Combatting Climate Lies - 248

Many of my columns have focused on ways to sharpen our thinking skills to recognize misinformation and avoid being conned or misled. At the end of this column are a list of websites constructed and made available to verify articles and social media posts.

Abraham Lincoln believed in the American people’s ability to make wise decisions. That is if they were provided the truth. “If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts”.  President Lincoln recognized there is an obligation to deliver “real facts”.

The “great point” today is there seems no end to the industry of lying. Facts have not been respected.  Social media has become a liar’s force multiplier. It is humiliating to think the lies we read on social media may not have even been written by a human but by a machine. These manufactured lies often multiply like viruses via bots and people mindlessly clicking “like”. Computer algorithms select you or I as targets for fallacious information because our psychological profiles on their social media computers identify us as easy marks. Bringing people real facts today is one of mankind’s greatest challenges.  I wonder how President Lincoln would have met the problem of delivering citizens “real facts” today?

The European Union, unlike our government, has decided to bring their citizens more facts and less lies. The European Parliament passed the “Digital Services Act” which requires technological companies to remove illegal and harmful content or face fines. The tech companies will even be required to reveal their psychological matrices used to bend us to their will. We call these devices algorithms, and it will be extremely interesting to discover how they have been designed to manipulate us.

In the United States I doubt if any meaningful protections will be enacted as we have a first amendment which protects free speech. Thus, one can say nearly anything dishonest and scientifically unsupportable without fear of being held accountable. We do know the first amendment does not protect totally irresponsible behavior like calling, “Fire” in a crowded theater when there is no fire. But if there was a fire in a crowded theater and a villain vocally insisted against the evidence of a fire, and people needlessly died, would that be protected speech? Metaphorically our earth is on fire and whole nations of people will be displaced and many will die due to clever climate liars. In fact, this is no longer a future scenario, but one humanity is experiencing now. We do not know if liars and the digital machinery they employ to misinform us will be curtailed. Special business interests, like fossil fuel businesses and social media companies, will oppose any restrictions on dishonesty.   

Social media companies can regulate themselves and, belatedly, did so recently. Organizations that track online misinformation made an interesting observation after the January 6th assault on the capital. When the major social media companies pulled the plug and removed the former president from their platforms on January 8th, election misinformation reduced 73%.  

The bottom line is our opinions are only as accurate as we are determined to build them. We may, or may not, get some help from the government. Since climate change is now a climate crisis, largely because we have been fed amplified disinformation, we can only recognize and embrace truth by being a determined and vigilant citizen. One way to honor truth is to steer clear of liars.

The Environmental Defense Fund, (EDF) informs us a 2021 analysis identified 10 of the worst climate liars. On Facebook, these 10 accounts were accountable for nearly 70% of climate disinformation. They are: 1. Breitbart, 2. The Western Journal, 3. Newsmax, 4. Townhall Media (founded by the Exxon-Mobil-funded Heritage Foundation), 5. Media Research Center (received funding from Exxon-Mobil), 6. The Washington Times, 7. The Federalist Papers, 8. The Daily Wire, 9. Russian state media, via RT.com and Sputnik News, 10. The Patriot Post, a secretive site whose writers use pseudonyms.

Sometimes it is hard to discern if a statement is true. If you hear or read something questionable here are reputable fact checking sites which might help: 1. Climate Feedback is a worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in climate change media coverage, 2. PolitiFact is part of the nonprofit Poynter Institute, focused on politics, 3. Fact checker is run by the award-winning, fact-checking team at the Washington Post, 4. Snopes.com is one of the oldest and largest fact-checking sites online, covering anything and everything, 5. Lead Stories was co-founded by a registered Independent and a registered Republican and might appear more trustworthy to conservatives.

To make it efficient to verify articles and social media posts I suggest saving these fact check sites to your browser favorites or onto a document on your desktop. To speed the effort of downloading these sites you can go to climatelynx.com and find column 248 and digitally access these sites. Or go to the EDF Misinformation Website: edfaction.org/how-we-can-fight-misinformation

Being a truth sleuth is not easy. But if you do it, you’ll be helping save the earth and will make “Honest Abe” proud.

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