation”.
Climate Cosmos is “clearly the lowest possible level spam – they’re just trying to put out content out for some easy clicks, hence the clickbait-y titles,” said Philip Newell, communications co-chair of the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition. “AI has brought the cost of disinformation down to nothing. It has automated bullshit.”
“It appears to be mostly AI slop, rather than a concerted disinformation operation,” he said – adding that AI has “no concern for accuracy”.
Climate Cosmos posted a host of articles on MSN every day and has more than 45,000 subscribers on the aggregator. However, in July, all of its MSN content disappeared, as did all the content produced by other publications belonging to its parent company.
A spokesperson for Microsoft, which owns MSN, told DeSmog: “when we become aware of instances that violate our policies, we take action to remove them as soon as possible.”
Newsbreak did not respond to DeSmog’s request for comment.
Even despite – or perhaps because – of this historical lack of editorial rigour, Climate Cosmos has been used by multiple anti-climate campaign groups and publications.
The website’s content has been cited by the Heartland Institute, Wattsupwiththat, the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), and the American Spectator. The climate denial project CFACT also reprinted an article from Climate Cosmos on its own site.
Climate Cosmos “appears to be climate denier propaganda posing as a science blog,” said Michael E. Mann, a leading climate scientist and Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania.
The website has recently forayed into YouTube content, posting AI-generated videos that promote misleading, anti-climate narratives. Recent video titles include: “why the green energy revolution isn’t delivering”, “how renewable energy is destroying natural habitats”, “why fossil fuels are still essential”, and “wind farms: killing wildlife and scarring landscapes”.
However, the site doesn’t always take an anti-climate stance. There are many examples of Climate Cosmos articles that support climate action. However, what does seem to be a common feature of the site’s content is a hazy understanding of science. One video posted on MSN by Climate Cosmos reported on the “Top 10 snowiest cities in Hawaii” – an archipelago that rarely sees snow.
“Climate Cosmos and the wider NextVision Media portfolio are run with a clear commitment to scientific integrity,” Matthias Binder, director of Climate Cosmos and its parent company NextVision Media, told DeSmog. “Our editorial aim is to present well‑sourced information and a broad range of perspectives on climate‑related issues—an especially contested topic in the United States. We have no interest in publishing or amplifying misinformation.
“When concerns are raised about the accuracy or sourcing of a piece, we investigate immediately. The articles you referenced were taken offline as part of our ongoing quality review, and we are tightening our internal checks to ensure every author biography, citation and data point is fully verifiable before publication.
“Our editorial guidelines already require the disclosure of any significant AI assistance, and we are reinforcing that policy across all teams. Where individual items have fallen short of this standard, corrective steps have been taken and processes strengthened.
“We remain committed to updating or removing any content that does not meet our accuracy threshold, and we appreciate constructive feedback that helps us improve.”
Fact and Fiction
Matthias Binder, listed as the Climate Cosmos CEO, and its “chief scientist” Marcel Kuhn appear to be real people.
They are both registered officers at NextVision Media UG in Germany, according to the German companies register. Binder’s Linkedin profile states that he is a corporate strategist for the auto giant BMW, and Kuhn’s says he works for Siemens.
NextVision Media has a registered U.S. address in Wyoming, and runs a number of other climate and non-climate news sites, all of which have the same AI policy as Climate Cosmos.
Climate Cosmos’ Facebook page – which has 49,000 followers – states that it is managed by “Animals Around the Globe Gmbh” and was renamed from “Animal Good News” to “Climate Compass” and finally to “Climate Cosmos”. Its archive shows that it was promoting animal-related content on Facebook as recently as last year, seemingly in an attempt to boost its following.
“A tried and tested tactic is to use animal media to build an audience to look like a real account and then switch it over and do whatever you want with it,” Newell said. “It’s a technique exploited by bad actors to build popularity. You can also use ad revenue from animal sites to make the site attractive to potential buyers.”
Climate Cosmos still posts some animal content. Its website features a number of dog-related articles including “6 Human Foods Dog Owners Mistakenly Believe Are Safe”.
Animals Around the Globe Gmbh is a German media company that runs a number animal-themed Facebook pages and is linked back to a U.S. company Animal Media Group registered in Wyoming.
Animals Around the Globe Gmbh also runs the climate-related publication Weather-Fox, which has the same AI policy as all NextVision Media’s sites and appears to use AI to produce its content.
“The backbone of this kind of clickbait is the listicle,” Newell added.
Weather-Fox had more than 37,000 subscribers on MSN before all the profiles associated with NextVision and Animal Media Group were pulled from the aggregator in July.
Unclear Motives
Animals Around the Globe Media Gmbh and Animal Media Group were both founded and are run by entrepreneur Jan Otte, who invests via his company Otte Ventures. On his LinkedIn page, Otte boasts that his publications have achieved over 200 million page views and “1 billion seconds watch time per month”.
MSN, which is the default news aggregator on Microsoft operating systems, allows its news partners to monetise their content, receiving a small amount of advertising revenue for their work. NextVision Media also offers business subscriptions for support in digital publishing.
However, according to Harriet Kingaby of the Conscious Advertising Network, it is strange that Climate Cosmos and its sister sites don’t appear to run advertising directly on their platforms – “although they might be making money by tracking and selling user data.”
While Otte’s motives for running AI media companies aren’t exactly clear, his posts on X provide some clues.
He has shared many posts praising tech CEOs, lauding AI tools, and sharing advice on how to “make more money with AI agents in less than 30 mins”.
He also has reposted political content, including posts from far-right tech entrepreneur Elon Musk bemoaning the “collapse of Western civilization”, and other content suggesting that degrowth – a school of thought suggesting that the solution to climate threats is to stop the pursuit of economic growth – is akin to a “death cult”.
Much of Otte’s reposting activity has been centred around the role that AI agents could play in generating wealth for those who use them, and in radically reshaping the internet.
Ultimately we may never truly know what motivates Otte and his associates, none of whom explained to DeSmog why they continue to run these publications.
However, regardless of their motives, the growing prominence of Climate Cosmos and other AI-supported platforms speaks to the concerns of experts who warn about the technology’s ability to amplify misinformation – even unintentionally.
Artificial intelligence allows the opponents of clean energy “to more easily, cheaply and rapidly develop persuasive false content and spread it across social media, targeted advertising and search engines,” stated a CAAD report in March 2024. “If we do not (significantly) build on the early AI safety blueprints introduced in the U.S. and EU, the great promise of AI technology could result in far greater catastrophe.”
