Australia is experiencing a “proliferation” of misinformation and disinformation about climate and renewable energy, a major new report has warned, and fixing it will require a whole-of-government approach, from boosting funding for scientific research to national campaigns to boost digital literacy.
A final report from the Senate inquiry into climate mis-information and dis-information, published on Wednesday, outlines a daunting 21 directions the federal government should take to improve “information integrity” on the divisive topics of energy and climate change.
“The integrity of Australia’s information ecosystem is threatened by a proliferation of misinformation and disinformation, which is polarising public discourse and eroding trust in science and knowledge institutions,” the report says.
“The motivations behind the spread of climate change mis/disinformation are also complex, ranging from genuine community concerns through to ideological, political and commercial narratives that can amplify or delay climate action, protect established business models, or increase community divisions.”
The committee was announced in July last year to look into how social media, AI and false or misleading claims are being used to skew people’s views on climate change and renewable energy.
It heard appalling stories of threats to landowners, abuse of bushfire victims and coordinated and sophisticated social media attacks on community groups.
It was also flooded with claims that climate scientists and the government are the real problem with climate obstruction from the likes of the Institute of Public Affairs on full display.
The final report recommends better funding for a wide range of civil society and government bodies.
These include more funding for regional and independent journalism, independent monitoring of dark money and hidden influence ecosystems, for regulators to combat greenwashing, digital literacy education, and for the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner (AEIC) which has been a strong advocate for communities.
The whole-of society approach won plaudits from the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition, which says Baltic states have taken the same approach successfully against propaganda from Russia.
“Countries like Finland and Estonia that have long been besieged by Russian propaganda, have demonstrated how a ‘whole of society’ approach works to protect the public against deliberate campaigns of deception, whether from authoritarian petrostates or billionaire-backed disinformation campaigns,” CAAD Communications co-chair Philip Newell said in a statement.
“Australia would be wise to pursue these recommendations quickly, and with full funding, and other countries should apply their own locally relevant solutions.”
The wind health issue is back
The report also wants to see fresh research on whether wind turbines can make people sick.
“The AEIC also told the committee of ongoing community concerns about the health impact of wind farms – despite the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) finding that there is no consistent evidence that wind farms directly impact human health,” the report says.
“However, given the age of the NHMRC research, the committee supports the AEIC suggestion that it would be timely to provide updated information on this issue.
The main health worry from wind turbines is the impact of infrasound, noise that is too low for human hearing.
The NHMRC did run a study in 2015 but also funded a Woolcock Institute study that was published just three years ago, which found that constant exposure to recordings of infrasound from a wind farm over the course of 72 hours had no effect on the participants.
Lead researcher Nathaniel Marshall told Renew Economy this month that infrasound as a health issue is a “scientific dead end”.
“[Infrasound] flat out did nothing to people,” he said.
“If you look at the paper, apart from the participants in the study we also had a lot of staff who were exposed to infrasound and none of us felt sick either.
“You can test it and we did and it didn’t do anything.”
AI “slopaganda”
The final report also directly pointed out a particularly embarrassing moment for the now-defunct Rainforest Reserves Australia group.
The self-described conservation charity was called out for using artificial intelligence (AI) and fabricating citations in their submission to the inquiry, and faced scrutiny about whether it was misleading communities and spreading inaccurate claims.
The committee suggested that a framework to guide submitters on how to use AI – and disclose it – would be a good idea.
A number of submitters and witnesses said the widespread use of AI is leading to a self-perpetuating cycle of mis- and disinformation, as AI then uses that data to create new content — or “AI slopaganda”.
But it also touched on the broader issue of planning applications becoming a dumping ground for sloppy and AI-based submissions from people who are not affected by a development.
It suggested location-based thresholds for community-based versus outside views, and penalties for fraudulent work to discourage a mass of fraudulent submissions, including to parliamentary committees.
Delays mean fewer regional jobs
The deteriorating “information ecosystem” is already having an effect on Australians’ attitudes to renewables, with even rooftop solar now falling in popularity.
For large scale renewable projects, delays caused by fearmongering are also delaying the economic opportunity costs around jobs and benefits funds, the committee’s report said.
Scare campaigns against renewable energy are preventing thousands of regional jobs and new economic opportunities,” says the Clean Energy Council chief policy officer William Churchill.
“They weaken Australia’s energy resilience at a time when global political instability has only increased the case for renewables, which is helping to shield Australia from global price shocks and deliver energy sovereignty,” he said in a statement.
“The facts are that coal is exiting the system and has reached its end of life, and clean energy is the cheapest replacement.
“Utilising Australia’s abundance of sun and wind, is in not only in our national interest, it makes good economic sense, creating jobs, procurement from small businesses and supporting regional councils and communities.”
It’s all censorship!
There were three dissenting views, which ultimately argued that putting any kind of guardrails around information, whether it’s a lie or a differing opinion, amounts to censorship.
None engaged with the recommendations the committee they participated in put forward, saying instead that any action will restrict free speech.
In fact, the committee’s final review explicitly recommended against the kind of heavy-handed methods that silence different views, urging instead for the federal government to “take a nuanced approach that does not dismiss legitimate community concern or stifle public debate.”
What was particularly interesting is that all three used tactics from a playbook that fossil fuel lobbyists have been using for 60 years, and adopted a new one often seen in planning submissions of not addressing the question but saying many words.
The new tactic, which made up most of the submission from new Nationals leader Matt Canavan, was to attack the premise of the question and the fact that the Senate was holding the inquiry.
“This inquiry was conducted in a way which proved that it was not about a genuine effort to improve the accuracy of public dialogue but, instead, it was an attempt to bully and cajole people into silence. I have never seen a greater abuse of the Senate’s purpose,” he said.
The other two dissenters, One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts and United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet, were more inclined to follow the usual playbook.
Both tried to undermine the inquiry with scepticism about its premise and the solutions it offered, and demanded policy neutrality for all views, be they real or fake.
Roberts dismissed any scientists and views he disagreed with and, with judicious use of all caps dotting his text, attacked the UN, now-deceased UN diplomat Maurice Strong, and the inquiry itself.
He opened with saying UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is running his own misinformation-disinformation “censorship bill”, then went on to attack the “wily psychopathic UN criminal” Strong, and, the Howard government for using the Kyoto Protocol to “steal” farmers’ property rights.
His base claim is that there is no evidence to show the global climate is changing, and he wants full transparency from government – such as televised cabinet meetings – rather than transparency over who, say, is making claims online.
Babet couched all “alternate opinions” about climate policy as valid views worthy of protecting from censorship – whether they are lies or a genuine view point.
“There is growing pressure to equate skepticism about anthropogenic climate change with the spread of harmful misinformation. This is an authoritarian impulse that threatens the foundations of a free society,” he said in his dissent.
He claimed it is the government and its agencies who are also putting out disinformation.
If you would like to join more than 29,000 others and get the latest clean energy news delivered straight to your inbox, for free, please click here to subscribe to our free daily newsletter.
