Laugh or cry?
New AI tool for climate misinformation
“Ultimately, our goal is the Holy Grail of fact-checking, which is being able to detect and debunk misinformation in real time. Ideally, I would have social media platforms using it to detect misinformation in real time.”
What counts as "climate misinformation"?
Let's have a look
"Denialist keywords include references to
extremes in the past, extremes not
increasing or extremes not linked to
climate change."
More denialist claims
Includes "damages/deaths from extreme weather aren’t increasing"
Includes "extreme weather linked to non-climate change phenomena (like ENSO)"
More denialist claims
Includes "Future generations will be richer and better able to adapt"
More denialist claims
"Carbon Capture & Sequestration (CCS) is unproven/expensive"
More denialist claims
"Nuclear power is safe/good for society/economy/environment"
More denialist claims
Criticism of Skeptical Science 🤣
If there was ever any doubt that these guys want to control public debate & silence those with differing views that's gone
🚨Wow
Report of the Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Freedom
"grave concern about retaliation and a sense that anyone who objected to the state of affairs might lose his or her job or be punished" drive.google.com/file/d/1mB6mjq…
Miami Herald coverage: "Fear of upsetting state officials is pervasive among faculty at the University of Florida, to the point that race-related references have been edited out of course materials and researchers felt pressure to destroy COVID-19 data" miamiherald.com/news/local/edu…
Compare report from the faculty to findings of administrators: "University of Florida Board of Trustees ensures that the institution is free from undue influence by external persons or bodies through clear and consistently enforced policies and procedures" tampabay.com/news/education…
Observations of hurricane activity apparently don't show the right trends
So this new paper re-invents history by using modeled historical hurricane activity to find the right trends
Predictably, gross misinformation follows
This is where we are at in hurricane research?😐
And the MIT press release fails to accurately reflect the paper
During the pandemic (in 2020) in most places around the world expressed public trust in science increased dramatically from 2018 (but not Central Asia/Russia and Sub-Saharan Africa), both in general & within regions
🧵
Today IOC released a new Framework on Fairness, Inclusion & Non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity & sex variations olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-r…
This offers a sharp rebuke to World Athletics "Semenya Rule" barring certain women from competition without medicating
The IOC prioritizes the prevention of harm
The World Medical Association @medwma opposes the World Athletics "Semenya Rule" because of its harm to athletes
No more need be said on this topic
IOC comes out against sex testing of athletes - Good
Yet the WADA Anti-Doping Code was recently modified in light of the "Semenya Rule" to allow drug tests to be used for gender verification