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Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Aug 17

Many say climate change caused the deadly fires in Hawaii but it didn’t. What caused the fires was Hawaiian Electric’s failure to clear flammable grasses from around electric wires because its focus, and ratepayer money, was going to renewables.

wsj.com/us-news/wildfi…

“Between 2019 and 2022, it invested less than $245,000 on wildfire-specific projects on the island”

“While there was concern for wildfire risk, politically the focus was on electricity generation.”

“Looking back with hindsight, the business opportunities were on the generation side, and the utility was going out for bid with all these big renewable-energy projects,” he said. “But in retrospect, it seems clear, we weren’t as focused on these fire risks as we should have been.”

Same thing happened in California.

Gov. @GavinNewsom pushed the utilities to spend billions on renewables and cut the budget for forest fire prevention.

The result was more forest fires. When they were caught, they blamed climate change.

Read 6 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Aug 16

https://twitter.com/0rf/status/1691652238819623361

YouTube's new policy is that it will censor you if you disagree with World Health Organization.

YouTube recognizes that WHO's "guidance" might change. But if it does, it won't be because of debate on YouTube.

YouTube isn't a social media platform, it's a propaganda platform.

https://twitter.com/0rf/status/1691652238819623361

Imagine if YouTube had been around over the last 200 years.

It would have banned criticisms of blood-letting, thalidomide, lobotomies, and sterilizing the mentally ill, all of which were recommended by official health authorities.

Opposition to bad health and medical advice often comes from outside of the health and medical profession or from the fringes.

To disallow criticism of the mainstream consensus is a recipe for gross abuses of power and is an attack on free speech, science, and democracy.

Read 6 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

Aug 15

Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook is the “digital equivalent of a town square,” committed to factual accuracy, and protecting the environment.

But now, Facebook is censoring accurate information about the role of industrial wind energy in killing whales on the brink of extinction.

Facebook Censors Accurate Information Linking Wind Energy To Whale Deaths

Facebook also spreads misinformation by "," which relies on debunked U.S. government sources

For the last 20 years, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that his social media company is the “digital equivalent of a town square,” committed to factual accuracy, and protecting the natural environment.

But now, Facebook is censoring accurate information about the relationship between industrial wind energy development and the increase in whale deaths off the East Coast.

Yesterday, Facebook and Instagram censored my post linking whale deaths to wind energy off the East Coast of the United States. The censorship came in the form of a “https://t.co/IFNCMsQako” article from March 31, 2023, which relied entirely on U.S. government sources.

The censorship came on the exact same day that Public and Environmental Progress released a new documentary, “Thrown To The Wind,” which proves that the https://t.co/IFNCMsQako article is false.

“Thrown To The Wind” presents powerful new scientific evidence that the wind industry is responsible for the increase in whale deaths and that U.S. government agencies are either covering up the evidence or have failed to do the research that is described in the film.

Facebook last year defended its censorship by saying its “fact-checks” are just “opinion” and thus immune from defamation lawsuits, like the one brought by former ABC News correspondent John Stossel.

But that means that Facebook is spreading disinformation. By “disinformation,” I mean information that the person knows to be false. Facebook knows its “fact checks” are just their “opinion.” Thus, labeling https://t.co/NuvsVDtvtc, which in this case is simply repeating US government misinformation, as a “fact-checker” is disinformation.

And the consequences are serious. According to Facebook, “Each time a fact-checker rates a piece of content as false, Facebook significantly reduces the content’s distribution … We … apply a warning label that links to the fact-checker’s article, disproving the claim.”

Why is that? Why is Facebook censoring accurate information and spreading disinformation? And how can we fight back?FactCheck.com

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1691494961399877632?s=20

Please subscribe now to fight censorship, save the whales, and read the rest of the article!

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1691494961399877632?s=20

Read 7 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

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.

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1690449569472204800

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

https://twitter.com/shellenberger/status/1690449569472204800

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

@shellenberger

Aug 12

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.

Read 7 tweets

Michael Shellenberger

@shellenberger

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

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