Public asked to report climate misinformation on May Day

Global Action Plan are standing up to the climate misinformation which they say will be an inevitable feature of the forthcoming local and mayoral elections.

As such they are calling for the public to help them on May 1st – the day before the elections – by identifying examples of untruths and patent nonsense online, screenshotting them and sending them to Global Action Plan.

The object of the exercise, they explain, is to ‘expose what they’re up to, inoculate the public against their lies, and push for official action to stop them.’

Recent research has identified three layers of claim-making by climate change deniers, all stemming from five ‘Super Claims’: Global warming is not happening, Human greenhouses are not causing global warming, climate impacts are not bad, climate solutions won’t work and climate science is unreliable.  These then feed into other layers: sub-claims and sub-sub-claims.

For the avoidance of doubt, Global Action Plan explain the sort of rhetoric they would like reporting to them:

• Scare stories about green technologies – like electric vehicles exploding or heat pumps being expensive and ineffective.
• Claims that clean energy won’t work –and that we need fossil fuels to lead good lives.
• Exaggerated or unbalanced arguments that climate policies are harmful – they will limit our freedom, be too expensive or harm the environment in other ways.
• Conspiracy theories using buzzwords like ‘climate lockdown’, ‘global elites’, ‘the great reset’ and ‘climate scam’
• The impacts of global warming will be beneficial – or not that bad.
• Content that doubts the credentials or motives of climate scientists or politicians who advocate green policies.
• Fake content – e.g. ‘deepfake’ videos and audio – apparently showing high profile green figures saying something scandalous.
• Authoritative looking figures casting doubt on key green policies.
• Content that makes climate advocates (or their claims) seem absurd and alarmist.

They say: ‘Opponents of climate action are planning to use this week’s local and mayoral elections as a dry run for the UK general election later this year. But they’re not the only ones – we’re ramping up our counterefforts too.

‘If you can help us reveal the climate lies they’re spreading this May Day – Wednesday 1 May, the day before millions cast their votes – we stand a better chance of stopping them in the autumn.

‘Climate deniers can no longer pretend climate change isn’t happening, so they now sow ‘new climate denial’, attacking climate scientists or politicians who support climate action, scaremongering about costs, and undermining solutions to climate change.

‘And these shadowy actors love to whip up controversy about local issues, such as speed limits, cycle lanes, or traffic restrictions. For them, Thursday’s elections are a perfect opportunity to road test targeted fear and confusion ahead of a much bigger rollout later this year.’

Global Action Plan will assess the submissions for emerging themes, in order to inform more rigorous investigative work in the run up to the UK general election.

‘We may want to forward any particularly outrageous / egregious examples with regulators or journalists,’ they say, ‘but we will always ask your permission first.’

https://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/online-climate/climate-vs-big-tech/truth