We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Really jump in “Top Biden aide prods big tech to crack down on climate change misinformation”, Axios reports.
Gina McCarthy, President Biden’s top domestic climate adviser, said tech companies should do more to prevent the spread of inaccurate information about climate change and clean energy.
Driving the news: “The tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation,” she told Axios’ Alexi McCammond at a virtual event that aired Thursday.
“We need the tech companies to really jump in,” McCarthy said.
Who is “we”?
And what the [fossil fuel] industry is now doing is seeding, basically, doubt about the costs associated with that and whether they work or not.”
Expressing doubt about the cost of a proposed government measure, and whether it will actually work as promised? How dare they! Such dangerous speculation cannot be allowed.
Hat tip: Iain Murray.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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In the UK we get all the climate misinformation we need from the BBC.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2022/06/09/bbc-accused-of-institutional-alarmism-as-new-report-reveals-long-list-of-climate-misinformation/
Disinformation [ dis-in-fer-mey-shuhn] noun. – Any information or opinion which does not conform to the currently favored official view; or, more generally, any information or opinion which does not support the Progressive worldview. See also badthink.
I looked at the ‘about’ section on the Axios website trying to see who funds them. They are very vague and handwavy about funding sources and who has control over the organisation. Then their mission statement goes on about how transparent they are about funding sources etc. and links back to the ‘funding’ section which obscures their funding sources. It’s so low effort that it’s actually depressing.
In the near future I’m expecting the ‘about’ section of these non-profit orgs to just link to a photo of Tony Blair giving you the finger with caption “and what are you going to do about it, peasant?”
In fairness to the oil, gas, power, chemicals and agricultural businesses, they’ve been kicking this political football around for decades, mostly to try and defend their own profits, but also to prevent being tagged as the “main offenders” in the CAGW scam, which is essentially an attempt by Marxists in watermelon camouflage to undo the industrial revolution.
It was BP Oil who came up with the concept of the “carbon footprint”, which is a very personal and individualised way of looking at CO2 emission, focussed on the end consumer and glossing over intermediate CO2 generation in the upstream -> downstream -> distribution processes where probably 70% of CO2 emissions actually take place, because this focuses attention on the individual driver as the “climate criminal” rather than apportioning some or all of that on big business.
Big business does lots of Warble Gloaming PR, but the actual process of transforming crude oil, gas and coal into power, fuel, chemicals and pesticides hasn’t changed that much since Warble Gloaming was created out of whole cloth and not much else.
DISCLAIMER – I worked for decades in the Oil, Gas and Power business, mainly for BP Oil Trading.
‘…misinformation…’
Wrong word. A lie is a lie however many syllables describe it.
But these aren’t lies, disinformation or misinformation, merely facts, interpretations and opinions which are inconvenient to “those who would deign to rule over us” and contrary to the bullshit narrative that they are trying to force down our throats.
When you’ve got ACTUAL climate scientists with decades of published, peer-reviewed papers like Dr. Richard Lindzen and many, many others turning around and saying, effectively, “Warble Gloaming has no scientific basis”, yet this is dis/misinformation because it goes against the political narrative, that’s bullshit.
The scientific argument against AGW was in very large part won a decade ago, and was obviously the stronger in the decade before that, but the political argument against has gone on in major part being lost. Surface events like an election being stolen from Trump or Boris marrying an enthusiast for it may play a role – Niall optimist Kilmartin does not advise assuming we are always doomed to lose – but there are deeper causes. Observing that greater politicisation of science results in poorer science is like observing that more government control of the economy lowers output. This parallel would remain true even if the same watermelons were not active in both examples today.
I note the quote at the masthead of Stoneyground’s link (my bolding):
“The scientific argument against AGW was in very large part won a decade ago…”
I don’t think that there was a scientific case ever. Right from the start it was known that the effect of CO2 on temperature was negligible. The only way that Global Warming could be made into an issue was by positing a positive feedback loop involving water vapour. This idea had numerous flaws but they ran with it. The climategate emails demonstrated clearly that the climate alarmists were up to no good. Why was all that sculduggery necessary if they had the facts on their side? The answer of course is that they didn’t, the sceptics were right all along and I’m pretty sure that they knew it.
Yet highly intelligent and admirable men like Lord Sumption and Iain McGilchrist seem to accept catastrophic climate change as a reality. To me there is no chance they are dishonest but I would have thought that both evidence and the attitude of the so called climate scientists would give them pause. Mark me baffled.
No democratic government should ever employ the term disinformation in its public discourse. And the word misinformation should be used sparingly too, confined to clarifying points of policy the government believes to have been misreported in the media.
Disinformation should be confined to defence doctrine where, like deception, it constitutes a legitimate component of wartime military operations.
And the Left is at war against the deplorably right-wing and revolting peasants.
The Supreme Court ruled long ago that the government asking other people to censor stuff was the same as the government censoring stuff – a violation of the 1st Amendment.
But then the Biden/Harris Administration has a fanatical hatred of the Bill of Rights – 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment and-so-on.
“Climate disinformation” – as Tony Heller (realclimatscience.com) often points out, American government agencies often change historic temperature data (or present data for areas of the world where they have none – just making stuff up) in order to fit their political agenda.
If the American government really wanted to end “disinformation” (about climate or anything else) it would close itself down.
@John Galt
DISCLAIMER – I worked for decades in the Oil, Gas and Power business, mainly for BP Oil Trading.
Ah, so you are a shill for the planet destroying fascists?
It always struck me as odd that when a study or information is published that supports the use of oil is found to be sponsored by “big oil” it is discounted as self serving. But when a study or information is published that supports the increase in power an wealth of the state is sponsored by “big government” it is somehow not similarly discounted, rather it is a public service. And this is obviously true since all our experiences are that politicians and civil servants are selfless philanthropists putting aside their own goals and agendas to simply serve the best interest of the public.
God bless ’em, every one. Where is your fawning, genuflecting gratitude Galt?
Whilst the First Amendment prevents the Federal Government (to an extent) from regulating speech, perhaps a newly-expanded (I mean ‘more representative and inclusive’) Supreme Court will find that the First Amendment, being silent on the matter, and amending and so limiting governmental power, does not extend to ‘thought‘, so there is no limit on the Congress passing legislation to restrict and control thought (under the general welfare power of course).
So freedom of speech is maintained, but your thoughts can be criminalised. What your thoughts were is a matter of fact for the jury to find…