Australia has to attack misinformation about climate change, Senate report says
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-29/senate-report-misinformation-climate-change-recommendations/106497978
Australia has to attack misinformation about climate change, Senate report says
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-29/senate-report-misinformation-climate-change-recommendations/106497978
15 Comments
Do we? How about just focusing on the government’s job of ensuring access to the basics rather than getting distracted by becoming the thought police.
Net Zero²
Net Zero Carbon Emissions
x
Net Zero Increases to energy costs
Make that the policy. I have trouble buying into Net Zero on its own for Australia because by the IPCC numbers with just Australia Net Zero the 1.5c catastrophic increase is likely still going to happen.
So we don’t control the outcome in any real way.
Make the policy about the economic benefit as well as the science and I’ll vote #1 in fact the best energy policy will get my number 1 vote even if it’s PHON or The Greens.
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One way to do this is to put Labor/Liberal/Nationals/One Nation bottom of your preferences at voting time. All these parties support new coal, gas expansion (which is against all the science and health recommendations).
They all are on the spectrum of climate science deniers and refuse to even stop expanding coal/gas extraction or taxing it properly.
Labor/Liberal etc all trot out the same lines and keep approving new coal&gas (and yes, not just coal for steel making or whatever bullshit excuse Labor was sticking to up until they approved the other type quietly). They are corrupt. Won’t even ban fossil fuel donations.
Social media has made this task infinitely harder.
People need to consume well balanced scientifically researched information.
Gets me why the government doesn’t do information blasts about climate change on TV, streamer ads and social media. Make it super simple, super quick, and just answer maybe three things at a time.
Like, the question of why is ice increasing in Antarctica? This is a favourite one of climate change deniers, but there are compelling reasons why.
With a long enough memory, climate fear mongering is always changing. It was at one stage fears of cooling even! Carbon Dioxide is a red herring and a ridiculous gas to base the massive green economy on. Fossil fuels are still essential to lifting people out of poverty worldwide, and stopping people sliding into energy poverty in the West.
I saw an excellent in depth analysis many years ago on the 3000 or so scientific papers that make up the basis of the original climate “consensus”. They are being misrepresented to draw the conclusion of climate alarmism. A simply evil narrative to burden our children with.
If murdoch, gina or a rightie politician says anything you can presume the opposite is likely true.
Who would have thought that making education into a luxury commodity would make people more susceptible to misinformation. Nobody could have predicted this.
>But in a dissenting report, new Nationals leader Matt Canavan criticised the inquiry, saying it was used to “bully and cajole people into silence”.
“The heart of this inquiry’s approach has been to suppress, ridicule and silence anyone who expresses different views from the current scientific consensus,” he argued.
Rejection of science because it doesn’t fit your twisted view of religion, political ideology or because your donors are threatened by it is not simply a “different view”. People like this absolutely should be ridiculed in the same way as flat earthers.
They could start by kicking out of Parliament House the lobbyists from the companies paying for the disinformation campaigns. Those Russian bot farms don’t work for free – it’s the fossil fuel companies paying for it.
It has to attack misinformation about everything from every angle.
The politicians are the worst for it.
The climate wars are over, why is the Senate wasting time on this?
Going to turf that malinformed numpty Malcom Robert’s out of estimates then please.
My issue is that scientist can and have been bought by corporations as we’ve seen in America. 10 different scientists could say 10 different things. I’ve read articles of one scientist saying one thing then later reading a different article with a scientist saying the complete opposite. Its too easy to be misinformed that any attempt to combat it will probably blow up in their faces. Just make the facts easily accessible and more importantly stop trying to change people’s minds. Focus on informing the next generation.