How PragerU Built a Climate Disinformation Empire
Before producing a series of videos on climate change, the nonprofit received millions from two fossil fuel billionaires
In 2009, Dennis Prager and Allen Estrin started a nonprofit, PragerU, with an ambitious goal: Change the minds of millions of Americans. At the time, both men were frustrated by what they saw as a left-leaning education system. They wanted to build a conservative university to educate the masses.
But they quickly ran into a major obstacle.
“Just to get started would be $250 million,” Estrin told The New York Times. “You have to buy property, a building, do a faculty, years to start, years to raise money, and then at the end what do you have? One thousand students in the first graduating class?”
Estrin, who had become obsessed with the medium of internet video, proposed an alternative strategy. Rather than build a brick-and-mortar university, PragerU could produce and promote 5-minute educational videos online.
Over the next 14 years, PragerU would go on to produce hundreds of videos on topics ranging from climate change to critical race theory. Their 5-minute videos would be viewed more than 5 billion times, rivaling the reach of the world’s largest media companies.
They would also produce some of the most viewed climate disinformation videos on the internet.
Fracking billionaires gave PragerU $6.25 million in seed funding
It took a few years for PragerU to find the distribution strategy that would eventually define the organization’s success. Early on, they spent almost all of their money on production, often shooting videos in expensive studios.
Estrin thought if they made polished videos they would easily go viral. Instead their first videos only reached a few thousand people.
In 2012, three years after starting the nonprofit, Estrin—a former screenwriter—stumbled upon a key insight. “It hit me. We were violating a basic Hollywood rule…You need to spend as much on marketing as you do on production,” he told the Daily Wire.
But at that time, PragerU didn’t have much money to spend on marketing. In 2011, the nonprofit brought in $398,847 in revenue according to IRS filings. The following year, they brought in $523,785.
Estrin believed that promoting their videos on new digital platforms like Facebook and Google could change the minds of millions of people. He just didn’t have the money to do it.
The next year, that changed. In 2013, PragerU received a $6.25 million grant commitment from Dan and Farris Wilks, two brothers from Texas who had recently sold their natural gas fracking company for $3.5 billion.
Shortly after receiving money from the Wilks brothers, PragerU launched a series of videos on climate change and energy.
One video titled “Do 97% of Climate Scientists Really Agree?” features Alex Epstein, a consultant to fossil fuel companies, who falsely claims that only 2% of climate scientists believe humans cause climate change. The source of this claim is a comment on a 400 word blog post. The video quickly racked up 6.1 million views on YouTube and Facebook.
In another video, “Fossil Fuels: Greener than You Think”, Epstein falsely claims that fossil fuels improve air and water quality. He backs this up by showing the correlation between rising fossil fuel production and declining air pollution in the United States. Left unmentioned is the fact that fossil fuel pollution kills more than 8 million people every year.
According to PragerU’s Form 990s, two members of the Wilks family were on the board in 2015 and 2016 when they started publishing videos on energy and climate change.
Since then the nonprofit has produced 23 five-minute videos on climate change and the environment. Many of them, like “Are Electric Cars Really Green” and “Can We Rely on Wind and Solar Energy?” make false or misleading claims about clean energy.
Other videos, like “The Truth About CO2” and “What They Haven't Told You about Climate Change,” make claims that contradict the scientific consensus on the causes of climate change.
According to an analysis by Distilled, the 23 videos have 108 million views on YouTube and Facebook.
PragerU used Facebook and Google ads to reach millions
For years PragerU has used Facebook and Google to promote its videos to young viewers.
According to Facebook’s Ad Library, the nonprofit spent $19,952,885 on the platform between May 2018 and December 2022. Google doesn’t release data on its advertisers, but according to PragerU’s IRS filings, they spent $4.5 million on Google and YouTube ads in 2021.
In December 2021, PragerU spent $7,000 promoting its video titled “Do 97% of scientists really agree?” on Facebook. With that spending, the video reached more than 600,000 people.
That same month, PragerU spent $5,000 promoting a video titled “The Truth about CO2.” The ad reached more than one million people.
Eventually activists pressured both companies to change their misinformation policies.
In February 2022, Facebook announced it would no longer let advertisers promote videos related to “sensitive topics” like climate change. Since then, PragerU has pivoted to promoting videos that claim renewable energy is unreliable and bad for the environment.
In December 2022, PragerU spent $4,000 promoting one of their videos featuring Mark Mills, a fellow at Manhattan Institute. Fossil fuel companies have given Manhattan Institute millions of dollars in donations to spread climate misinformation. In the video, Mills claims that in order to power modern society in the future we’ll need fossil fuels. “If you think we can get it all from wind and solar, dream on,” he says.
PragerU has also promoted a video titled “The Great Texas Freeze.” The video features an executive from Texas Public Policy Foundation, a fossil fuel-funded think tank; it falsely claims that renewable energy was the main cause of the 2021 blackouts that killed hundreds. A federal investigation found that the blackouts were largely caused by frozen natural gas infrastructure. PragerU’s video has received more than two million views across YouTube and Facebook.
In October 2021, Google announced that it would “prohibit ads for content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”
But according to an analysis by Distilled, PragerU’s climate misinformation videos are still being promoted on the platform.
One ad currently running on the platform reads, “What Causes Global Warming?” The ad takes users to a video titled “Climate Change: What Do Scientists Say?” The video claims “There are many reasons why the climate changes…and there is no evidence that CO2 emissions are the dominant factor.”
This, too, is false. 99.9% of climate scientists agree that CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions from human activities like burning fossil fuels are responsible for the vast majority of recent warming.
Two other ads read “Climate Change - What Do Scientists Say?” and “Is the Climate Crisis Real - The Truth Unveiled.” Both ads take users to the same video claiming there is no evidence that CO2 causes climate change.
As of December 2022, six Google ads were still promoting the video. It has been viewed 13.9 million times.
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I hope that you can get many views for this video. Can you spend a lot on marketing as PragerU has done? (well, a guy can hope, right?)
Facebook prohibits advertisers from displaying "sensitive topics" but then it goes on to say they are still showing climate change denial videos. Sounds like YouTube needs to get their act together to not spoil the minds of children who are viewing YouTube as their primary source of information.