Where do the climate scientists post?

It is clear to me that Twitter in in decline, but not everyone seems to have noticed. So when a close friend of mine mentioned that climate scientists have largely moved to Bluer Skies, I saw an opportunity to turn gut feeling into something concrete.

To do so I hand checked the social presence of 120num_scientists(Count) climate scientists found on Reuters' "The Hot List". For each scientist I recorded their most prominent academic webpage, whether it linked to social media, and any Twitter/Bluesky presences I could find. I recorded my findings in the attached Prolog database and wrote queries to collect the following data.

All the data and queries exist in a single file. You can download it directly or play with it online, here.

Findings

The majority of climate scientists, 61%num_scientists_without_social_media(N, R), do not have a public social media presence. While I don't have direct evidence, I get the sense that many established scientists have more important things to do than post on microblogging platforms. Good for them.

Of the 47num_scientists_with_social_media(N, R) scientists who maintain social media presence, the majority post to Bluesky over Twitter. Bluesky accounts are more common and significantly more active. While 32 scientists maintain Twitter accounts, 22social_media(S, twitter, H), recent_post(twitter, H, date(Y,_,_)), Y < 2026 of them haven't posted in 2026. Compare that Bluesky activity, where 28aggregate_all(count, (social_media(S, bluesky, H), recent_post(bluesky, H, date(2026, _, _))), Count) out of 34aggregate_all(count, S, social_media(S, bluesky, _), C) Bluesky accounts have posted in the last year.

Most scientists do not link to their social media pages from their research pages. A few do (18website(S, W), links(W, P)). A small number of pages contained links to inactive Twitter accounts. In somes cases scientists link to their Twitter which then forwards users to their Bluesky. Perhaps in the future these pages can link directly to Bluesky.

What's striking to me is how active climate scientists are on Bluesky. Often when finding their profiles I would see posts that were only a few hours old.

Exercises in Prolog

This data set offers a gentle introduction to Prolog. Here are some challenges for the reader. Expanding each section will reveal an answer:

scientist(S).

scientist(S), social_media(S, twitter, H).

scientist(S), website(S, W), links(W, P), social_media(S, P, H).

scientist(S), inactive(S, twitter), social_media(S, bluesky, H),
recent_post(bluesky, H, date(Y, M, D), Y=2026, M>5.