Disinforming the Public

[Quintessence]

It's well established that a key ingredient of a functioning democracy is a well-educated public that has access to important information pertaining to a given issue. Take, for example, the issue of gun control. In order for a citizen to have a well-informed opinion about that issue, having easy access to information such as statistics on gun deaths or laws governing gun ownership is important. Obvious, right?

Apparently it's only obvious if the information matches up with your political agenda.

America's current national administration has engaged in campaigns of systematic disinformation and erasure on a topic of paramount importance. As the New York Times reports:

Nearly a year into the Trump administration, mentions of climate change have been systematically removed, altered or played down on websites across the federal government, according to a report made public Wednesday.

....

“We have found significant loss of public access to information about climate change,” the authors wrote.

“Why are these federal agencies putting so much effort into ‘science cleansing’ instead of using time and resources to fulfill agency responsibilities, such as protecting the environment and advancing energy security?” they wrote. “Removing information regarding climate change from federal websites does not affect the reality of climate change, but may serve to obfuscate the subject and inject doubt regarding the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that it is caused by human activity.”
How Much Has ‘Climate Change’ Been Scrubbed From Federal Websites? A Lot.​

I don't intend this thread to be about climate change in particular, but the chilling implications erasure of important information from government websites has for the functioning of our democracy. What else is being scrubbed away? What other issues are being obfuscated? How can we hold our national government accountable for disinformation like this?

 

[socharlie]

It's well established that a key ingredient of a functioning democracy is a well-educated public that has access to important information pertaining to a given issue. Take, for example, the issue of gun control. In order for a citizen to have a well-informed opinion about that issue, having easy access to information such as statistics on gun deaths or laws governing gun ownership is important. Obvious, right?

Apparently it's only obvious if the information matches up with your political agenda.

America's current national administration has engaged in campaigns of systematic disinformation and erasure on a topic of paramount importance. As the New York Times reports:

Nearly a year into the Trump administration, mentions of climate change have been systematically removed, altered or played down on websites across the federal government, according to a report made public Wednesday.

....

“We have found significant loss of public access to information about climate change,” the authors wrote.

“Why are these federal agencies putting so much effort into ‘science cleansing’ instead of using time and resources to fulfill agency responsibilities, such as protecting the environment and advancing energy security?” they wrote. “Removing information regarding climate change from federal websites does not affect the reality of climate change, but may serve to obfuscate the subject and inject doubt regarding the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that it is caused by human activity.”
How Much Has ‘Climate Change’ Been Scrubbed From Federal Websites? A Lot.​

I don't intend this thread to be about climate change in particular, but the chilling implications erasure of important information from government websites has for the functioning of our democracy. What else is being scrubbed away? What other issues are being obfuscated? How can we hold our national government accountable for disinformation like this?

money, GW is fake to redistribute money, climate is in process of change, always, but now USA exports OIL, so GW must to disappear... now we have to burn more of fossil fuel to warm up...

 

[Brickjectivity]

It's well established that a key ingredient of a functioning democracy is a well-educated public that has access to important information pertaining to a given issue. Take, for example, the issue of gun control. In order for a citizen to have a well-informed opinion about that issue, having easy access to information such as statistics on gun deaths or laws governing gun ownership is important. Obvious, right?

Apparently it's only obvious if the information matches up with your political agenda.

America's current national administration has engaged in campaigns of systematic disinformation and erasure on a topic of paramount importance. As the New York Times reports:

Nearly a year into the Trump administration, mentions of climate change have been systematically removed, altered or played down on websites across the federal government, according to a report made public Wednesday.

....

“We have found significant loss of public access to information about climate change,” the authors wrote.

“Why are these federal agencies putting so much effort into ‘science cleansing’ instead of using time and resources to fulfill agency responsibilities, such as protecting the environment and advancing energy security?” they wrote. “Removing information regarding climate change from federal websites does not affect the reality of climate change, but may serve to obfuscate the subject and inject doubt regarding the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that it is caused by human activity.”
How Much Has ‘Climate Change’ Been Scrubbed From Federal Websites? A Lot.​

I don't intend this thread to be about climate change in particular, but the chilling implications erasure of important information from government websites has for the functioning of our democracy. What else is being scrubbed away? What other issues are being obfuscated? How can we hold our national government accountable for disinformation like this?

Not to derail, but this is the #1 reason why I no longer favor strong central government. Its just too large. With a stroke it can erase information, people, perhaps whole countries. A large central government can accomplish many things that smaller governments cannot, but it can also self destruct more easily. Its too vulnerable -- analogous to a non-diverse environment. It is also non-responsive to citizen concerns. We must bite the bullet and return more functions to states. States rights is now becoming a more relevant concern to me. We should begin to empower state-level politicians and weaken senators and representatives in Washington.

 

[Stanyon]

It's well established that a key ingredient of a functioning democracy is a well-educated public that has access to important information pertaining to a given issue. Take, for example, the issue of gun control. In order for a citizen to have a well-informed opinion about that issue, having easy access to information such as statistics on gun deaths or laws governing gun ownership is important. Obvious, right?

Apparently it's only obvious if the information matches up with your political agenda.

America's current national administration has engaged in campaigns of systematic disinformation and erasure on a topic of paramount importance. As the New York Times reports:

Nearly a year into the Trump administration, mentions of climate change have been systematically removed, altered or played down on websites across the federal government, according to a report made public Wednesday.

....

“We have found significant loss of public access to information about climate change,” the authors wrote.

“Why are these federal agencies putting so much effort into ‘science cleansing’ instead of using time and resources to fulfill agency responsibilities, such as protecting the environment and advancing energy security?” they wrote. “Removing information regarding climate change from federal websites does not affect the reality of climate change, but may serve to obfuscate the subject and inject doubt regarding the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that it is caused by human activity.”
How Much Has ‘Climate Change’ Been Scrubbed From Federal Websites? A Lot.​

I don't intend this thread to be about climate change in particular, but the chilling implications erasure of important information from government websites has for the functioning of our democracy. What else is being scrubbed away? What other issues are being obfuscated? How can we hold our national government accountable for disinformation like this?

I think what is important is what kinds of information it was, it's still out there so it's not as if it just disappeared.

 

[Polymath257]

I think what is important is what kinds of information it was, it's still out there so it's not as if it just disappeared.

A great deal of climate data is only out there because it was 'rescued' before the take-down order. There is a lot that was not saved, unfortunately.

One of the few conspiracy theories I have thought had a case was the one that says our politicians do not *want* an educated populace. That is one reason why our public schools are so bad. It is also why anything that doesn't fit a political agenda is silenced as much as possible.

So, for example, it is currently against the law for the CDC to study anything related to gun deaths. That means there is no reasonable data set that is available to really get a handle on some of our problems with gun violence. This is simply, and clearly, only the case for political reasons.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

It's well established that a key ingredient of a functioning democracy is a well-educated public that has access to important information pertaining to a given issue. Take, for example, the issue of gun control. In order for a citizen to have a well-informed opinion about that issue, having easy access to information such as statistics on gun deaths or laws governing gun ownership is important. Obvious, right?

Apparently it's only obvious if the information matches up with your political agenda.

America's current national administration has engaged in campaigns of systematic disinformation and erasure on a topic of paramount importance. As the New York Times reports:

Nearly a year into the Trump administration, mentions of climate change have been systematically removed, altered or played down on websites across the federal government, according to a report made public Wednesday.

....

“We have found significant loss of public access to information about climate change,” the authors wrote.

“Why are these federal agencies putting so much effort into ‘science cleansing’ instead of using time and resources to fulfill agency responsibilities, such as protecting the environment and advancing energy security?” they wrote. “Removing information regarding climate change from federal websites does not affect the reality of climate change, but may serve to obfuscate the subject and inject doubt regarding the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that it is caused by human activity.”
How Much Has ‘Climate Change’ Been Scrubbed From Federal Websites? A Lot.​

I don't intend this thread to be about climate change in particular, but the chilling implications erasure of important information from government websites has for the functioning of our democracy. What else is being scrubbed away? What other issues are being obfuscated? How can we hold our national government accountable for disinformation like this?

We don't hear so much about global cooling, phrenology, or steady state anymore either. It's just scientific progress

 

[Mindmaster]

I don't intend this thread to be about climate change in particular, but the chilling implications erasure of important information from government websites has for the functioning of our democracy. What else is being scrubbed away? What other issues are being obfuscated? How can we hold our national government accountable for disinformation like this?

It's sort of like a situation where both sides are presenting faulty information...

First there was "Global Warming" for those of us older than millennials, then none of those predictions came true - in fact, we're in a global "cool down" and the last 3-4 years have been some of the coldest winters in recent memory. The polar ice currently is massive, despite the claims made in the past..

When those GW predictions had failed the scientists involved back-tracked and invented "Climate Change" - the caveat being that climate change always happens, and mostly it happens in regard to non-man made factors. This is just the classic bait and switch really, their predictions failed and they had to recast them into something more nebulous to stay employed. I see this as _very_ dishonest, and lacking integrity... Generally, there are refusals to admit basic scientific information that doesn't fit the narrative like the forementioned polar cap growth or the fact that the largest greenhouse gas is water vapor, and nothing we can do anything about.

Of course, there are other reasons to be "environmentally friendly" like health or efficiency. (I don't particularly find it economically healthy to be too dependent on one means of providing power or whatever, things go bad and it's nice to have alternatives...) Nothing we can do will destroy the planet though, just ourselves... We should approach these things from a health concern angle, rather than the fortune telling model that the climate scientists are engaged in currently.

Someone of course can take the hard data that these scientists use and argue against all of it with validity because the earth has been both warmer and colder than now, we're sort of in a moderate range of all time temps. Humanity survived those warmer times as well, and there is no precedent for drastically modifying our behaviors based on that. For me it's simple, don't **** where you sleep but don't be anally retentive about it either. Most of the information provided on climate science is bogus or anecdotal at best, and anyone seriously researching the topic over long swaths of time (say the last 10,000 years or more) can easily see holes in their arguments. I'd cleanse this information off federal websites as well, because as it stands now most of it is unsubstantiated. Just because those ideas are popular with the mainstream science gurus doesn't mean they're correct -- most of them know very little about historical climate variations if anything at all.

I am for placing solid information on these websites though, but that's not what was there before Trump started "deleting" them.

 

[sun rise]

The problem is bigger than climate change. The regime in power in Washington is lying or trying to cover up misdeeds about a lot of things. If the truth came out fully and people prosecuted for this misdeeds, Trump and the vast majority of Republicans in Congress would be behind bars tomorrow as would the propaganda (aka lying) from gigantic corporations who are systematically lying to the American people to keep themselves in a position of power and wealth.

 

[Fool]

It's well established that a key ingredient of a functioning democracy is a well-educated public that has access to important information pertaining to a given issue. Take, for example, the issue of gun control. In order for a citizen to have a well-informed opinion about that issue, having easy access to information such as statistics on gun deaths or laws governing gun ownership is important. Obvious, right?

Apparently it's only obvious if the information matches up with your political agenda.

America's current national administration has engaged in campaigns of systematic disinformation and erasure on a topic of paramount importance. As the New York Times reports:

Nearly a year into the Trump administration, mentions of climate change have been systematically removed, altered or played down on websites across the federal government, according to a report made public Wednesday.

....

“We have found significant loss of public access to information about climate change,” the authors wrote.

“Why are these federal agencies putting so much effort into ‘science cleansing’ instead of using time and resources to fulfill agency responsibilities, such as protecting the environment and advancing energy security?” they wrote. “Removing information regarding climate change from federal websites does not affect the reality of climate change, but may serve to obfuscate the subject and inject doubt regarding the scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that it is caused by human activity.”
How Much Has ‘Climate Change’ Been Scrubbed From Federal Websites? A Lot.​

I don't intend this thread to be about climate change in particular, but the chilling implications erasure of important information from government websites has for the functioning of our democracy. What else is being scrubbed away? What other issues are being obfuscated? How can we hold our national government accountable for disinformation like this?

it's easier to control people with fear and misinformation when they are in the dark.

 

[metis]

We don't hear so much about global cooling, phrenology, or steady state anymore either.

Much like we don't hear much anymore about unicorns and turning lead into gold.

 

[metis]

First there was "Global Warming" for those of us older than millennials, then none of those predictions came true - in fact, we're in a global "cool down" and the last 3-4 years have been some of the coldest winters in recent memory. The polar ice currently is massive, despite the claims made in the past..

False as anyone can tell if they actually do the research. But for those who watch Fox and listen to Limbaugh, ...

 

[Quintessence]

I'm reading through the full report that the article links to, and it's making me think of some interesting parallels. The report mentions that climate denialism essentially pulls from the same playbook that the tobacco industry did back when it's products where scientifically proven to be problematic. But, unlike the tobacco industry, climate denialists have managed to secure state-level sponsorship to protect their profits.

At root, this sort of corruption comes down to allowing corporations to have much too much power over democratic processes. I would bet we can find similar things going on within the health care and drug industries. I believe that one of the roles of good government is to protect its people from exploitation, but it's a role that the national government seems increasingly willing to abdicate.

 

[Mindmaster]

False as anyone can tell if they actually do the research. But for those who watch Fox and listen to Limbaugh, ...

First thing to know is science can't even accurately predict weather more than 3 days in the future other than to make predictions based on historical events. Yet, this same history is the data that climate change supporters selectively ignore.

Secondly, I was going to type all this but someone else did: Tens of Thousands Of Scientists Declare Climate Change A Hoax

Your ad hominem is weak, try harder, btw. I figure we'd moved passed the whole first gradish level of insulting someone as a Rush or Fox News fan already - stuff you know not to be true but will nonetheless mindlessly repeat it over and over again and expect us to be amazed, like the first time you made a poop-y.

 

[tytlyf]

First thing to know is science can't even accurately predict weather more than 3 days in the future other than to make predictions based on historical events. Yet, this same history is the data that climate change supporters selectively ignore.

Weather and climate are 2 different things.

Secondly, I was going to type all this but someone else did: Tens of Thousands Of Scientists Declare Climate Change A Hoax

Stop being lazy and spreading fake news. Learn to research and fact check things that RW media tells you.
No, 30,000 scientists have not said climate change is a hoax

Your ad hominem is weak, try harder, btw. I figure we'd moved passed the whole first gradish level of insulting someone as a Rush or Fox News fan already - stuff you know not to be true but will nonetheless mindlessly repeat it over and over again and expect us to be amazed, like the first time you made a poop-y.

You don't have to watch Fox or Rush to say what they say. Most of the 'conservative' performance artists out there just repeat what Fox and Rush say. The difference is, Fox/Rush work for the republican establishment, the performance artists are in it for the $$. Intentionally spreading disinformation for monetary gain (website subscriptions, food buckets, bible speakers, etc.)

Republicans claim climate change is a hoax because Big Oil tells them that. Big Oil controls republicans in congress and Big Oil writes the laws and tells these people what to do.

The NRA lobbies republicans in congress as well, telling them to scrub and remove any programs designed to learn more about gun violence and statistics. The NRA are part of the MIC. They only care about selling guns for their overlords. Everything else be damned.

 

[metis]

First thing to know is science can't even accurately predict weather more than 3 days in the future other than to make predictions based on historical events. Yet, this same history is the data that climate change supporters selectively ignore.

Secondly, I was going to type all this but someone else did: Tens of Thousands Of Scientists Declare Climate Change A Hoax

Basically what you're implying is that the research scientists who specialize in this area are either ignorant, dishonest, or both.

The reality is that we know that we're in a period of global warming because these are based on real temperature measurements that have been done for over 200 years. 19 of the last 20 years have set heat records worldwide since such records have been kept. Even Wiki can supply you with information, including links to various sites, such as you can find here: Global warming - Wikipedia

Even the graph at the top pretty much tells the story.

And if you don't believe in the Wiki article, check the NAS, NOAA, NASA, Scientific American, National Geographic, and even the Department of Defense websites on this.

Your ad hominem is weak, try harder, btw. I figure we'd moved passed the whole first gradish level of insulting someone as a Rush or Fox News fan already - stuff you know not to be true but will nonetheless mindlessly repeat it over and over again and expect us to be amazed, like the first time you made a poop-y.

It was not "ad hominem" but more a statement that you're using "alternative facts" from some source, undoubtedly right-wing. Actually, it is your comment above that is "ad hominen" if you actually stop and reread and think about what you wrote.