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Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
@shellenberger
Aug 12 • 7 tweets • 3 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
For years, the government has insisted that the increase in whale deaths off the East Coast has no relationship to the wind industry's high-decibel pile driving and boat activity. But now, a new documentary, "Thrown To The Wind," based on new research, will challenge that.
We have not released the documentary yet. It's coming soon!
Industrial wind projects “could have population-level effects on an already endangered and stressed species,” warned a top US government (NOAA) scientist last year.

"Population-level effects" include extinction. Image
The scientist warned that "oceanographic impacts from installed and operating turbines cannot be mitigated for the 30-year lifespan of the project unless they are decommissioned."

https://t.co/hPQ734qRRystatic1.squarespace.com/static/6113216…

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Under pressure from the White House, the US government has ignored its top scientist and pushed forward to industrialize the oceans and risk the extinction of the North Atlantic Right Whale.

saverightwhales.org
Wind energy companies and their foundations have donated nearly $4.7 million to at least three dozen donations to major environmental organizations. Linowes has made public a report and a database documenting the conflicts-of-interest she discovered.

— The National Fish and… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Scientists representing many of the same environmental groups supporting the industrial wind energy projects wrote in a 2021 letter that “the North Atlantic right whale population cannot withstand any additional stressors; any potential interruption of foraging behavior may lead… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

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More from @shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Aug 13
Yesterday marked the 60th known whale death on the East Coast since Dec 1, 2022. This is not normal.

The government says it’s not because of the wind industry’s high decibel pile driving & boat traffic in previously pristine waters. They’re lying. And now we have the proof.
The government lied when it said it had done the research proving that the high-decibel pile driving and expanded boat traffic weren’t the cause of rising whale deaths. They hadn’t done the research

Well, we did. And the results are incontrovertible. Soon, everyone will see that
The wind industry spent years bribing the US government, scientific organizations, aquariums, and the news media to lie to the American people about their abominable activities, which if allowed to continue, to make the North Atlantic Right Whale extinct.
Read 6 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Aug 8
The White House demanded more Covid censorship despite overwhelming evidence — discussed internally by Facebook executives — that censorship increases "vaccine hesitancy." Why, then, did the White House demand it? Because the White House was under pressure from the news media.
We have already seen that Facebook felt the pressure to do more censorship for two reasons: White House threats to its Section 230 liability protection and the need for the White House to pressure Europe to allow "data flows" to the U.S.

Today's scoop is different. It shows that Facebook knew that more Covid censoring would increase vaccine hesitancy and that the White House demanded more censorship anyway.

But why?
Pressure On Facebook And White House For Greater Censorship Came From News Media

As the government’s Covid vaccination campaign flagged in 2021, New York Times and others ramped up demands for more censorship

by @galexybrane @lwoodhouse @shellenberger

Yesterday Public reported for the first time that Facebook censored content at the request of the White House in order to guarantee White House support in a $1.2 billion battle with the European Union over data privacy.

It is a significant discovery because it points to a major and additional point of financial leverage that the US government used to coerce censorship, in addition to widely discussed Section 230 liability protections, which President Biden, directly and indirectly, threatened — if Facebook refused its demands to censor.

But it all raises a question: why was the Biden White House so determined to censor Facebook in the first place?

Until the Facebook Files, the answer had been that they wanted people to take the vaccine. The White House believed all the anti-vaccine information on Facebook was contributing to “vaccine hesitancy.”

But now, the Facebook Files reveal that Facebook executives knew censoring disfavored vaccine views would backfire and explained to White House officials that censoring such views would violate established norms around freedom of speech. But the White House demanded more censorship, anyway.

In internal emails, Rosa Birch, Facebook’s Director of Strategic Response, argued that vaccine censorship would “1/ prevent hesitant people from talking through their concerns online and 2/reinforce the notion that there’s a cover-up.”

Birch stressed that a large and strong body of research showed the importance of “open dialogue,” access to information, and creating “an open and safe space for people to have vaccine-related conversations.”

Birch worried that censorship might “risk pushing [the vaccine hesitant] further toward hesitancy by suppressing their speech and making them feel marginalized by large institutions.”

The White House rejected Birch’s evidence-based case against censorship.

“We are facing continued pressure from external stakeholders, including the white house and the press, to remove more COVID-19 vaccine-discouraging content,” Birch wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg in an April 2021 email.

Facebook executive Nick Clegg initially attempted to defend his staff. “I countered that removing content like that would represent a significant incursion into traditional boundaries of free expression in the US,” wrote Clegg.

But he eventually caved in. “Given what is at stake here,” he wrote, “it would also be a good idea if we could regroup to take stock of where we are in our relations with the WH [White House], and our internal methods too.”

And so, in direct response to White House pressure, Birch put forward three stronger enforcement options for the demotion or deletion of “vaccine discouraging content.” Listing out the pros and cons of each option, Birch explicitly named satisfying “critics” as a factor in determining which course of action to take.

The White House was warned that censoring “vaccine hesitancy” was not the right approach. Why, then, did it push for it anyway?
Read 5 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Aug 8
Many insist it wasn't illegal for the White House to demand greater censorship by Facebook, but it was. Not only did Biden threaten Facebook's legal (Sec. 230) status, Facebook desperately needed Biden to force Europe to allow data flows into the US, which he did. Quid pro quo.
A lot has come out about Facebook's censorship, so our new scoop may seem like old news, but it's not. What we discovered is that White House exercised a different form of leverage over Facebook, one as powerful, and maybe more so, than threatening its legal existence.
Until now, critics of censorship have focused on Biden's threat to revoke Facebook’s Section 230 liability protection.

The new emails reveal a new form of White House leverage: its conditional willingness to stop the EU from demanding Facebook halt data flows to the US.
Read 13 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Aug 4
The charges against Trump rest on him making “knowingly false” claims: if he actually believed Dems stole the 2020 election, the case falls apart. As such, he's being charged with Stacey Abrams syndrome, an arguably greater threat to democracy than false claims @galexybrane Image
Trump Charged With Stacey Abrams Syndrome

by @galexybrane

On Tuesday, Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith charged former president Donald J. Trump with three conspiracies related to the 2020 election and its aftermath: conspiracy to defraud the United States,… https://t.co/P1XAdCSDzRtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
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@galexybrane FBI Controlled The American Communist Party

@shellenberger

Tablet last week published a must-read interview with David Garrow, the Pulitzer-winning biographer of books about the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama. We will have more to say about the… https://t.co/K7sjsNETLitwitter.com/i/web/status/1…
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Read 7 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Aug 3
News rating groups like @NewsGuardRating claim to be objective and have special insight into "misinformation," but they don't. NewsGuard takes money from the Pentagon and spreads misinformation about covid's origin. It is arrogant & depends on the fear & greed of legacy media. Image
Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz: Fear, Arrogance, and Greed Behind “News Rating” Organizations

On NewsGuard and the need for journalistic humility

by @shellenberger

The bewildering number of news organizations has inspired entrepreneurs to create ways to rank them. The most… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Please subscribe now to support Public's investigative reporting and to read the rest of the article!

Read 4 tweets
Michael Shellenberger Profile picture
Aug 1
Good thing lab leaks are just a conspiracy theory or this might be concerning Image
Journalists like @alisonannyoung had for years been reporting on frequent and dangerous lab leaks when the mainstream news media denounced, en masse, any speculation that Covid-19 might have resulted from a lab leak as a "debunked conspiracy theory."

This is from 2014: Image
Under pressure from totalitarians and useful idiots in the the news media, Facebook censored this well-reasoned oped in February 2020

nypost.com/2020/02/22/don…
Read 6 tweets

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