Andrew Urban writing in a great piece at Spectator.com.au, comments on the move by the Labor government to fine tech companies billions of dollars for publishing so-called “misinformation.” But, Urban asks the question that immediately went through my mind, that I raised in previous articles, that is, who decides what is “misinformation”? Take all the aspects of the Covid plandemic for example. Even Joe Biden said that the Covid vaxxes would prevent transmission. But, it is a matter of fact that these vaxxes did not. And fully vaccinated people got Covid, some multiple times. So, at one point in time, all this was “misinformation,” then what was once a conspiracy theory, was found to be true. The same applies to the issue of the origin of Covid; natural origin versus the lab leak idea. As Trump originally proposed the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis, it was rejected by the mainstream as being “racist,” as is anything that reflect badly upon the CCP who the mainstream media love, indeed, worship. Now, it is the accepted position.
Urban discusses climate change issues, which is relevant too, but the same points can be made. The Labor government has not been given any divine access to truth, so the entire legislation is fundamentally flawed. But that is the point; not to somehow seek truth, but to suppress informed democratic debate for the purposes of social control, and their ultimately globo-commo agenda.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/06/the-governing-orthodoxy-or-the-truth/
“No, look, seriously, what do you say to a Labor government that plans to fine companies billions of dollars for publishing disinformation and/or misinformation, when that government itself is the most persistent offender?
The first response, of course, is to question who would decide what is a transgression. The Ministry of Truth, of course, you naïve innocent…! But the wrench in the spokes of that wheel is that these days, truth has many owners. The Ministry would stick to the ruling orthodoxy on the contentious matters – like: What is a woman? Any social media giant that allows a post to appear which suggests that a woman is an adult human female would be robbed of 5 per cent of its Global Gross revenue. Gross, indeed.
Our most cherished humans, mothers, could not celebrate Mother’s Day online. The only new greeting cards available would say Happy Vagina Owner’s Day – although that, too is likely to be rather revolutionary and subject to scrutiny by the all-powerful Vagina Advisory Voice. Men, too, can have vaginas, wombs, and breasts. Obviously.
Men twice the size and power of women should compete in elite sports, from swimming to weight lifting. Contrary views will not be tolerated.
And where the new policy would come into heated friction with energy and climate change policies is with the ruling orthodoxy about fossil fuels dangerously heating the earth. This is the sacrosanct part of the Global Climate Alarmist Guidebook. Every nook and cranny of government decision-making is infected with the shrieking Thunderberg Doctrine, which asserts that the Earth’s demise is nigh, thanks to us burning coal. Stop it. And stop oil, too, or I’ll throw paint on your paintings.
But the trouble for the Ministry of Truth would be the old, well-known persistence of truth itself. Not the Ministry’s truth, but evidence-based truth. I don’t need to remind readers of Winston Churchill’s observation – but I will (in case a putative Ministry status climber is spying on The Speccie). Said he: ‘Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is.’
The truth is, politicians are not the most qualified of the professions (?) to identify truth. In the case of climate matters, there is the governing ‘truth’ a la Climate Minister Chris Bowen – and the rest. There are qualified people who study the different aspects of how climate works – and there are many, many, many aspects to study. I myself have been studying some of the studies for a decade and you won’t be shocked to hear that outside the well-funded crowd of contributors to the IPCC (Infusing Politics to Climate Change), the ruling orthodoxy does not rule. Investigative Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise has written an instructive book with the eye-catching title, The Delinquent Teenager – who was mistaken for the world’s top climate expert (Connor Court). It’s all about the IPCC – and it’s not complimentary.
‘Having morphed into an obnoxious adolescent, the IPCC is now everyone’s problem,’ she notes, and goes on to thoroughly disembowel the organisation, which produces the Climate Bible, the sequence of reports collated by the Panel and cited by governments the world over. This Bible is the reason for carbon taxes, rising bills, costly regulations, and ‘why everyone thinks carbon dioxide emissions are dangerous’.
What Laframboise goes on to prove is that the Climate Bible is written, not by a meticulous upstanding professional in business attire, but ‘a slapdash, slovenly teenager who has trouble distinguishing right from wrong’.
Her first indictment is that ‘the organisation is so arrogant, so used to being fawned over, that its leaders failed to take the most ordinary of precautions’. It saw no need to discuss conflict of interest issues. The IPCC and much of the media claim that the reports it produces come from the ‘best talent available across the world’. Laframboise cites several examples to show such claims to be unsupportable, whether in the field of extreme weather events, mosquitos or sea levels expertise.
Of several examples cited, one is that of a woman who was a research assistant at Australia’s Monash University in 2008. After earning her PhD in 2009, she was hired by another university which boasted that she had already played a key role in both the 2001 and 2007 editions of the Climate Bible. The IPCC selected its 2001 authors in 1999; ‘This means its leadership decided she was a world-class expert 10 years before she had earned her doctorate.’
Another author didn’t earn her PhD until 2010, yet in 1994 – 16 years earlier and three years before her first academic paper was published – she was one of just 21 people in the entire world selected to work on the first IPCC chapter that examined how climate change might affect human health.
Laframboise devotes a chapter to climate modelling – and points out that the IPCC has not subjected climate models to rigorous evaluation. It simply asked climate modellers to evaluate their own handiwork. ‘This is like asking parents to rate their own children’s attractiveness,’ she quips.
From identity politics to Aboriginal grievance claims and climate change, the notion of policing disinformation (deliberate) and misinformation (mistaken) looks daunting, if not impossible. At least, impossible without the guidance of bias.
How would Labor’s Ministry of Truth reconcile challenges to the ruling orthodoxy:
- ‘There is no climate emergency’ – Climate Declaration, signed by a global network of over 1500 scientists and professionals (Climate Intelligence Foundation).
- The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is 0.04 per cent, with only 0.0012 per cent from human activity – Australia’s contribution is just over 1 per cent of 0.0012 per cent.
- Natural warming ended the last ice age.
- ‘Annual human emissions (3 per cent of the total) of carbon dioxide are meant to drive global warming. This has never been shown. If it could be shown, then it would also have to be shown that natural emissions (97 per cent) don’t drive global warming.’ – Geology professor Ian Plimer.
- ‘It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that carbon dioxide, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.’– MIT Professor, emeritus, Richard Lindzen.
The Ministry of Truth will have to forbid Chris Bowen from posting on social media.”