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<font size="+2"><font face="Calibri"><i><b>September </b></i></font></font><font
size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>21, 2023</b></i></font><font
face="Calibri"><br>
</font> <br>
<i>[ On the Misinformation Battle Ground </i><i> ]</i><br>
<b>Twitter ranks worst in climate change misinformation report</b><b><br>
</b>Climate coalition cites Twitter’s lack of clear policies to stop
incorrect information and confusion from Musk takeover<br>
Nick Robins-Early<br>
Wed 20 Sep 2023<br>
A report ranking climate change misinformation gave Twitter
(recently rebranded as X) only a single point out of a 21-point
scorecard when assessing policies aimed at reducing inaccurate
information – the worst out of five major tech platforms.<br>
<br>
The Climate of Misinformation report by Climate Action Against
Disinformation looked at Meta, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok and
Twitter for their content moderation policies and efforts to
mitigate inaccurate information such as climate denialism. The
group, which is made up of dozens of international climate and
anti-disinformation organizations including Greenpeace and Friends
of the Earth, released the report to draw attention towards climate
misinformation on major platforms and makes the claim that big tech
has become a “complicit actor” in accelerating the spread of climate
denial.<br>
witter’s low rank in the survey was because it failed to meet almost
any of the organization’s criteria for climate misinformation
policies, which ranged from having clear and publicly available
information on climate science to having clearly articulated
policies on what actions the company will take against the spread of
misinformation. The report noted that billionaire tech mogul Elon
Musk’s purchase of the company last year added to the confusion over
how policies are enforced and how the company makes content
decisions.<br>
<br>
“Elon Musk’s acquisition of the company has created uncertainty
about which policies are still standing and which are not,” the
report stated.<br>
<br>
Twitter received its only point in the report for fulfilling one of
the researchers’ requirements that platforms have an easily
accessible and readable privacy policy. Twitter was also the only
platform to lack a clear reporting process for flagging harmful or
misleading content for higher review.<br>
<br>
Tech platforms have long struggled with creating effective or
coherent policies on content moderation, while events such as the
Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 US presidential election resulted in
swaths of misinformation circulating online. Amid conservative
backlash and labor cuts in the tech industry, many companies have
also deprioritized content moderation and opened the door to
potential surges in misinformation on their platforms.<br>
<br>
Although the other platforms fared better, none ranked especially
high on the report’s scale – Pinterest scored highest with 12 points
out of a possible 21. Issues ranged from a lack of clear definitions
of what constituted climate misinformation, failure to enforce
existing policies in a transparent way and a lack of proof that
companies apply these policies equally across different languages.
None of the companies release public reports on how their
algorithmic changes affect climate misinformation, according to the
report.<br>
<br>
The organization’s authors advocate for a number of changes to big
tech’s policies, including establishing clear guidelines on climate
and updating privacy policies to show when private data is being
sold to advertisers that could be linked to the fossil fuel
industry.<br>
Although anti-misinformation groups such as Climate Action Against
Disinformation have repeatedly advocated for big tech to make
investments in their content moderation, the trend in the past year
has often been the opposite. Musk has hollowed out Twitter’s
moderation capabilities while reversing policies to allow for the
targeting of transgender people as well as the spread of
anti-vaccine falsehoods. YouTube also reversed its policy to allow
for election denialism, while Instagram allowed anti-vaccine
activist Robert F Kennedy Jr back onto its platform.<br>
<i>[ see the document
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Climate-of-Misinformation.pdf">https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Climate-of-Misinformation.pdf</a>
]</i><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/20/twitter-x-musk-climate-misinformation-social-platforms">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/20/twitter-x-musk-climate-misinformation-social-platforms</a>
<p>- -</p>
<i>[ clip from PDF document on measure of misinformation ]</i><br>
<b>KEY FINDINGS</b><br>
See Further Explanation and Discussion sections for further detail.<br>
<blockquote><b>· Pinterest</b> received the most points, proving
that they’re leading the industry on policies that mitigate the
spread of climate misinformation.<br>
<br>
<b>· YouTube, Meta, and TikTok </b>have made commitments to
address climate<br>
misinformation on their platforms, but independent researchers
demonstrate that policy enforcement is lacking.<br>
<br>
<b>· Twitter/X </b>received only one point—lacking clear policies
that address climate<br>
misinformation, having no substantive public transparency
mechanisms, and offering noevidence of effective policy
enforcement.<br>
<br>
· 4 out of 5 platforms did not have a content moderation policy
that includes a<br>
comprehensive, universal definition of climate misinformation.<br>
<br>
· Most platforms lack policies that address greenwashing.<br>
<br>
· Although TikTok has demonstrated intention to do so, no platform
showed proof of equal enforcement of climate misinformation
policies across languages.<br>
<br>
· 4 out of 5 platforms’ privacy policies were either difficult to
read, did not explicitly prevent the sale/sharing of personal
data, or both.<br>
<br>
· There’s a lack of algorithmic reporting from all platforms, and
4 out of 5 platforms lackreporting on misinformation trends.<br>
<br>
· 2 out of 5 platforms lack effective public education tools on
climate change and<br>
climate solutions, and public education tools like Facebook’s
Climate Science Center have been proven to not effectively counter
misinformation.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Climate-of-Misinformation.pdf">https://caad.info/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Climate-of-Misinformation.pdf</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<font face="Calibri"><i>[ NYT Opinion - right direction, weak
effort, politics needs more physics ] </i><br>
</font> <font face="Calibri"><b>Biden’s Green Energy Money Is Sugar
on a Poison Pill</b><br>
Sept. 19, 2023</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">By Lydia Millet<br>
<br>
We’ve just had the hottest summer in recorded history, with
runaway wildfires in Canada and Hawaii, ruinous floods from
Slovenia, Sudan and Hong Kong to Vermont and Brazil. We’ve seen
nearly half of the world’s ocean waters in a heat wave, having
absorbed some 90 percent of the heat produced by our greenhouse
gas emissions.<br>
<br>
Amid those catastrophes a new report from Oil Change
International, out Sept. 12, showed that despite its rhetoric on
climate leadership, the United States accounts for one-third of
planned oil and gas expansion across the globe between now and
2050 — more than any other nation.<br>
<br>
President Biden, with both help and hindrance from Congress, has
brought us federal funding for clean technologies. That’s a
crucial step but brutally inadequate: If we keep drilling, pumping
and using oil and gas, green-energy money will remain a sprinkling
of sugar on a poison pill.<br>
<br>
In advance of this year’s United Nations Climate Ambition Summit
on Wednesday, Mr. Biden has made concessions to the environmental
lobby, canceling oil and gas leases in high-profile Alaska refuges
and reserves. Those gestures are welcome, but also easy. The more
difficult and more essential task is to remove incentives for oil
and gas companies to continue their frantic pace of production,
transport and profiteering.<br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">The president’s answer to the climate crisis
has been, in one word, more: more money for solar and wind, sure!
But also more oil production and more exports of planet-heating
fuels. More of everything! It’s the path of least resistance. And
after all, more is the American way.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri">But more won’t cut it with fossil fuels,
whether we’re using them ourselves or selling them to other
countries. U.S. crude oil exports have gone up almost 850 percent
since an important export ban was lifted in 2015, and in 2023
domestic oil production will hit an all-time high. Cleaning up our
domestic portfolio won’t mean much if we keep shipping out dirty
fuels to be combusted abroad.<br>
<br>
The race to decarbonize should be embraced as a race to
emancipation and to a greater global peace. Fossils are currently
subsidizing conflicts from Russia’s war against Ukraine to
militias in Myanmar. In the United States, they also have a
regressive influence, since the steep, local environmental costs
of producing fossils are borne by frontline populations that are
largely poor communities and those of color.<br>
<br>
This means that the emerging fight against fossil fuel dominance
is not a faint, symbolic echo of, say, the struggles for civil
rights and the women’s vote, or of organized labor for fair
treatment in the 1930s. It’s a fusion of the impulses behind each
of these mass liberation movements, striving to unite the need for
environmental justice with the need for racial equity, workers’
rights and an economic system that values the common good over
narrow, elite interests. It asks our leaders to use science as the
basis for policy — and for rational action. And it asks this not
in the name of one group alone, but for all of us.<br>
<br>
So far the United States is Goliath, not David. For the very first
time, global leadership is naming and blaming fossil fuels for the
crisis: while the Paris Agreement doesn’t even make mention of
fossil fuels, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres is now
targeting them directly by welcoming only nations that will commit
to no new fossil fuel development and to concrete transition and
phaseout plans to speak at the climate summit.<br>
<br>
With its enormous economic, military and political clout, America
is the colossus that stands in the way of a planetary crackdown on
emissions. Congress is deeply entangled with the fossil fuel
industry, and in the short term will stay that way. In time, we
can hope for its corruption to wane and a belated survival
instinct to kick in. But at this pivotal point, when science tells
us we have to peak emissions by 2025, the only way forward is
through the executive.<br>
<br>
President Biden can’t stop oil companies from drilling on private
or state lands, which are the source of the vast majority of our
current output, but he can phase out oil and gas production on
public lands. And he can reinstate a ban on oil and gas exports
from private lands. He can stop saying yes to all new oil and gas
projects — including the planned Sea Port Oil Terminal off the
Texas coast, intended to increase our exports — and more
exploration and drilling sites in the Gulf of Mexico.<br>
<br>
He can declare the destabilized climate to be the emergency it is
and stop the billions of dollars in fossil fuel financing invested
abroad, which locks in decades’ worth of extraction. He can direct
the Environmental Protection Agency to establish national limits
for greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. He can end the
Department of Energy’s fossil fuel financing programs and require
that all new vehicle sales are zero-emission by 2030. He can
prosecute polluters and utilities for the damages they cause under
nuisance and fraud suits, as Gov. Gavin Newsom has just done in
California, and bring antitrust violation suits against entities
that obstruct the clean energy transition.<br>
<br>
President Biden can do all of this. If he acts now with urgency
and strength, he can replace the poison pill of carbon emissions
with medicine. He can give us hope that the ones who come after us
will not be subjected to summers of chaos that grow more ravaging
every year.</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><i>Ms. Millet is the author of more than a
dozen books of fiction, most recently “A Children’s Bible” and
“Dinosaurs.”</i><br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/opinion/climate-summit-2023-un.html"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/opinion/climate-summit-2023-un.html</a><br>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/opinion/climate-summit-2023-un.html?unlocked_article_code=IH7U1feyno4r1Kve5LoEL4QhJPrKtJCgl6rS_ZF-kiPHCuBrvaoHcgs_zl5uXEYc_GIhnw7XI2xKtCGHo0MbESOljQJ3DYTiwZ4A9u2oXikmAzfvp2u1i1R2eytrKm19AwGaAC6bcvXWg_MxrSpVItbRtPLg6CmbwjBVlpSSU_As8bqAj9Y8Ke20UYD4b0IBmCYUEw5wMaK3evjhmzn1hRGZe4MKcHK927Ifx21mrf1-4f98scGot4KZKgVqOz6V7emD2C6T25im4Qsjuxg3JUJqRlbLFCJuGn4-O9XPIh-R5tH-oTiraWfrJ5O5owpadM2EtTCwfVp1P1ssGbd1Kg&smid=url-share"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/opinion/climate-summit-2023-un.html?unlocked_article_code=IH7U1feyno4r1Kve5LoEL4QhJPrKtJCgl6rS_ZF-kiPHCuBrvaoHcgs_zl5uXEYc_GIhnw7XI2xKtCGHo0MbESOljQJ3DYTiwZ4A9u2oXikmAzfvp2u1i1R2eytrKm19AwGaAC6bcvXWg_MxrSpVItbRtPLg6CmbwjBVlpSSU_As8bqAj9Y8Ke20UYD4b0IBmCYUEw5wMaK3evjhmzn1hRGZe4MKcHK927Ifx21mrf1-4f98scGot4KZKgVqOz6V7emD2C6T25im4Qsjuxg3JUJqRlbLFCJuGn4-O9XPIh-R5tH-oTiraWfrJ5O5owpadM2EtTCwfVp1P1ssGbd1Kg&smid=url-share</a><br>
</font>
<p><font face="Calibri"><br>
</font> </p>
<font face="Calibri"><br>
<i>[The news archive - looking back]</i><br>
<font size="+2"><i><b>September 21, 1980 </b></i></font> <br>
September 21, 1980: In a presidential debate between Republican
Ronald Reagan and Independent John Anderson (President Carter did
not participate), the latter endorses a "emergency excise tax on
gasoline," which the former vehemently opposes. Reagan and
Anderson also debate the merits of energy conservation, with
Anderson backing strong energy-conservation measures. <br>
<br>
(10:00--20:25)<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1IIyh3yTsM"
moz-do-not-send="true">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1IIyh3yTsM</a><br>
<br>
<br>
</font>
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