Pirate's Cove

See, everything that does not conform to doomsday cult doctrine is “misinformation”

Social Media Is a Growing Vehicle for Climate Misinformation

A few weeks ago, delegates from nearly 200 nations met for the 29th United Nations climate summit (COP29) in Azerbaijan, where they discussed how best to reduce emissions to slow dangerous global warming. Meanwhile, a separate global forum was playing out online, dedicated to undermining the conference, promoting oil and gas and denying humans’ role in climate change.

A new report, published on Friday by international nonprofit Global Witness, found that climate misinformation and disinformation spread unchecked on TikTok during COP29, mostly in user comments on videos. The users they identified denied man-made global warming and rebuked efforts to combat it, claiming that climate change is a “lie” or “hoax.”

Again, would those be the 40,000+ who took fossil fueled trips? You know they did not bike or walk there, and taking the train would be extremely arduous. If the current warm period is mostly/solely caused by mankind then why did all these people take fossil fueled trips? Anyway, how dare you peasants have the ability to speak your mind!

In recent years, social media platforms like X, Facebook and even LinkedIn have emerged as efficient vehicles to spread this type of inaccurate rhetoric as quickly as climate-fueled wildfires. Online influencers and prominent political figures, particularly President-elect Donald Trump, have fanned these flames on social media, a worrisome trend as trust in science and journalists continues in some communities to plummet, experts say.

It couldn’t be, bare with me here, that cult scientists have shown themselves to be in the tank for the cult, that their “findings” are more like Madam Zelda reading your palm, and that most of their prognostications fail, right? That pretty much everything they predict is utter doom, and it helps get them more government money, meaning this is government propaganda, right?

This tracks with my colleague Bob Berwyn’s recent reporting from the conference, during which U.N. officials launched an initiative to combat climate misinformation at an international scale. Berwyn pointed out that after Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X) in 2022, the tech mogul reinstated accounts that had been banned for spreading disinformation about climate and other topics. Since then, the number of accounts amplifying climate denial have proliferated, with high-profile users reaching millions of people per post.

Government that won’t let you have your say and tries to shut those guilty of Wrongthink down are what kinds of governments? If the climate cult’s “science” is so weak that they cannot rebut people with scientific facts than maybe this is a cult, not a science.