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Open in TheBrain

COP 27 cairo 2023

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Sharm El-Sheikh,

NOTE EARLY BS ALLIES HORIZ

SEE MISINFO 2 facebook

SEE SHILL

pvt plane eco-hyp

gt reset?

bonn?

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mma 4 24 facebook

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https://www.desmog.com/2023/01/19/fossil-fuel-groups-spent-millions-on-social-media-ads-spreading-climate-disinformation-during-cop27/

fossil fuel-linked groups spent around $4 million on Facebook and Instagram ads that spread false climate claims over the COP27 summit, a new report says.

The physical presence of more than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists overshadowed the November conference in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, as world leaders, NGOs and activists gathered in a bid to accelerate global efforts to confront the climate crisis.

Analysis out today shows oil and gas interests were also busy online. Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) – the coalition behind the second “Deny, Deceive, Delay” report – has documented how PR companies, front groups and oil majors were actively spreading disinformation in the weeks leading up to and during the summit.

Researchers with the coalition’s COP27 Intelligence Unit identified over 3,700 ads sharing false claims on Facebook and Instagram, platforms owned by Meta. They also found a rise in content related to outright climate-science denial by ‘anti-woke’ pundits on Twitter, who pushed #ClimateScam and lines such as ‘climate is a hoax’.

Jennie King, head of climate research and response at the non-profit Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) think tank, which led the Intelligence Unit, said the events of 2022 had “turbocharged a global ecosystem of disinformation”.

“Russia’s war in Ukraine and its impact on energy supply chains have renewed anti-climate attacks globally, as vested interests falsely attribute blame for these events to the “cult of Net Zero,” King explained.

“Our report shows Big Oil continues to invest millions in digital advertising to launder their image as ‘climate champions’, while also promoting the necessity of fossil fuels.”

The coalition’s findings come nearly two years after a report by the UN’s climate science body, which found for the first time that “vested interests” were delaying efforts to tackle climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that actors representing “vested economic and political interests” had eroded support for climate policy by generating “rhetoric and misinformation that undermines science and disregards risk and urgency”.

Climate Denial ‘Comeback’

Big Oil companies Shell, Chevron and Exxon all ran ads in the run-up to the summit, but the majority were posted by PR and fossil fuel front groups.

The 850 organisations surveyed spent between $3-4 million on nearly 3,800 adverts on Facebook and Instagram between September 1 and November 23, the report found. Adverts promoted fossil fuels as affordable and reliable, and justified their ongoing use with arguments around energy independence.

Energy Citizens – a PR and lobby group for the largest trade association for the oil and gas industry the American Petroleum Institute – ran more daily ads than all the other pages combined, the analysis found. The ad campaign advocated for U.S. production of fossil gas and oil, citing nationalist arguments around ‘energy security’.

The analysis found that a number of U.S. based pages ended their ad campaigns after mid-term elections on November 8. However, the research found disinformation ramped up with ad campaigns from three industry PR groups: America’s Plastic Makers, funded by the American Chemistry Council, which describes itself as ‘the leading association representing the $553-billion U.S. chemicals industry’, and fossil fuel front groups Affordable Energy for New Jersey and Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future.

In addition, the Saudi Green Initiative had at least 13 live adverts around the summit, just as Saudi Arabia’s delegation was accused of pursuing a ‘strategy to keep the world hooked on oil.’

The findings come as Sultan Ahmed Jaber was announced as the new President for COP28, making the Dubai summit next year the first to be led by a current oil executive.

Ben Dennes, a researcher at the University of Exeter who specialises in environmental communication online, said the $4 million figure was just the “tip of the iceberg”.

The Meta ad library used in the analysis was a “black box”, with only ads deemed by Meta to relate to ‘social issues, elections or politics’ fully accessible.

There is “unclear and subjective guidance on what this means”, Dennes told DeSmog, adding that researchers were also unable to analyse Google Ads in the study as the service does not permit searches for misinformation and greenwashing content.

It was therefore possible that “certain greenwashing and misinformation content has slipped through the net”, Dennes said.

Culture Warriors Co-opt Climate 

Alongside analysis of industry-linked advertising, researchers also documented climate disinformation on Twitter over a four week period from the end of October.

‘Anti-woke’ pundits and conspiracy theorists gained the most traction, the report found, and “often collaborate with a well-funded network of think tanks and pundits.”

Climate denial tropes such as ‘climate actors are alarmist’ and ‘climate change is a hoax’ also featured. Some posts targeted the “loss and damage” fund, established in Sharm-el-Sheikh to provide financial assistance to vulnerable nations most impacted by the climate crisis.

Researchers also found that the hashtag #ClimateScam spiked on Twitter with 362,000 mentions between July and December, raising concerns over a failure to prevent disinformation on the platform. The original content came from a non-verified account, but was then adopted by a number of verified account holders – including U.S. pundit Tom Fitton, a climate denier with two million followers.

The CAAD coalition is advocating for immediate steps to be taken by tech companies to stem the flow of climate delayism and “junk science”. It is also calling on governments and multilateral bodies to implement a “unified definition” of climate mis-and disinformation within UN key institutions.

“This research shows that climate disinformation isn’t going away and, in fact, it’s getting worse.

During COP, Twitter’s search engine pushed #ClimateScam as a top result without any justification for the data behind it,” said Erika Seiber, climate disinformation spokesperson at Friends of the Earth U.S.

“Until governments hold social media and ad companies accountable, and companies hold professional disinformers accountable, crucial conversations around the climate crisis are going to be put in jeopardy.”

Meta and Twitter were contacted for comment.

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opendemoc

brunswick works for cop and saudi aramco and bp

...Last month, more than 400 scientists called on the PR firm Hill+Knowlton Strategies to drop its fossil fuel clients after openDemocracyrevealed it was also working for the Egyptian presidency of COP27.

Some 636 fossil fuel industry representatives registered to attend COP27, according to research by Global Witness, leading to claims that the conference had been hijacked.

net zero allows for loophole fuckery?

H&K busted on cop 27 egypt

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/un-climate-champions-pr-brunswick-saudi-aramco/

UN  climate campaign leaders are taking advice from a PR firm that works extensively for fossil fuel giants – including the world’s biggest oil company, Saudi Aramco.

The international public relations firm Brunswick has helped the UN’s “high-level climate champions” – a small but influential team led by the UK and Egypt, the hosts of COP26 and COP27 – to develop five UN-backed climate policies and campaigns.

One of these campaigns is Race to Zero, which encourages companies to rapidly reduce emissions, with its flagship initiative, Business Ambition for 1.5°C, calling on corporations to help limit global warming to that level.

But while advising the climate champions, and having signed up as a member of Race to Zero, Brunswick also spins for fossil fuel companies developing dozens of new oil and gas prospects.

these developments will make the 1.5°C goal – which requires a complete stop to new oil and gas projects – much harder to attain.

Duncan Meisel, executive director of Clean Creatives, a campaign calling for PR and advertising agencies to boycott fossil fuel companies, told openDemocracy: “Working for oil drillers and fossil fuel power companies makes Brunswick an opponent of the action that UN high-level climate champions are trying to promote.”

PR companies’ role in the climate crisis has been under renewed scrutiny in recent months, after Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general, condemned the “massive public relations machine raking in billions to shield the fossil fuel industry from scrutiny”...

Last month, more than 400 scientists called on the PR firm Hill+Knowlton Strategies to drop its fossil fuel clients after openDemocracyrevealed it was also working for the Egyptian presidency of COP27.

Some 636 fossil fuel industry representatives registered to attend COP27, according to research by Global Witness, leading to claims that the conference had been hijacked.

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an 12 22 sorta //

The day before nearly two weeks of negotiations kick off at the United Nations summit on biodiversity, campaigners warned Tuesday that the talks taking place this month in Montreal may offer humanity its last chance to mitigate the planet's crisis of rampant species loss, and called on policymakers to adopt an ambitious framework to protect wildlife.

More than 190 nations will be represented at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), where negotiators will discuss a draft agreement aimed at conservation, slashing levels of toxic pollutants, and mitigating the climate crisis.

With about one million species—out of about 8.7 million known species—expected to become extinct in the coming decades, advocates said that policymakers must reverse more than a decade of failure to meet the targets set in 2010 at COP10 in Aichi, Japan, including protecting 17% of terrestrial and inland water areas and conserving coral reefs.

"Now is the time for the world to set bold new goals to protect every last species," said Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. "We're undermining our own survival by taking nature for granted, decimating wild places and jeopardizing vulnerable communities."

Advocates are pushing the 196 member nations of the convention to adopt 21 targets named in the draft set to be presented at the meeting, including:

"If delegates at the Convention on Biological Diversity can't agree that we should end extinction, it's a tragic reflection on our values," said Curry. "We've put nature in the basement of our heart, but it needs to be in the penthouse."

Greenpeace International called the meeting "the make-or-break moment for global biodiversity" while Greenpeace East Asia senior policy adviser Li Shuo called it "a chance for reinvention."

"It is unacceptable for this process to continue to pump out promises and never deliver," he said. "Negotiations over the next two weeks need to generate targets that will actually be implemented and supported."

In his opening remarks on Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterrescalled on negotiators to adopt a framework "that addresses the root causes of this destruction."

"Deforestation and desertification are creating wastelands of once-thriving ecosystems," he said. "Our land, water, and air are poisoned by chemicals and pesticides, and choked with plastics. Our addiction to fossil fuels has thrown our climate into chaos—from heatwaves and forest fires, to communities parched by heat and drought, or inundated and destroyed by terrifying floods."

"The deluded dreams of billionaires aside, there is no Planet B," Guterres added. "We must fix the world we have. We must cherish this wonderous gift. We must make peace with nature."

Biologist Alexandre Antonelli, the director of science of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the U.K., called the conference "one of the most important meetings humanity has ever had."

"We have a very narrow window of opportunity to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2030 and reverse its decline by 2050," Antonelli toldThe New Statesman on Monday. "We may never have that chance again."

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mma 11 22

The COP27 climate summit hosted by the Egyptian government concluded on November 20 with a hard-fought agreement to compensate countries that are most vulnerable to climate disasters. Before the ink was even dry on this landmark “loss and damage” deal (considered a step forward in both acknowledging and addressing global climate injustices), Fox News personalities and guests began attacking it.

As the conference concluded on Sunday, Fox News turned its attention to attacking climate reparations.Fox & Friends Sunday co-host Pete Hegseth described the fund as a “sin tax,” saying, “Ultimately, it's self-loathing. It’s the belief that the West's success was premised on pollution, so now it's our turn to pay developing countries … because we built the world based on their backs.” On The Big Sunday Show, Fox contributor Sean Duffy bizarrely criticized the fund because it doesn’t allow recipients to use the allocations to invest in fossil fuels.

Since Sunday, at least 9 programs on the network have discussed climate reparations. Much of the coverage is largely in line with the lines of attack we predicted from right-wing media ahead of the conference. It consisted of misleading attacks suggesting that these payments would hurt the U.S. economy and further empower China; represent a form of wealth redistribution; or are unfair to the recipients because they can’t use the funds to develop fossil fuels.

What is loss and damage financing and why it matters

After 30 years of pressure from developing nations, world leaders agreed to create a new fund through which rich countries will help pay for vulnerable countries to recover from climate-fueled disasters. The concept, known as loss and damage or climate reparations, was a point of contention at COP27 specifically among richer countries like the United States.However, the U.S., among other nations, has agreed to contribute to the fund while not accepting any liability for loss and damage caused by climate change.

G20 countries, which represent about 80% of global economic output, are also responsible for about 75% of toxic greenhouse gas pollution. Yet small and poorer countries, particularly island nations, bear the brunt of those impacts in the form of drought, sea-level rise, and other disasters resulting in enormous economic losses. The African Development Bank estimates that the continent has already lost between 5-15% of its GDP growth due to climate impacts.Climate-fueled flooding in Pakistan that killed more than 1,000 people and displaced or otherwise affected more than 30 million this summer gave urgency to loss and damage negotiations this year. In a September segment on CNN’s New Day, correspondent Clarissa Ward reported on the flooding and the comments from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on the need for climate reparations for these types of climate disasters, while noting that Pakistan emits less than 1% of global emissions but suffers disproportionate harm from climate impacts such as flooding.

However, almost none of the details of the fund, such as which countries will contribute, who exactly will get the money, and how much will be offered up, have been discussed. The U.S. and the European Union are pushing to ensure that China would not benefit from the funding and that it would eventually have to contribute, though it is defined by the U.N. as a developing nation. China’s position as the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter may throw that label into question with regard to this particular fund in the coming months. The country has voiced its opposition to being treated like a developed nation.

Despite the importance of this historic agreement, Fox has wasted no time in demonizing the fund and using the deal to discredit global action on climate change:

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aha yikes: the trump gift that keeps giving; morano is using pent-up up rage to gin up anti-commie far of grn action on climate:

aha 2: fox tucker all about compassion/empathy?! eg w steve king rehab?

revive energy pov is LOMBORGIAN misdirection: famine cause by putin war, floods, droughts, other wars that they ignore or cheer for

[https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/fox-news-platforms-climate-denial-and-great-reset-conspiracy-theory-during-cop27](https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/=https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/fox-news-platforms-climate-denial-and-great-reset-conspiracy-theory-during-cop27ted%20macdDuring%20the%20final%20weekend%20of%20the%202022%20United%20Nations%20Climate%20Change%20Conference,%20known%20as%20COP27,%20two%20Fox%20News%20programs%20invited%20longtime%20climate%20denier%20Marc%20Morano%20to%20discuss%20the%20conference%20and%20link%20it%20to%20a%20conspiracy%20theory%20about%20the%20Great%20Reset.As%20Media%20Matters%20wrote%20last%20week,%20adherents%20to%20the%20Great%20Reset%20conspiracy%20theory%20absurdly%20believe%20that%20global%20elites%20are%20using%20climate%20change%20policies%20in%20order%20to%20crush%20individual%20freedoms%20and%20install%20a%20global%20dictatorial%20government.%20Morano%20is%20a%20key%20driver%20of%20the%20climate%20denial%20components%20of%20this%20conspiracy%20theory.%20We%20also%20noted%20that%20given%20the%20high-profile%20nature%20of%20COP27%20and%20the%20presence%20of%20numerous%20world%20leaders%20there,%20this%20conspiracy%20theory%20would%20proliferate%20within%20right-wing%20discussions%20of%20the%20conference.And%20now,%20the%20most-watched%20cable%20news%20network%20in%20the%20U.S.%20has%20prominently%20featured%20the%20false%20claims%20in%20its%20discussions%20around%20COP27.On%20the%20November%2012%20edition%20of%20Unfiltered%20with%20Dan%20Bongino,%20Morano%20stated%20that%20world%20leaders%20want%20to%20%E2%80%9Cuse%20the%20COVID%20template%20to%20fight%20climate,%20i.e.%20authoritarianism,%20you%20don%E2%80%99t%20have%20a%20say,%20democracy%20goes%20to%20die.%E2%80%9D%20He%20also%20falsely%20downplayed%20the%20health%20threats%20associated%20with%20climate%20change,%20wrongly%20dismissed%20the%20need%20for%20climate%20action%20as%20too%20expensive,%20and%20directly%20referred%20to%20COP27%20as%20%E2%80%9Cthe%20Great%20Reset%20summit.%E2%80%9D%20Host%20Dan%20Bongino%20also%20brought%20up%20a%20key%20tenet%20of%20the%20Great%20Reset%20conspiracy%20theory,%20which%20is%20that%20climate%20change%20is%20all%20about%20control.%20He%20stated%20that%20the%20conference%20is%20%E2%80%9Ca%20totalitarian%20way%20to%20control%20things.%20This%20has%20nothing%20to%20do%20with%20climate%20science.%22[vid]11/12MORANO%20%28FOUNDER,%20CLIMATEDEPOT.COM%29:%20I'm%20here%20in%20Sharm%20El-Sheikh,%20Egypt,%20at%20this%20conference.%20And%20not%20only%20is%20the%20World%20Economic%20Forum%20here,%20the%20home%20of%20the%20Great%20Reset%20%E2%80%94%20they%20were%20on%20the%20panel%20with%20John%20Kerry%20when%20he%20went%20to%20use%20the%20COVID%20template%20to%20fight%20climate,%20i.e.%20authoritarianism,%20you%20don%E2%80%99t%20have%20a%20say,%20democracy%20goes%20to%20die%20when%20they%20talk%20like%20that.%20But%20the%20World%20Health%20Organization%20was%20also%20here%20to%20morph%20COVID%20and%20climate%20together%20by%20declaring%20climate%20a%20massive%20public%20health%20threat.%20Despite%20the%20fact,%20Dan,%20that%20climate-related%20deaths%20have%20dropped%2099%%20in%20the%20last%20hundred%20years%20and%20they%E2%80%99ve%20declined%20due%20to%20wealth%20creation,%20and%20development,%20infrastructure,%20and%20fossil%20fuels.%20So,%20this%20is%20very%20scary.%20This%20is%20John%20Kerry.%20Al%20Gore%20also%20is%20here.%20Along%20with%20John%20Kerry%20he's%20pushing%20his%20climate%20trace%20app%20that%E2%80%99s%20going%20to%20be%20tracing%20all%20individual%20CO2%20contributors%20globally.%20Remember,%20humans%20inhale%20oxygen;%20we%20exhale%20CO2.%20So%20they%E2%80%99re%20modeling%20a%20track%20and%20trace%20app%20for%20CO2%20to%20go%20after%20businesses%20and%20agriculture.%20This%20is%20the%20Great%20Reset%20summit%20here%20in%20Sharm%20El-Sheikh,%20Egypt.DAN%20BONGINO%20%28FOX%20HOST%29:%20Marc,%20and%20you%E2%80%99ve%20been%20sounding%20the%20alarm%20about%20this%20forever.%20This%20is%20all%20about%20control.%20This%20has%20nothing%20to%20do%20with%20science.%20When%20the%20vax%20started%20to%20lose%20effectiveness%20against%20transmission,%20they%20almost%20doubled%20down%20on%20mandates.%20Their%20push%20for%20digital%20ID,%20digital%20currencies,%20you%20know,%20CO2%20monitors%20%E2%80%94%20this%20is%20just%20a%20totalitarian%20way%20to%20control%20people.%20This%20has%20nothing%20to%20do%20with%20climate%20science.%20MORANO:%20It%20has%20nothing%20to%20do.%20Here%E2%80%99s%20how%20absurd%20it%20is.%20Goldman%20Sachs%20economist%20two%20weeks%20ago%20said%20on%20CNBC%20that%20we%E2%80%99ve%20spent%20almost%20$4%20trillion%20to%20reduce%20fossil%20fuels%201%.%20And%20so,%20and%20you%E2%80%99d%20would%20think%20they%E2%80%99d%20look%20at%20that%20and%20say%20solar%20and%20wind%20are%20failing,%20you%20cannot%20replace%20fossil%20fuels%20at%20any%20scale%20they%E2%80%99re%20talking.%20Al%20Gore%20comes%20this%20week%20along%20with%20John%20Kerry%20and%20wants%20private%20industry%20to%20spent%20$4%20trillion%20per%20year%20to%20fight%20climate%20change.%20That%E2%80%99s%20how%20insane%20this%20is.%20It's%20almost%20like%20the%20old,%20you%20know,%20socialism%20never%20failed,%20it%20wasn't%20done%20correctly%20in%20the%20Soviet%20Union,%20it%20wasn%E2%80%99t%20done%20correctly%20in%20Venezuela,%20it%20wasn%E2%80%99t%20done%20correctly%20in%20Eastern%20Europe,%20it%20wasn%E2%80%99t%20done%20correctly%20in%20Cuba.%20They%20are%20now%20literally%20looking%20at%20this%20and%20saying%20all%20the%20failure%20we%20see%20everywhere%20is%20more%20of%20a%20reason%20to%20double%20down.%20And%20this%20is%20what%E2%80%99s%20scary,%20Dan:%20You%20have%20every%20major%20corporation%20listed%20as%20quote%20%E2%80%9Cmain%20partners%E2%80%9D%20at%20this%20U.N.%20climate%20Great%20Reset%20summit%20including%20IBM,%20Google,%20Coca-Cola,%20Bank%20of%20America.The%20next%20morning,%20on%20Fox%20&%20Friends%20Sunday,%20Morano%20again%20fearmongered%20about%20the%20Great%20Reset%20at%20COP27.%20In%20addition%20to%20claiming%20that%20climate%20change%20is%20all%20about%20control,%20he%20also%20invoked%20the%20idea%20of%20lockdowns%20and%20the%20idea%20that%20global%20elites%20want%20to%20disrupt%20agriculture%20%E2%80%94%20also%20key%20tenets%20of%20the%20Great%20Reset%20conspiracy%20theory.%20He%20closed%20the%20interview%20by%20insinuating,%20again,%20that%20COP27%20is%20all%20about%20the%20Great%20Reset,%20and%20that%20these%20global%20elites%20want%20to%20increase%20their%20power%20at%20the%20expense%20of%20human%20liberties.[vid]%20CAMPOS-DUFFY%20%28FOX%20HOST%29:%20President%20Joe%20Biden%20pledging%20$150%20million%20to%20advance%20Africa's%20resilience%20to%20climate%20change.%20This%20despite%20146%20million%20people%20across%20the%20country%20going%20hungry.%20ClimateDepot.com%20publisher,%20and%20author%20of%20The%20Great%20Reset:%20Global%20Elites%20and%20The%20Permanent%20Lockdown,%20Marc%20Morano%20joins%20us%20now.%20Marc,%20always%20great%20to%20have%20you%20on%20the%20show.%20So%2034%20million%20Africans%20are%20actually%20in%20danger%20of%20famine%20right%20now.%20So,%20why%20are%20they%20offering%20them%20money%20for%20climate%20policies%20and%20initiatives%20and%20not%20food?%20MARC%20MORANO%20%28FOUNDER,%20CLIMATEDEPOT.COM%29:%20This%20is%20an%20incredible%20situation.%20They%20have%20it%20completely%20backwards.%20Instead%20of%20looking%20at%20all%20the%20problems%20in%20the%20world,%20and%20saying%20we%20need%20more%20food%20production,%20we%20need%20high-yield%20agriculture,%20they%20look%20at%20it%20and%20say%20we%20need%20to%20stop%20climate%20change.%20And%20this%20whole%20agenda,%20they%20have%20harmed%20Africa,%20first%20of%20all%20through%20COVID%20policy%20%E2%80%94%20CAMPOS-DUFFY:%20Yes.%20MORANO:%20%E2%80%94%20and%20this%20is%20chiefly%20occurring%20through%20COVID%20lockdowns,%20which,%20by%20the%20way,%20the%20World%20Health%20Organization%20was%20there,%20the%20World%20Economic%20Forum%20was%20at%20this%20U.N.%20Climate%20summit%20where%20Biden%20was.%20And%20they%27re%20pushing%20more%20response%20to%20climate%20as%20the%20same%20template%20as%20COVID,%20which%20means%20essentially%20bypassing%20democracy.%20But%20what%20the%20Biden%20administration%E2%80%99s%20done,%20they%E2%80%99re%20allowing%20this%20to%20happen%20in%20Africa.%20We%27ve%20seen%20it%20in%20the%20Netherlands.%20They%27re%20collapsing%20modern%20high-yield%20agriculture.%20They%E2%80%99re%20doing%20it%20in%20Australia,%20in%20Canada.%20They%E2%80%99re%20making%20food%20more%20expensive,%20creating%20shortages.%20They%E2%80%99re%20doing%20the%20same%20thing%20in%20transportation%20and%20doing%20the%20same%20thing%20in%20energy,%20all%20in%20the%20name%20of%20climate%20change.%20%E2%80%A6CAMPOS-DUFFY:%20Marc,%20really%20quickly,%20yes%20or%20no.%20Is%20this%20summit,%20and%20all%20of%20the%20initiatives%20that%20they%27re%20pushing,%20even%20this%20tracking%20app%20%E2%80%94%20is%20it%20about%20the%20environment,%20or%20is%20it%20about%20the%20Great%20Reset%20and%20population%20control?%20MORANO:%20This%20is%20all%20about%20increasing%20their%20power,%20imposing%20their%20vision,%20and%20their%20vision%20is%20population%20control,%20economic%20control,%20and%20basically%20civil%20liberties%20control%20of%20every%20human%20on%20the%20earth.%20That%20is%20really%20what%20this%20conference%20is%20about.%20That%20is%20what%20the%20United%20Nations%20teaming%20up%20with%20the%20World%20Economic%20Forum%20is%20all%20about.Later%20in%20the%20program,%20host%20Rachel%20Campos-Duffy%20again%20brought%20up%20the%20Great%20Reset.%20After%20a%20discussion%20about%20Biden%20meeting%20Chinese%20President%20Xi%20Jinping,%20Campos-Duffy%20stated%20that%20Morano%20%E2%80%9Cwrote%20a%20book%20about%20climate%20change%20and%20how%20it%20is%20part%20of%20the%20Great%20Reset.%20It%20is%20really%20fantastic,%20being%20very%20clear%20what%20this%20is%20about.%20Climate%20change%20is%20not%20about%20the%20climate.%20He%20actually%20proves%20it%20is%20not%20really%20affecting%20the%20climate%20and%20certainly%20not%20worth%20the%20trillions%20of%20investment%20that%20the%20world%20and%20especially%20America%20have%20made%20in%20that.%20But%20he%20says%20it%E2%80%99s%20about%20the%20Great%20Reset,%20it%E2%80%99s%20about%20control,%20and%20it%E2%80%99s%20ultimately%20about%20population%20control.%E2%80%9D=)

ted macd  no lnx

During the final weekend of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP27, two Fox News programs invited longtime climate denier Marc Morano to discuss the conference and link it to a conspiracy theory about the Great Reset.

As Media Matters wrote last week, adherents to the Great Reset conspiracy theory absurdly believe that global elites are using climate change policies in order to crush individual freedoms and install a global dictatorial government. Morano is a key driver of the climate denial components of this conspiracy theory. We also noted that given the high-profile nature of COP27 and the presence of numerous world leaders there, this conspiracy theory would proliferate within right-wing discussions of the conference.

And now, the most-watched cable news network in the U.S. has prominently featured the false claims in its discussions around COP27.

On the November 12 edition of Unfiltered with Dan Bongino, Morano stated that world leaders want to “use the COVID template to fight climate, i.e. authoritarianism, you don’t have a say, democracy goes to die.” He also falsely downplayed the health threats associated with climate change, wrongly dismissed the need for climate action as too expensive, and directly referred to COP27 as “the Great Reset summit.”

Host Dan Bongino also brought up a key tenet of the Great Reset conspiracy theory, which is that climate change is all about control. He stated that the conference is “a totalitarian way to control things. This has nothing to do with climate science."

[vid]11/12

MORANO (FOUNDER, CLIMATEDEPOT.COM): I'm here in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, at this conference. And not only is the World Economic Forum here, the home of the Great Reset — they were on the panel with John Kerry when he went to use the COVID template to fight climate, i.e. authoritarianism, you don’t have a say, democracy goes to die when they talk like that. But the World Health Organization was also here to morph COVID and climate together by declaring climate a massive public health threat. Despite the fact, Dan, that climate-related deaths have dropped 99% in the last hundred years and they’ve declined due to wealth creation, and development, infrastructure, and fossil fuels. So, this is very scary. This is John Kerry. Al Gore also is here. Along with John Kerry he's pushing his climate trace app that’s going to be tracing all individual CO2 contributors globally. Remember, humans inhale oxygen; we exhale CO2. So they’re modeling a track and trace app for CO2 to go after businesses and agriculture. This is the Great Reset summit here in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

DAN BONGINO (FOX HOST): Marc, and you’ve been sounding the alarm about this forever. This is all about control. This has nothing to do with science. When the vax started to lose effectiveness against transmission, they almost doubled down on mandates. Their push for digital ID, digital currencies, you know, CO2 monitors — this is just a totalitarian way to control people. This has nothing to do with climate science.

MORANO: It has nothing to do. Here’s how absurd it is. Goldman Sachs economist two weeks ago said on CNBC that we’ve spent almost $4 trillion to reduce fossil fuels 1%. And so, and you’d would think they’d look at that and say solar and wind are failing, you cannot replace fossil fuels at any scale they’re talking. Al Gore comes this week along with John Kerry and wants private industry to spent $4 trillion per year to fight climate change.

That’s how insane this is. It's almost like the old, you know, socialism never failed, it wasn't done correctly in the Soviet Union, it wasn’t done correctly in Venezuela, it wasn’t done correctly in Eastern Europe, it wasn’t done correctly in Cuba. They are now literally looking at this and saying all the failure we see everywhere is more of a reason to double down. And this is what’s scary, Dan: You have every major corporation listed as quote “main partners” at this U.N. climate Great Reset summit including IBM, Google, Coca-Cola, Bank of America.

The next morning, on Fox & Friends Sunday, Morano again fearmongered about the Great Reset at COP27. In addition to claiming that climate change is all about control, he also invoked the idea of lockdowns and the idea that global elites want to disrupt agriculture — also key tenets of the Great Reset conspiracy theory. He closed the interview by insinuating, again, that COP27 is all about the Great Reset, and that these global elites want to increase their power at the expense of human liberties.

[vid]

CAMPOS-DUFFY (FOX HOST): President Joe Biden pledging $150 million to advance Africa's resilience to climate change. This despite 146 million people across the country going hungry. ClimateDepot.com publisher, and author of The Great Reset: Global Elites and The Permanent Lockdown, Marc Morano joins us now. Marc, always great to have you on the show. So 34 million Africans are actually in danger of famine right now. So, why are they offering them money for climate policies and initiatives and not food?

MARC MORANO (FOUNDER, CLIMATEDEPOT.COM): This is an incredible situation. They have it completely backwards. Instead of looking at all the problems in the world, and saying we need more food production, we need high-yield agriculture, they look at it and say we need to stop climate change. And this whole agenda, they have harmed Africa, first of all through COVID policy —

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Yes.

MORANO: — and this is chiefly occurring through COVID lockdowns, which, by the way, the World Health Organization was there, the World Economic Forum was at this U.N. Climate summit where Biden was. And they're pushing more response to climate as the same template as COVID, which means essentially bypassing democracy. But what the Biden administration’s done, they’re allowing this to happen in Africa. We've seen it in the Netherlands. They're collapsing modern high-yield agriculture.They’re doing it in Australia, in Canada. They’re making food more expensive, creating shortages. They’re doing the same thing in transportation and doing the same thing in energy, all in the name of climate change. 

…

CAMPOS-DUFFY: Marc, really quickly, yes or no. Is this summit, and all of the initiatives that they're pushing, even thistracking app — is it about the environment, or is it about the Great Reset and population control?

MORANO: This is all about increasing their power, imposing their vision, and their vision is population control, economic control, and basically civil liberties control of every human on the earth. That is really what this conference is about. That is what the United Nations teaming up with the World Economic Forum is all about.

Later in the program, host Rachel Campos-Duffy again brought up the Great Reset. After a discussion about Biden meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping, Campos-Duffy stated that Morano “wrote a book about climate change and how it is part of the Great Reset. It is really fantastic, being very clear what this is about. Climate change is not about the climate. He actually proves it is not really affecting the climate and certainly not worth the trillions of investment that the world and especially America have made in that. But he says it’s about the Great Reset, it’s about control, and it’s ultimately about population control.”

===

===

nz wms

your pre-COP climate denial inoculation

Climate denialists and inactivists are as active as ever, experts and activists warn. David Williams reports

American climate scientist Michael Mann has proved as adept at predicting the behaviour of climate deniers and purveyors of disinformation as he was at using data to prove anthropogenic climate change.

His famous temperature graph, known as the “hockey stick” for its steep rise in the 20th Century showing the influence of humans, attracted fierce attacks, especially after 2001, when it was published in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) third assessment report.

The attacks were scientifically invalid, Mann told :{Scientific American:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;vertical-align:baseline;background-image:initial;background-position:initial;background-size:initial;background-repeat:initial;background-attachment:initial;background-origin:initial;background-clip:initial"):}: in 2005, and used “disengenuous arguments and untruths”.

“I imagine it will go on, just as it went on for years and years with tobacco until it was no longer tenable.”

the attacks have persisted, including false claims the hockey stick was proved wrong. (As if problems with a single graph could undo all evidence of climate change, anyway.)

As a Reuters fact check said last year, Mann’s graph shows temperatures rapidly rising since the 20th century, and “multiple studies and independent climate scientists support the findings depicted”.

Some temperatures have been altered and corrected, using more robust reconstruction methods. And as more data has been added the stick head has grown taller – as predicted – underlining the original graph’s reliability.

Just as reliable have been the actions of the merchants of misinformation, deniers, and the promoters of climate delay, whose tactics, often funded by the fossil fuel industry, were on display earlier this week.

“Greta finally gets it!” a headline shrieked on the website Climate Depot, run by well-known denialists the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT. (See what they did there?)

CFACT’s director of communications, Marc Morano – who, for some reason, is attending the latest United Nations climate negotiations in Egypt, starting this coming Sunday – disingenuously celebrated climate activist Greta Thunberg’s “moment of clarity”.

“We welcome Greta now understanding that these summits have nothing to do with the climate.”

This is a gross distortion.

Thunberg did dismiss the climate summit, known as COP27, as an opportunity for “people in power ... to [use] greenwashing, lying and cheating”.

The high-profile Swede called the meetings a “scam”, not because they’re about something other than climate but because they “are not really going to lead to any major changes”. “These systems are failing us,” she said at an event in London to promote her book.

Another important reason she’s not going is because of Egypt’s human rights record, and the limited space for civil society groups at COP27.

(A troubling distraction, perhaps, is the controversial appointment of US PR firm Hill+Knowlton, previously accused of greenwashing for oil companies, as communications manager at the Egyptian climate conference.)

Climate Depot also misused Thunberg’s quote, “Blah, blah, blah”, to sum up the last COP, in Glasgow, Scotland.

Earlier this week, on Twitter, Mann, the climate scientist, called Morano “one of the most prominent industry-funded climate change deniers”.

He tells Newsroom via email: “It’s textbook. They can’t deny that climate change is real any more, but they’re sure working hard to prevent anything being done about it.”

Morano has been called the king of the skeptics. He used to work as a producer for shock-jock Rush Limbaugh, and is the former communications director of well-known denier Senator James Inhofe, of Oklahoma.

In 2012, Morano was named Climate Change Misinformer of the Year by Media Matters, and he has said climate scientists “deserve to be publicly flogged”.

In 2009, just before the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Morano’s site Climate Depot helped whip up a media storm by promoting a manufactured scandal. Based on emails – stolen from England’s University of East Anglia – between climate scientists, including Mann, the disinformation campaign tried to cast doubt on climate science by claiming data had been falsified.

The claims were eventually discredited but it cast a shadow over the Copenhagen conference, which ended in disarray.

“The goal is always the same – delay climate action.”

– John Cook

It’s got to be a hard gig being a denier right now, surely, in the face of unequivocal evidence of climate change. It’s not just piling up in academic journals, the evidence might be gushing through the window.

Think of Pakistan’s record floods, the alarming warming in Europe, or melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

But climate experts and activists are still warning about misinformation and disinformation ahead of the climate negotations in Egypt.

John Cook is a post-doctoral research fellow with Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub.

He’s written books like Cranky Uncle vs Climate Change,to give the public the tools to understand and respond to climate science deniers.

Given the weight of evidence showing human-induced climate change, we asked Cook if denial and disinformation tactics are diminishing or changing?

“Over the last few decades, climate misinformation has been steadily transitioning from science denial to attacks on climate solutions,” he says via email. “As the scientific evidence has accumulated, it’s become more untenable to deny the science. But the goal is always the same – delay climate action.”

Motivations differ, Cook says. Fossil fuel companies want to maintain profits. Conservative groups oppose some proposed solutions such as regulating polluting industries. Political groups go on the attack because the public is becoming polarised – often, no doubt, thanks to disinformation.

“Climate misinformation will continue to persist so long as there are people who oppose climate action.”

(Misinformation, it’s said by academics, is when someone unwittingly spreads false rumours, while disinformation is intentionally starting or spreading those false rumours, maliciously.)

Connor Gibson is a former Greenpeace USA staffer who recently compiled a climate misinformation field guide for journalists, through the group Climate Action Against Disinformation (of which Greenpeace is a member).

Gibson’s specialty is opposition research into individual and corporate donors to anti-climate-change groups – such as Charles and David Koch.

He says deniers are just as active as they’ve ever been.

“It’s pretty much the same group of mostly old white men, mostly in the US, who are still perpetuating the same tired set of lies that they have for decades now.”

Since the election of Donald Trump as US president in 2016, and “a fascist wave swept the world”, there has been more outright denial of climate science, he says. But there are a range of tactics – from arguing humans aren’t the main driver of planetary warming, to tapping into economic pragmatism, or pushing a narrative of hopelessness.

“That menu of rhetorical arguments has always existed, but which ones are more effective during different eras, and in different regions of the world, that’s what has shifted over the years.”

Seeding disinformation is easy and relatively cheap when it’s coordinated, he says, and many of these groups have been working together for years.

Some of the more egregious actors Gibson calls out are the American Petroleum Institute, ExxonMobil, the Heartland Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. Many key people in the climate denial machine have links to tobacco and oil companies.

He also mentions the Atlas Network as a worldwide funder of free-market think tanks, whose affiliates and funders have been involved in climate denial.

The website DeSmog reports: “Atlas has cosponsored numerous Heartland Institute events dedicated to the proposition that climate change is not a crisis.”

Greenpeace describes Atlas as a “Koch Industries climate denial front group”.

It turns out Atlas has New Zealand connections.

Its archived webpage shows its list of partners include theNew Zealand Initiative think tank (which earlier this year published a report Pretence of Necessity, Why further climate change action isn’t needed and won’t help) and the right-wing Taxpayers’ Union.

In a recent podcast about charging farmers for greenhouse gas emissions, Taxpayers' Union board member Casey Costello said “climate emissions stuff” was “at risk of a distraction”.

“At the end of the day, when people are struggling to put food on the table, and everything’s really expensive, that’s the highest priority – quality of life, and protection of our most vulnerable, should take precedence over the high ideals of a few.”

Jordan Williams, Taxpayers' Union’s executive director, says via email: “I was not aware Atlas has any interest in climate change policy – I’ve attended about a dozen of their events and I am a graduate of their Think Tank MBA programme and, subsequently, the Smith Fellowship programme.

“Not once have I heard climate change come up as an issue. We have never worked with or been funded by Atlas on a climate change project.”

Oliver Hartwich, NZ Initiative’s executive director, is more succinct: “We haven’t received money from Atlas and haven’t had any interactions with them on climate change.”

Newsroom asked climate experts to dispel some popular myths.

Cook, of Monash University, focuses on an argument the climate has always changed.

“The logic is that climate changed naturally before humans so what’s happening now must be natural as well.

“This argument commits single cause fallacy, arguing that whatever caused climate change in the past must be the same cause now, when in fact, climate can be driven by multiple causes and human activity is now the dominant cause.

“This argument is like arguing that people died of cancer before cigarettes were invented, so cigarettes can’t cause cancer.”

New Zealand climate scientist Professor James Renwick, of Victoria University of Wellington, sits on the Climate Change Commission and has been a lead author of IPCC assessment reports. He’s never been to a COP meeting.

We put to Renwick a skeptical view that warming isn’t as bad as early climate models predicted.

“The changes in temperature we’ve seen since the IPCC got going 30 years ago have been in line with the model projections.”

No model is perfect, he says, and model predictions are only as good as the assumptions plugged into them.

“It’s easy enough to find simulations from 30 years ago that had much more warming than we’ve experienced because they had much more in the way of greenhouse gas emissions, and it’s easy to be disingenuous about all of this and say, ‘Oh, look, what really happened was way less than what this model was saying’.

“And that’s because that model was forced with very high CO2 emissions. So when you match up the actual emissions to the modelled emissions you find that model temperatures follow the actual temperatures pretty closely. And the same goes for sea level rise.”

In terms of the seemingly perverse situation of negotiators, politicians, activists, and media taking flights to climate conferences, Renwick says that doesn’t invalidate the arguments that emissions reductions are urgent.

“You don’t have to be a carbon Jesus to talk about climate change.”

Climate action supported

Renwick says he doesn’t think anti-establishment groups vocal during Covid-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates have shifted led to an uptick in climate denialism in New Zealand.

“I know that some of the main people involved in the Voices for Freedom and so on are anti-climate-change, but I don't have the sense that, that that's really changed the public conversation much.”

Looking beyond our shores, Bronwyn Hayward, a professor of political science and international relations at University of Canterbury, says there’s been a political shift since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.

“While there’s a storm of social media debate, the fundamentals are that governments and businesses, banks and insurance companies recognise that climate change is a really significant risk now for doing business and for human life and infrastructure. And that's a huge and fundamental shift.”

Public surveys also show support for emissions cuts.

The new denialism, she says, is an emphasis on only adapting to climate change, and not continuing to cut emissions. A sort of doomism that suggests the situation is so bad there's nothing we can do. It’s not true, she says, adding: “Every effort that we make does make a major difference.”

Yet, the need for deep cuts is urgent and the picture of a future warmed world is worrying.

A United Nations Environment Programme report released last week said on current emissions reduction pledges, the world was likely on track for 2.6C of warming on pre-industrial levels.

Incremental change is no longer an option, the report warned. What’s needed is a “wide-ranging, large-scale, rapid and systemic transformation”.

Hayward says any increase over 2C would be dangerous.

“There's millions more people who will be affected by water shortages, heat stress, and storms and sea-level inundation.”

Renwick, of Victoria, hopes policymakers understand the urgency of the problem.

“They’ve been told this over and over again, through the IPCC and any number of other avenues, but I don’t have the sense that it’s really got through.

“You can argue that the political processes are slow, and that can be a good thing. But, boy, this is a problem we need fast action on, and I would love to see some real moves coming from the governments of the world to really start to reduce emissions as fast as we possibly can.”

Confronting the facts

Back in 2009, during the Copenhagen climate summit, I had my own brush with CFACT, at its Climate Sense Conference. As I said in my article for Stuff, it was “really a chat with a few dozen Scandinavian students, bolstered by American imports”.

The “large and prestigious” CFACT delegation of “experts and advisors” included Marc Morano, of Climate Depot. I didn’t meet him, but I interviewed S Fred Singer, the godfather of the skeptic movement, who told me: “We look at the data, we tend to believe what the atmosphere tells us and then disbelieve what the models say.”

Singer, a physicist, said 31,000 scientists agreed with his “realist” views. But they’re not climate scientists? No, but one-third have PhDs. “They know how to read graphs, they know statistics – that’s really all you have to know.”

Then he changed tack – if the science is settled, why spend more money on it? Perhaps to better understand the processes behind the climate.

After taking a deep breath, Singer said: “Yeah, OK.”

And with that, the interview was over.

While they were in Copenhagen, the CFACT delegation was happy to talk to media about the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia.

Some were written by climate scientist Mann, he of the hockey stick graph, who accused the email leakers of cherry-picking and citing scientists out of context.

Weeks later, in San Francisco, addressing an American Geophysical Union meeting, Mann said: “Scientists must play a key role in combating the disinformation effort, presenting a positive case for science and turning lemons into lemonade, while readily acknowledging the real uncertainties and distinguishing them from manufactured ones.”

Seeding doubt, it seems, is a great deal easier than explaining the complex and nuanced climate science

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https://www.desmog.com/2022/11/04/drop-fossil-fuels-400-scientists-pr-hill-knowlton-cop27/

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11 22 mma

The year’s most important international climate talks are fast approaching, and the fossil fuel industry and its right-wing media allies are seizing the opportunity to ramp up climate disinformation and delay climate action.

The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) will be held in Egypt from November 6-18, bringing together politicians and delegates from nearly 200 countries to set goals and present plans for addressing climate change and report on their countries’ current progress toward achieving these goals.

In the months leading up to COP27, statements from right-wing media figures suggest that misinformation about transitioning to clean energy will play a large part in this year’s campaign to undermine the conference both in the U.S. and around the world.International events that aim in part to address the climate crisis, such as Davos and the United Nations’ Conference of Parties, often fuel conspiracy theories claiming that climate change is a crisis fabricated by international institutions like the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. This cycle of false claims, misinformation, and conspiracy theories gives right-wing media and other bad actors ammunition for attacks on climate policies and leaders affiliated with these intergovernmental organizations, further weaving the climate discourse into broader culture wars.

Here are just some of the ways right-wing media and fossil fuel industry shills can be expected to undermine the case for climate action around COP27.

Fossil fuel industry-aligned media will insist that oil and gas expansion is necessary in light of Europe’s energy crisis and the war in Ukraine

One of the biggest concerns climate advocates have about COP27 is that geopolitical tensions resulting from the Russian war in Ukraine will decrease momentum for cooperation on climate goals, and right-wing media will likely exploit these tensions.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, conservatives have exploited the war to reinforce the idea that U.S. energy independence only comes from more oil and gas drilling. The rising costs of food and energy in the wake of Russia’s attack have also created fodder for far-right conspiracy theories such as the “Great Reset,” which contends that these challenges are the result of a tyrannical one-world government or “globalist cabal” using emergencies such as COVID-19 and climate change in order to take away people’s personal freedoms. Right-wing media and politicians across the globe have blamed “the rush to ‘net zero’” emissions for the latest energy crisis, and they will likely continue to push this misleading point during COP27 to discourage steps to aggressively implement clean energy targets.

In reality, the International Energy Agency’s annual world energy outlook found that the global energy crisis has likely hastened the transition away from fossil fuels — the agency predicted that because of a massive increase in the deployment of renewables, demand for fossil fuels will peak in 2025, sooner than anticipated. The report also found “scant evidence to support claims from some quarters that climate policies and net zero commitments contributed to the run-up in energy prices.”

Despite this, right-wing media figures are claiming that the European energy crisis has permanently deterred countries from meeting their climate goals. Fox News commentator and longtime climate denierSteve Milloyinsisted on October 24 that “after 34 years of climate idiocy, ahead of#COP27 and ahead of World War III, coal burning is at a record (as are prices). Emissions are never going down and the climate agenda is dead.”

Climate contrarians Jordan Peterson, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Epsteinwere recently identified as key amplifiers in a reportlooking at climate disinformation around COP26, and they have already started taking aim at issues that will be central to COP27.

Peterson wrote in The Telegraph in August that the net zero “agenda, justified by emergency, will instead make everyone poorer, particularly those who are already poor,” in addition to making “the lives of the working men upon whom we all depend for our daily bread and shelter more difficult and less rewarding.” He concluded,“There is simply no pathway forward to the green and equitable utopia that necessitates the further impoverishment of the already poor.”

In a September 27 Facebook post, Peterson claimed that “globalist utopians demand that we fall in line with their ‘cure’ for climate change,” which he also suggested was to blame for the European energy crisis.

On Twitter, Shellenberger has acknowledged that the European energy crisis began after Russia “started curtailing nat gas as retaliation for EU sanctions & its military support for Ukraine” but insisted that “the underlying reason is Germany's delusional belief that it could rely on renewables.”

Epstein similarly claimed in September that increasing oil and gas production is the real solution “to help ourselves and our allies” facing an “energy crisis—specifically a crisis of lack of fossil fuel supply, which has increased the cost of energy and increased Europe’s dependence on Russia.”

Right-wing media will misleadingly use large developing countries' energy policies to delegitimize climate action elsewhere

Right-wing media have long argued that because countries like China and India have large carbon footprints as they continue to expand and industrialize using the dirtiest energy sources, such as coal, it would be futile for the U.S. and other countries to transition to cleaner forms of energy. If right-wing media follow their past playbook in covering COP27, any commitments that large developing countries do or do not make are likely to be weaponized against climate action.

At COP26, countries including Saudi Arabia, South Africa, China, and India sought to water down language in the final agreement to avoid eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and completely phasing out coal. Without the cooperation of these governments, it would indeed be nearly impossible to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. As a new U.N. report warned, even if countries follow through with climate commitments, the world would be on track for at least 2.5 C of warming. However, this cynical thinking that discounts any and all progress and ignores the fact that every bit of warming governments are able to prevent will save lives, particularly those who have barely contributed to the climate crisis yet are disproportionately affected by its harmful impacts.

On Facebook, climate denier and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck posted a video on October 24 claiming that the Inflation Reduction Act — which includes more than $360 billion in spending to address climate change — really “isn’t about the climate” because China's new plan to increase coal production “would wipe out any gains from Biden's climate plan multiple times over.” (Though China is expanding coal production, the country is also making massive investments in renewable energy, expanding its solar capacity, and is predicted to overachieve the emissions reductions targets it promised internationally for 2030.) 

In August, avid fossil fuel shill Daniel Turner wrote on Twitter: “Spending $369 billion on climate initiatives won't stop China from emitting more emissions than the entire developed world combined.”

Republican operative, QAnon conspiracy theorist, and anti-Muslim extremist Scott Presler said on September 18, “The ‘green movement is a scam & democrats need to realize that — so long as we’re doing business w/ China — they’re funding climate change.”

Writing for the New York Post, climate skepticBjorn Lomborg on the other hand applauded China, India, and other developing countries for “balking at the expectation they emulate these terrible policies” aiming for net-zero emissions.

Climate contrarians will frame fossil fuel expansion as the only viable option to address energy poverty in developing nations

The African Union, which represents 55 member states, reportedly plans to use COP27 to push for fossil fuel expansion. Right-wing media will misleadingly frame massive oil and gas expansion as the only viable solution for people in African nations who are suffering from energy poverty, famine, and drought, driven in part by climate change.

To be sure, criticism that the West is hypocritical in its climate policies is warranted: Rich nations have yet to fully deliver on their promise of $100 billion in mitigation and adaptation funds for developing nations annually that were set to begin in 2020. Now, Europe is rushing to buy natural gas from Africa in place of Russia, and some energy-producing African countries are questioning why they can’t expand and directly benefit from these resources when rich countries haven’t delivered on promises to help finance green projects that could replace fossil fuels.

However, those who back fossil fuel expansion have made the astonishing claim that green energy policies themselves are the true source of oppression in the Global South and the main obstacle keeping poor nations in poverty.

Michael Shellenberger, who is known for bashing renewable energy, recently took to Twitter to back coal production in South Africa in response to supposed climate hypocrisy from Germany. Last year, Germany gave roughly $810 million in an agreement to help South Africa end its use of coal, a move Shellenberger decried as “green imperialism.”

On September 13, former Trump appointee Ryan Maue, who has previous ties to the Koch-funded Cato Institute, said, “China lifted a billion people out of poverty through industrialization powered by fossil fuels. India is doing the same. Why can't Africa?”

“At this point in history, any nation, organization, or person standing in the way of another impoverished nation seeking to develop its own natural resources like oil, gas, and coal in the name of climate change  deserves a special place in hell,” Maue added, concluding that “Western enviro groups involved in these efforts are pure evil.”

A September 29, Western Journal op-ed claimed that “for those in the Third World, colonialism is a living experience, courtesy of restrictive energy policies forced upon them by Western political leaders.”

"This modern form of enslavement — to the West’s so-called green agenda — is variously known as climate colonialism, carbon imperialism and other monikers. Whatever the nomenclature, the reality is suppression of access to fossil fuel energy sources in the name of saving the planet from a made-up climate emergency."

The anti-science agenda driving this stance is clear: The author, Vijay Jayaraj, also writes for the CO2 Coalition, an organization dedicated to climate change denial.

Right-wing media will use claims of climate hypocrisy and elitism to dismiss the urgency of climate action

Right-wing media frequently and inaccurately label wealthy, privileged people as representatives of the entire climate movement, attacking their supposed hypocrisy based on their individual actions in order to help oil and gas companies shirk responsibility for hindering climate action and extending the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. (Climate advocates have repeatedly condemned the not-so-climate-friendly methods of travel adopted by politicians and celebrities.) With leaders arriving from around the world, attacks can be expected to ramp up around international climate conferences to distract media consumers from negotiations.

Conservative British political commentator Sophie Corcoran recently noted on Twitter that the COP27 summit is “where all of theworld leaders are going to fly over to Egypt in their private jets, in order to tell us that we should stop flying. Can't wait.”

The Washington Examiner claimed in a recent editorial that politicians “do not believe a word they say about climate change,” but “they are dead serious about you sacrificing your lifestyle.” The piece smeared “climate hypocrites” who “are the very same ones maximizing their own carbon footprints by flying on private jets.”

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry has been a frequent target of such attacks from right-wing media. “U.S. climate envoy John Kerry warned African nations last week not to rely too heavily on natural gas in their efforts to modernize and bring electricity to millions,” said a September FoxNews.com article. “Federal data obtained by Fox News in July showed that Kerry’s family jet had emitted 300 metric tons of carbon dioxide since the Biden administration began.”

How to combat climate disinformation related to COP27

A new report from the Climate Action Against Disinformation Coalition aims to help journalists respond to and disarm misleading claims about energy and climate change.

The report highlights the importance of avoiding elevating bad content and repeating manipulative language and provides journalists and advocates with guidance for thinking about when to strategically ignore disinformation, when to simply provide accurate information, and when to debunk. It is key to contextualize disinformation to expose the real intentions of the bad actors spreading it, as well as identify potentially discredited sources. Is the person who wrote this being bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry? Do they have a history of climate change denial? The report provides tons of helpful resources for that purpose, as well as a variety of case studies and toolkits that would also be helpful for anyone who wants to make sure their online communities are informed about climate change adaptation and mitigation.

If it were a country, the fossil fuel industry would have been the largest delegation at COP26, while climate activists from the Global South struggle to gain access to the talks. Disinformation and greenwashing have unfortunately become part and parcel of the climate talks, and COP27 will be no exception. Now is the time to push back on the falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and misinformation from the fossil fuel industry and its right-wing media allies seeking to influence this year’s conference.

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agribiz BS

https://www.desmog.com**/2022/10/**06/aim4c-under-fire/

A US-led sustainable farming initiative, which aims to raise billions of dollars to tackle climate change, has been criticized for favouring big business and promoting uncertain techno-fixes ahead of U.N. climate talks in Egypt in November.

Launched at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow last year by the U.S. and United Arab Emirates governments, the AIM for Climate (Aim4C) coalition pledged to accelerate innovation in agriculture and food systems to support climate action.

Alongside 40 states, partners include major agribusinesses, such as Brazilian meat giant JBS, and agricultural trade groups such as CropLife International, as well as research centres such as the University of Edinburgh’s Climate Change Institute. Multi-billion-dollar nonprofits the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and The Nature Conservancy are also taking part.

Backers say the coalition aims to unlock new technologies that can help reduce the sector’s major contribution to climate change and make harvests more resilient. But food and farming groups have publicly criticized Aim4C, accusing it of championing industry-friendly and unproven climate “solutions” instead of spurring a transformative embrace of diverse, regenerative agriculture.

“When the voice of African farmers and communities is not brought to the negotiating table, we end up with flawed initiatives like Aim4C,” said Anne Maina, from the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya. “A focus on ag-tech is often hinged on profits for multinational corporations and not sustainable. Africa has workable alternatives right here at home, for resilient agriculture that works with nature.”

Aim4C’s participants skew heavily towards the Global North.Analysis by DeSmog found that more than two thirds of some 300 partners are located in the United States or Europe. Just seven percent are based in Africa, and not a single group representing Indigenous communities is listed among Aim4C’s “knowledge partners”.

African farmers face critical challenges. Farming on the continent is plagued by under investment and smallholders are already in the grip of the climate crisis, hit by floods, droughts and depleted soils. Hunger is rising, with Africa due to become home to the largest number of undernourished people by 2030.

But according to Professor Molly Anderson from IPES-Food, an international panel of experts on sustainable food systems, the innovations pursued by Aim4C are not the kinds of technology that will benefit small-scale farmers in Africa.

Anderson described as “inexcusable” the omission of both groups that support agroecology — a clean, green alternative to industrial farming — and those representing smallholders or Indigenous peoples. “It’s painfully clear Aim4C is going in the wrong direction,” she said.

The Egypt climate conference, known as COP27, is shaping up to be a battleground for two visions of the future of farming — a movement for regenerative agriculture that aims to diversify what we eat and how we farm, versus a resource-intensive industrial system that pushes planetary boundaries beyond their limits.

Aim4C will have a presence at the summit and is expected to hold a reception, run events in the U.S. pavilion, and attempt to attract more funds and support for its “technology-first vision.”

Jim Thomas, co-executive director of Canadian non-profit ETC Group said Aim4C is part of a makeover by the agriculture industry. “It’s a narrative push from agribusiness to retell its story, where it gets rebranded from being a major climate problem (which it is) to being seen as the solution or the saviour,” he said.

High-Tech Over Known Science

Meat and dairy production accounts for 14.5 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions — and more than half of agriculture’s total share of emissions. Planet-warming gases are emitted across the supply chain, from the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by clearing forests for pastures and feed crops, and burning petrol and diesel to transport animals and meat, to the methane emitted from animals and their manure. 

Climate scientists say that unsustainable meat and dairy consumption poses one of the biggest threats to the world’s hopes of meeting the goals of the 2015 Paris Agreement to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Aim4Carguesthat technology can increase productivity, help farmers adapt to the climate crisis, and cut emissions. The coalition aims to raise $8 billion in public and private finance for research and development, hinged around what it calls “climate-smart” solutions.

However, the term “climate-smart” has no widely agreed definition, and its use to promote contested practices including the use of pesticides and big data in farming have led to concerns that the concept could be used to “greenwash” polluting forms of agriculture.

Campaigners said Aim4C’s focus on high-tech solutions is a diversion from established scientific findings, including by the UN’s leading climate science body, that the world must cut back the production and consumption of animal products.

“It’s very much been tiptoeing around the elephant in the room,” said Allison Molinaro from Compassion in World Farming, which has been a participant in Aim4C since early this year.

“If we just say more research is needed, industrial animal agriculture keeps proliferating — and we’re not going to hit our 2030 targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions,” she said.

“Greener Cattle”

Aim4C is backing a Greener Cattle Initiative exploring ways to reduce methane emissions produced by grazing cattle, for example by changing their diet.

The project is one of the coalition’s 12 “innovation sprints” by non-governmental partners towards a particular researchgoal. Participants must put forward funding and a proposal, and Aim4C organizers then choose successful sprints to champion to 2025. One sprint “AgMission” has raised $45 million; its participants include PepsiCo, McDonald’s, and biotech company Syngenta Foundation.

Another Sprint is linked to the largest global meat company, JBS — which has been described by campaign group Feedback Global and thinktank the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy as “the highest emitting meat and dairy company in the world.” JBS sits on the steering committee of the Greener Cattle Initiative via its U.S. subsidiary. JBS cites its involvement in the Greener Cattle Initiative on its webpage, with reference to its net zero target. 

The presence of some of the most polluting companies in the sector — as well as trade bodies who represent them — has caused concern among environmentalists and experts, who fear that Aim4C may help Big Agriculture appear green without making meaningful emissions cuts.

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy has noted that JBS’ 2040 net zero pledge includes no plan to slow its rapid growth in meat production, stating that soon after its climate commitment the company announced a new $130 million investment to expand processing capacity (by 300,000 head of cattle per year total) at two of its U.S. beef processing plants.

Molinaro, of Compassion in World Farming, said the Green Cattle Initiative does not go nearly far enough. “It’s plugging one hole in a ship that has 50,” she said. “First of all, the science still isn’t there. We don’t know exactly how much [reduction] that would be.

“Second, it would only reduce methane emissions from the cattle. It doesn’t address the climate impacts of land use change, biodiversity loss, or deforestation associated with cattle production. And it doesn’t take into account the nutrient pollution from the pesticides you use to grow the rest of their feed, corn and soy.” A spokesperson from the Greener Cattle Initiative said the initiative funded “evidence-based research” that met “rigorous criteria for actionability and scalability.”

Jennifer Jacquet, an associate professor of environmental studies at New York University, likened the push for “green cattle” to past attempts to market“clean coal”.

“Beef is the coal of animal ag,” she said. “There’s no getting around that.”

Other Aim4C participants representing the meat industry include the North American Meat Institute and the Animal Agriculture Alliance which — as well as pushing back against efforts to cut meat consumption — have linksto climate science denial.

A JBS spokesperson said: “As a global food company, we understand and take seriously the challenges presented to farmers, communities and the food system to address climate change. Our net zero 2040 commitment is one example of our efforts, and we will be transparently reporting our progress along the way. Engaging in collaborative approaches like the Greener Cattle Initiative is essential to achieving these ambitious goals.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is leading the Aim4C coalition said: “AIM for Climate recognizes the wide range of participants necessary to achieve the AIM for Climate goal. Each participant adds value, and AIM for Climate draws on all knowledge, experiences, and cultures, and embraces inclusive excellence.”

Chemical-Intensive

Another resource-heavy industry in Aim4C is agrochemicals, whose primary trade association CropLife International, which represents fertiliser and pesticide manufacturers, is leading another innovation sprint.

While CropLife says that it is training smallholders in the use of “new approaches”, to do “more with less” and references the use of “organic bio-pesticides”, Nick Mole from the UK chapter of Pesticides Action Network was sceptical.

“There’s hundreds of millions of dollars going towards this [Aim4C], which could actually be used to train farmers directly on the ground in things that already exist — in integrated pest management or in agroecological or organic approaches,” Mole said. “That’s where the money should be going. What we need is small, fair, just farming and support for farmers to move away from pesticides.”

A recent round of funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture — a champion of agribusiness and the powerhouse behind Aim4C — was not suggestive of a shift in gear. The first set of grants for a $2.8 billion programme to fund climate-smart agriculture announced in September was characterized by Jacquet as a “windfall to business as usual”.

Projects included an $85 million grant given to dairy trade group, the California Dairy Research Foundation, to lead a methane reduction project, and another to U.S. meat giant, Tyson Foods, which is developing “climate-smart” beef, along with partners such as Bayer.

A Narrow Vision of Agriculture

Aim4C has also drawn criticism for what groups see as the dominance of powerful U.S. interests — and a narrow vision of agriculture.

Maina, of the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya, believes the lack of African representation is to blame for Aim4C’s approach, which she says rests on a “green revolution” model dependent on the intense use of synthetic fertilizers and toxic pesticides that has been promoted in Africa by groups like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with “dismal” results.

“Our leaders cannot keep doing something the same way and hope for different results,” Maina said. “We need to focus on agroecological solutions: Support resilient agriculture that works with nature, builds crop and diet diversity, and empowers marginalised farmers”.

“We really do need more investment in agriculture and agricultural research,” agreed Molly Anderson from IPES-Food. “But the kind of technology pursued by Aim4C is proprietary. It’s going into digitalization, it’s going into artificial intelligence. This technology is not available to low-income people. The technology being promoted are things that basically bolster the existing industrialised food system.”

Aim4C is gearing up to promote new innovation sprints at the COP27 conference in Egypt — as well as announce new funding. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who is spearheading the initiative, has argued that “farmers and ranchers, both small and large, must have a voice”.

Yet Anderson believes that even if civil society were better represented, in multi stakeholder initiatives like Aim4C, it is industry that dominates.

“The public goals of preserving ecological integrity and nourishing people, bolstering the role of women in agriculture…these things require investment but that’s not the kind of investment that these public private partnerships are interested in,” she said.

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https://www.desmog.com/2022/10/06/aim4c-climate-science-denial/

a  U.S. government-led sustainable farming initiative has been criticised for its association with a prominent meat industry group that questions the extent to which climate change is man-made.

The North American Meat Institute (NAMI) is a “knowledge partner” of the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (Aim4C), an initiative launched by the United States and United Arab Emirates at the Glasgow climate summit last year to fund research into technologies to tackle the climate crisis.

But NAMI claims the degree to which human activities lead to climate change is “unknown” on its website. The umbrella group, which represents many of the largest meat companies in the United States, has also previously pushed back against measures to address climate change.

Aim4C faced a backlash fromcivil society groups upon its official launch at the COP26 Glasgow climate conference last year, and stands accused of promoting industry-favored “techno-fixes” over meaningful action to reform agriculture ahead of the coming COP27 summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

Aim4C will have a presence at the summit and is expected to hold a reception, run events in the U.S. pavilion, and drum up more funds and support for its “climate-smart” technology drive.

Scientists say majorchanges in food production and farming are needed if the world is to meet climate goals, including cuts in meat and dairy consumption. (​​The meat industry has vigorously disputedthese findings.)

Chloe Waterman, a senior programme manager at Friends of the Earth, said Aim4C’s credibility was undermined by links to groups that had denied climate science and worked to obstruct climate action.

“Meat industry trade groups use the same playbook as Big Oil to spew climate disinformation and obstruct even basic climate policies, like requiring livestock emissions reporting,” she said. “Their membership in Aim4C indicates a total lack of standards within the initiative and undermines its legitimacy as a body purporting to tackle climate change.”

“Outright” Climate Science Denial

On a webpage entitled “Climate Change and Animal Agriculture: The Facts,” NAMI acknowledges that there is “growing public and governmental concern that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions should be curtailed”. However it contends the “degree” to which “human activity on Earth lead(s) to climate change” is “unknown”.

Elsewhere, NAMI states that while greenhouse gases and climate change “are important considerations for our industry and society at large”, with “so much uncertainty” surrounding these topics, “it’s important that we apply facts when we can”.

NAMI’s take flies in the face of the scientific consensus on climate. Last year the world’s leading scientific body on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), described the link between human activity and climate change as “unequivocal”, an upgrade from previous assessments of “extremely likely.”

A further report published by the IPCC this spring found that the impacts of human-caused emissions were undeniable, concluding “human induced climate change (…) has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people, beyond natural climate variability”.

NAMI told DeSmog that its claim came from an “old document.” (However NAMI did not share plans to remove the webpage and at the time of publication, the factsheet was still live.)

NAMI directed DeSmog to a recent pledge by the group’s members to put in place science-based targets to reduce emissions by 2030 in line with the 1.5ºC goal set out in the Paris Agreement, the 2015 international climate treaty that committed countries to keep the global average temperature rise to below 2°C warming and to strive for 1.5°C.

NAMI is not the only trade group linked to Aim4C to question climate science.

The American Farm Bureau Federation has a seat on the boards of the Animal Agriculture Alliance and US Farmers and Ranchers in Action, which are both listed as Aim4C “knowledge partners”. The AFBF is one of the most powerful U.S. lobby groups, and has worked for decades to block major climate measures.

In 2019, the AFBF questioned the man-made nature of global warming, stating that: “Environmental organizations and some scientists contend that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities (anthropogenic GHGs) are the principal cause for an increase in average global temperatures”.

“They’re challenging climate change outright here,” said Jennifer Jacquet, an associate professor in environmental studies at New York University. “And that’s really terrifying that in 2019 and [on NAMI’s website] in 2022 they are still taking this position.

“In this day and age, you almost won’t see a trade association for oil do that because it’s so socially unacceptable at this point. But here agriculture is just taking a page out of the playbook and doing it in the old fashioned way,” she said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which leads the Aim4C coalition, stated: “Each participant adds value, and AIM for Climate draws on all knowledge, experiences, and cultures, and embraces inclusive excellence.

“AIM for Climate recognizes the wide range of participants necessary to achieve the AIM for Climate goal.”

The American Farm Bureau Federation, Animal Agriculture Alliance and US Farmers and Ranchers in Action were contacted for comment.

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10 22 mail amy w

next month, the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP), the annual UN Climate Negotiations Conference, will kick off in Cairo, Egypt. Once again, negotiators and politicians from all over the world will join up to talk through what they're willing to do to stave off human extinction. That sounds dramatic, right?

But that's kind of what we're talking about here. There will be the usual massive contingent from the fossil fuel industry there as well. Last time, in Glasgow, the fossil fuel industry sent more representatives than any one country did. And there's likely to be more of the same in Egypt. The organizers have, in a much publicized and criticized move, :{allowed major global polluter Coca-Cola to sponsor :(style="font-weight:700"):}:the event.

Even worse, they've also hired Coca-Cola's publicist, Hill & Knowlton, to do PR for the conference. If you missed :{season three of Drilled:(style="font-weight:700"):}:, go back and listen. We did an entire episode on Hill and Knowlton founder :{John Hill }:and his work for both the oil industry and the tobacco industry all at the same time.

Hill masterminded the strategy of hiring scientists to say tobacco smoking wasn't bad for you and that the jury was still out on whether it caused cancer. At the very same time, his firm was working for the American Petroleum Institute and some of its member companies. In fact, it was Hill who brought tobacco folks into the American Petroleum Institute. The longstanding relationship between oil and tobacco eventually resulted in the creation of the cigarette filter—a money maker for oil and gas companies looking for a new place to sell petrochemicals and a slight of hand for the tobacco industry looking to convince consumers that they could make smoking less harmful by smoking lighter, filtered cigarettes.

Hill represented Monsanto around the same time too, so no surprise that the chemical industry embraced a lot of the same tactics. Definitely the folks you want strategizing the messaging for your climate conference! I'm sure they won't be reporting directly back to their clients. Cue head banging against wall video.

At any rate, COP isn't just a time for official corporate greenwashing. It's also a period of time that tends to see major spikes in climate disinformation. Social media will almost assuredly be flooded with various memes about the elitists at COP, the failures of renewable energy, and that damn frozen windmill picture that makes the rounds every couple of years.

A coalition of environmental groups has come together under the banner of :{Climate Action Against Disinformation:(style="font-weight:700"):}: to monitor the disinformation that spawns around some of these big inflection points. They initially got organized around COP 26 in Glasgow, and now in advance of COP 27 in Cairo, they've put together :{a report }:full of information aimed at helping journalists and other communicators avoid unintentionally spreading or amplifying mis- and disinformation.

The lead author on that report, Connor Gibson, walked me through it.

"A little bit more savvyness is needed in newsrooms in the modern era in order to not allow that to happen, because certainly disinformers now know how to exploit that tension between editors and journalists in terms of something like viral sloganeering," he told me, talking about how common it is that journalists need to fight within their own newsrooms against some of the bad habits that spread disinformation.

"Climate Gate is the example that I use in this report," he says. "You know, how many major news outlets printed the word ClimateGate? That is the tagline of the climate change denial movement, and just putting that in your headline over and over really  created a sense among news readers that there was guilt and that there was fabrication of data and all of the false accusations that had been made after those climate scientist emails were hacked and taken outta context and released. And you know, the fact checking that came after the investigations and exonerations that came after that didn't spread, that didn't spread nearly as widely as the phrase ClimateGate."

It never does. And that's the sort of thing this report hopes to help journalists avoid doing, but Gibson and the rest of CAAD are well aware of the biggest obstacle in tackling disinformation in general, and climate disinfo in particular: the lack of investment in journalism.

"I think one of the biggest insurmountable feeling trends that I looked at in this report is just the economics of the newsroom. You know, when there is a revenue incentive that is based around clicks, shares, most emailed articles that precludes the type of tone that is actually to stop misinformation from festering. And so the simple capitalist economics of keeping a news outlet functioning actually creates a breeding ground for misinformation as well, and is something that needs to be taken a lot more seriously than it currently is. But unfortunately, because it's about economics, I think that is one of the biggest obstacles that reporters will face when it comes to that tension between the responsibility of a reporter to communicate something accurately without feeding into conspiracy theory or myth, and the responsibility of an editor to keep the newspaper in circulation and  financially healthy.

That's especially true in the years since social media changed the news business. It's increasingly common to see social media promotion that is, itself, wildly misleading even if the article it's promoting isn't.

This report draws on years' worth of research on psychology-based communication techniques from experts like Stephan Lewandowsky and John Cook, and a lot of the collaborators on reports like :{The Debunking Handbook:(style="font-weight:700"):}: and :{The Conspiracy Theory Handbook}:, as well as guidelines from civil society organizations like First Draft, the Data and Society Research Institute, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"These folks are really experts on helping people avoid the most basic traps, and this stuff has been around for decades, right? Like Richard Nixon, I'm not a crook. Everybody hears the word crook, right?" Gibson explains. "Or George Lakoff wrote the book :{Don't Think of an Elephant!:(style="font-weight:700"):}: because the only word that sticks in your brain after you say that is the word elephant."

A lot of this stuff has been known for a long time, but Gibson poked around at some headlines from major outlets, and found the same old mistakes happening.

"It's not because people are foolish, it's just there is an amount of faith in the audience when it comes to an honest journalist and editor writing a report and writing a headline that unfortunately just misses the traps that disinformation relies on in order to spread," he says.

"And that's gotta be really frustrating when you're a professional who writes something that's very intellectually honest and yet, it helps misinformation and disinformation  spread. So that's really why we wrote this report."

Gibson says climate journalists were a key target not just because climate disinformation is on the rise and COP tends to bring big waves of it, but also because they dealt with disinformation before any other type of journalist. "The phenomenon of climate change denial I think has made climate change reporters a little more sophisticated in understanding these trends before social media made disinformation such a rampant problem in the last few years," he says. "And just the, the relentless nature in which that community of climate change deniers, you know, has stayed organized. So I would say that most of the people who are in climate reporting are far more sophisticated now than certainly they were in the 1990s or the 2000s when that phenomenon was a little underreported and the cast of characters wasn't as widely known."

"So, you know, we tried to write this report and publish it with acknowledgement that we're not writing it because climate reporters are particularly gullible or anything like that," he continues. "We think it's one of the more relevant fields with which to understand what communication techniques are required in order to mitigate misinformation and disinformation as well as a field where some of that understanding is already a little bit there."

Here are a few key highlights:....