Climate deniers

[Admin]

The impacts of the climate crisis are now clearly manifesting in ways beyond rising temperatures. In Australia, the conditions for severe bushfires are occurring far more regularly (hot days, dry land and high winds). And the country is now suffering its most intense bushfire season ever. The quantity of land burnt, the smoke pollution impacts, the temperatures and number of homes lost are all breaking historical records.

At the same time, Australia is pioneering the denial of climate disaster. There is some interesting research around denialism. Researchers have essentially discovered a strong political divide when it comes to climate science: progressives are much more likely to accept it as fact than conservatives. And presenting climate deniers with scientific information in the hope that they’ll change their minds actually reinforces their rejection, because they are so taken aback by the information.

This phenomenon affects solutions, too. If a policy proposal to reduce emissions conflicts with someone’s pre-existing beliefs – if it requires more government intervention in markets, for example – they tend to deny that the problem exists in the first place. Over the course of the past decade, Australia was a laboratory for this type of thinking. Research has shown that “climate scepticism gets substantial favourable exposure in mainstream Australian media”. As a result, Ipsos polling finds that Australia lags behind other nations in “acknowledging the threat of climate change”. And a renewable energy target of 42% – proposed in a landmark report by Australia’s chief scientist – was rejected by the conservative government partly because the number sounded too close to the opposition’s 50%.

Rightwing media outlets in Australia have responded to the current bushfires by either refusing to give the story its due prominence or by spreading falsehoods. Specifically, there is a claim emerging that environmentalists have blocked hazard reduction efforts by supposedly opposing dry fuel loads being burned or manually removed. It isn’t one of those half-truths – there’s no truth in it at all. Once spread by a rightwing journalist over 10 years ago, it has been given a new lease of life as a meme on social media.

There is a trajectory for memes like this: the idea emerges in the fever swamps of denialist groups, it slowly seeps into fringe blogs, and from those blogs into Australia’s rightwing media. Then fringe political players take it up, and it’s consequently absorbed by leaders from major parties.
[/url]
There is precedent for this phenomenon. In 2018, a [url=https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmgkjw/starbucks-hoax-coupon-4chan-pol-politically-incorrect]fake Starbucks campaign supposedly offering free coffee to people of colour in the US was orchestrated on the 4chan message board; it was then featured on Fox News. There is already evidence emerging of 4chan boards trying to spread misinformation that fires are being started by Muslim terrorists. The latest story doing the rounds is that the fires have been caused by arsonists or even climate activists – and it has been particularly potent.

Something else is out of control in Australia: climate disaster denialism | Ketan Joshi | Opinion | The Guardian

• Yea, the fires were deliberate arson attempts by climate activists, that's what Bolsonaro also said