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by aalleavitch 2308 days ago
This is nonsense. The only agenda here is money. Those bots are all twisting discussion towards climate denialism and in support of fossil fuel companies. You can draw a straight line to mass disinformation from the budgets of major oil companies. It's a PR expense, and why wouldn't they? On the margin it's in their interests and they won't have to foot the bill from any sort of environmental issues that follow. They don't have to care if the world burns.

You can't have pure science in a world where financial incentives are towards lies and obfuscation. This isn't justifiable skepticism, this is information warfare.
1 comments
dehrmann 2308 days ago
> You can draw a straight line to mass disinformation from the budgets of major oil companies

Citation needed.

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52-6F-62 2308 days ago
Not OP, but the oil lobby in Canada runs rather disingenuous commercials on television on a regular basis.

https://www.youtube.com/user/cappvideos

https://www.youtube.com/user/cappvideos/videos?view=0&sort=p...

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dehrmann 2308 days ago
It's more like they gloss over the impact of oil while talk about all the good they do. "Mass disinformation" is an overstatement because while you're seeing selection bias, at least the first few videos weren't untrue.
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52-6F-62 2307 days ago
No, they’re not untrue. You’re right about that.

The disinformation comes in the complete denial that they’ve done any harm in the first place because they make any attempt to rectify that harm.

My grandmother worked for Gulf/Shell in Toronto and then Alberta mid-century and even after she retired (twice) was very committed to the very same messaging.

It’s subtle—but as an outsider with that perspective into the industry it seems quite apparent.

I’ll add that none of it is black and white except for the effect that we’ve had on our environment.

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WilliamEdward 2308 days ago
It's a rhetoric not a fact, but any logical person can deduce that an industry that stands to lose money, and has a lot of it, will use some of it to push a narrative that everything is fine. This is tutorial level critical thinking.
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cgiles 2308 days ago
It is also the basis of much conspiracy theorizing. The chain of logic is:

1. Group X has an incentive to do Y

2. We observe Y

3. We also observe specific instances of X doing Y

4. Therefore, all Y is caused by X

The problem, obviously, comes in step 4.

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