Hear, hear! It's hearing season in government buildings across the country, and Republicans are running the House of Representatives like a clown show, with hearings on permitting reform proposals to gut bedrock environmental protections that will go nowhere in an otherwise Democratically-controlled DC. The hearings will make it seem like they're working hard, just like a bill markup session they held yesterday.
But adults are doing important work elsewhere. For example, climate hawk Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has the gavel of the Senate Budget Committee, and today he is convening a hearing on the economic risk that climate change poses to coastal communities.
And yesterday, the European Union's "Special Committee on foreign interference in all democratic processes in the European Union, including disinformation" held a lengthy hearing, with three experts speaking on climate disinformation.
Longtime climate disinformation researcher John Cook gave a great overview of climate disinformation narratives and measurements of what type of content is being spread online. In response to a question about the efficacy of attacks on scientists, the most common type of disinformation his research has found, Cook explained that it's the scientists harassed are the ones who publish the most impactful and persuasive studies, having the chilling effect of wasting researchers’ time and slowing them down, and giving people an excuse to deny the science.
Cambridge psychologist Jon Roozenbeek made his point plainly and repeatedly, right from the title of his presentation: "The most harmful climate disinformation is partly true." He started with the example of the tobacco industry's disinformation playbook, as exposed in 1994 when "Mr. Butts" sent 4,000 tobacco docs to researchers. The tobacco industry used three tactics: sowing doubt about the science, counter-attacking scientists, and not lying too much so that their position remained defensible.
The fossil fuel industry has, as we well know, followed the same playbook. That led Roozenbeek to three main conclusions: Climate disinfo is a serious rhetorical strategy; this strategy primarily targets policymakers, which is why disinfo needs to feel truthy; and that climate disinfo is used as a tactic in public relations campaigns to delay and soften climate legislation.
He told the EU policymakers it is a "mistake to assume that many of these arguments are made in good faith" because "the point is not to have an honest discussion about the best way to fight climate change."
Next, disinformation expert Jennie King of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue explained how disinformation warps public understanding of issues and makes it more difficult "to build a public mandate based on credible science" to meet the EU's policy commitments.
COVID-19 was a "crucible" for the digital disinformation ecosystem, and "the trauma of that period is being weaponized by climate deniers," who cultivated new conspiratorial audiences with vaccine denial. White supremacists and anti-Semites found the narrative around COVID lockdowns to be "fertile soil" for spreading hate and "mobilizing a more general public audience" of people who haven’t been exposed to these narratives in this way before.
King told the European Parliament members that there is a widespread "erosion of trust" in elected bodies, scientists, media, etc., with a "mass of baseless claims and propaganda" drowning out legitimate questions and concerns about climate policy.
She explained how the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition has found that the spread of disinformation is being "fueled and compounded by weaknesses" in online platforms, as vulnerabilities allow mis/disinfo to rise to the top and dominate discussions of climate policy, at a time when the IPCC says there is "a brief and rapidly closing window to act."
Flaws in online spaces are exploited by fossil fuel companies, those with vested interests, and hostile actors who see climate as another axis to spread distrust, drive division, and weaken democratic processes in the EU and around the world.
Between the three Big Tech problems related to advertising, monetization, and amplification, social media has "created a funding model" for disinformation that goes beyond the disinfo that is funded directly by the industry and by conservative billionaires. Thanks to how easy it is to game social media with outlandish claims and vile hate speech, social media companies have turned disinformation "into a viable business model."
So while it may be a tall order to get Big Oil to stop using the Big Tobacco playbook, the least companies like Google and Facebook could do, if they're not too busy bragging about how much they care about climate change, is not help disinfluencers make money from lying to users.
