- Klarenberg: 'Wikipedia and UK Government move to censor climate debate' Archived Message
Posted by Ian M
on July 27, 2023, 5:51 pm
|
On the one hand this could result in more people getting educated about climate science, which is woefully lacking in the general populace. However as soon as people find out that hidden hands are manipulating what information they do and don't see then there's no way they're going to believe any of what they say. You could ask why climate denial talking points are getting so popular (at least on social media) given the extensive evidence of corporate hidden hands manipulating those narratives, not to mention that they've been disproved time & time again for literally decades... and that would be a good question. Probably comes back to the Upton Sinclair quote and the psychology behind rejecting information if it undermines your sense of identity & self-worth. Anyway, overall I think this is a troubling development, continuing on from the manipulative narratives around covid. The government does not have our best interests at heart... cheers, I ***** https://unherd.com/thepost/wikipedia-and-uk-government-move-to-censor-climate-debate/ Wikipedia and UK Government move to censor climate debate Pandemic-era disinformation tactics are being restored by Kit Klarenberg Monday, 24 July 2023 A communications project has quietly been launched in the last few weeks, under the auspices of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13 (SDG 13), to “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”. This amounts to a concerted effort to police Wikipedia’s most viewed entries related to climate change, predominantly reflecting UN-approved perspectives and information on the subject. According to the official PR, the online encyclopaedia’s editors will work in tandem with “content experts” drawn from and handpicked by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Western government-funded Stockholm Environment Institute, among others. The groups will, until mid-2024, monitor and amend Wikipedia articles with “significant daily page views”. Noting the site’s entries “usually appear at the top of internet search results”, Wikipedia is set to play a “key role in helping promote climate change knowledge”. While there is a near-consensus that climate change is happening, how individuals and governments should respond to the problem is far from settled — yet the UN is determined to suggest otherwise. Speaking at a World Economic Forum panel discussion on “tackling disinformation” last autumn, UN Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications Melissa Fleming boasted about her employer’s narrative control wizardry. She revealed that the UN had “partnered” with major search engines and social media platforms to influence what content users do and do not see related to climate change. “We’re becoming much more proactive,” Fleming explained. “We own the science, and we think that the world should know it, and the platforms themselves also do.” Wikipedia editing is therefore just the latest front in the UN’s ongoing online climate change narrative control war. And there are disturbing indications that the British Government is carrying out similar activity. In March, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) commenced work on a three-month Government contract, awarded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to “analyse climate related mis/disinformation on social media”. ISD receives funding from a large collection of Western governments, foundations and tech giants, ostensibly to root out “disinformation” on particular topics. Tellingly, throughout the pandemic the Institute published alarmist reports on coronavirus “disinformation”. These publications framed any critics of Whitehall’s Covid-19 response as “anti-vaxxers”, while “anti-vaxxers” themselves were portrayed as a vast, far-Right, potentially terroristic fifth column. Every step of the way, these dubious pronouncements were amplified by the BBC, as well as by the corporation’s “specialist disinformation reporter” Marianna Spring. Spring took up her role in March 2020, precisely when ISD began its investigations into Covid “disinformation”. Then, in November 2021, the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee published a report on “behaviour change for climate and environmental goals”. It examined mechanisms by which British citizens could be willed into compliance with preventative measures, which can purportedly achieve Net Zero by 2050. The report argued that ISD’s analysis of “disinformation” published on Facebook during the COP26 conference that same month necessitated the highly controversial Online Safety Bill’s expansion to cover climate change. The Institute concluded that during the two-week conference, “sceptic content garnered 12 times the level of engagement of authoritative sources on the platform”. Shocking stuff, one might think — except much of this so-called “disinformation” took the form of criticism of Greta Thunberg and the hypocrisy of attendees arriving on environmentally destructive private jets. Meanwhile, Steve Smith, an “expert witness” consulted by the Committee, argued that “traditional broadcasters” such as the BBC “must play an important role as trusted sources in a landscape of disinformation online.” Elsewhere, he suggested the British Government should repurpose communications techniques deployed during the Covid-19 pandemic for the fight against climate change: Very effective messaging came from Covid and there are lessons that we can learn from it — the sense that, when we really think something is a crisis, the government can change overnight. But with climate change, we are still not doing that, are we? - Steve Smith Smith is a senior staffer at Picture Zero, a film and TV production company specialising in “human climate change stories”. He was one of several “experts” with no environmental science background — including marketing specialists, green activists, and pollsters — whose testimony heavily informed the report’s findings and recommendations. One after another, they urged the committee to “apply lessons of the Covid pandemic for bringing about widespread behaviour change.” It seems that governments deploying information warfare against their own citizens did not end with the Covid-19 reopening: influencing the public on the climate agenda is the next area of focus. ***** Klarenberg doesn't deny the reality of climate change fyi. Exchange with ML & Tim Hayward: ***** https://nitter.moomoo.me/KitKlarenberg/status/1683470762974355457#m Tim Hayward @Tim_Hayward_ My Twitter feed has some contrasting perspectives today. Dialogue between them might be interesting: @medialens Vs @KitKlarenberg Media Lens @medialens The climate crisis has not been 'choreographed'; it's not part of the 'chorus line'. State-corporate elites have always worked hard to bury the issue. They hate it, for the obvious reason that action threatens profits. They mention it only under pressure and do next to nothing. Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg Important to note I think climate change is very real. My concerns here are: *How it should - and can - be responded to on an individual and societal level, and whether governments and international institutions can be trusted to do the right thing *Whether life-altering measures ostensibly intended to tackle climate change will do so, and/or whether they will also serve other insidious, unstated purposes *Relatedly, that in the manner of COVID, governments are overwhelmingly focused on how to manipulate and coerce their populations into accepting those measures, rather than their efficacy and necessity I wholeheartedly concur with Media Lens' analysis that the media fails to report on climate change seriously because to do so would compromise their bottom line. So we should be circumspect about any remedies the same outlets end up pushing. Media Lens @medialens All reasonable concerns. It would be an amazing intellectual failure to imagine that a state-corporate system psychopathic, deceptive and self-destructive enough to create this disaster would not bring that sickness to its response. Why we need mass outrage and engagement. |