Climate action has a new enemy – the rise of “AI slopaganda”. Thanks to generative artificial intelligence platforms, climate misinformation is now propagating itself, a federal Senate inquiry has found.
The old enemies have not gone away – climate falsehoods are also spread by vested interests representing the fossil fuel industry, community members with genuine concerns but misguided beliefs, and sites serving clickbait to drive advertising revenue.
The select committee on information integrity on climate change and energy put these issues under the microscope for almost eight months. The report, which dropped last week, makes for grim reading.
The report says proliferation of misinformation (false information) and disinformation (deliberate deception) is polarising public discourse, reducing understanding of climate science and support for action, and eroding trust in science and knowledge institutions.
Australia has some of the highest levels of concern about information integrity globally, the report says. “In addition, false and misleading information about climate change or the environment was one of the top misinformation topics encountered by Australian audiences, with levels of disinformation tending to spike around extreme weather events.”
Misinformation campaigns against renewable energy projects have also been inflaming tensions and fuelling conflict in communities, the inquiry says, including bushfire survivors, landholders, and community group members being subject to harassment, intimidation, physical abuse and even death threats.
Yet silencing debate would probably further undermine trust in communities, science, experts, public institutions and the democratic system, the inquiry says.
So, in a nutshell, climate misinformation is not only undermining our ability to tackle the most pressing problem of our time, but the collateral damage includes community cohesion, political discourse and democracy itself.
What do we have to thank for this toxic cocktail of consequences? Why, the same fossil fuel interests that caused the greenhouse pollution behind global warming in the first place.
Parliamentary privilege for submissions enabled the publication of detailed and compelling evidence on the growing use of “astroturfing” and the role of “dark money” to influence mainstream public debate.
Astroturfing is where a campaign looks “grassroots” but is in fact highly co-ordinated and well financed, often with links to think tanks, commercial interests, lobby groups, donors or political parties. The concern about dark money is the lack of transparency around donations to think tanks and third-party affiliated organisations.
The report highlights a submission (No. 105) by Climate Social Science Network (CSSN) – an international collaboration of 800 scholars – that discusses “climate obstruction” or “intentional actions and efforts to slow or block policies on climate change that are commensurate with the current scientific consensus of what is necessary to avoid dangerous human-caused interference with the climate system”.
In its submission, QUT Digital Media Research Centre describes the tactics as similar to those used by the tobacco lobby to fight anti-smoking regulation.
It’s worth reading the 75-page submission by University of Technology Sydney academic Dr Jeremy Walker, which lays out detailed evidence for a global climate misinformation campaign co-ordinated by the Atlas Network. It starts with an image of a cheque issued by Exxon to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in 1998.
“Climate policy has not failed, it has been defeated,” Walker writes.
Walker points to archived documents that suggest ExxonMobil directly commissioned Atlas to seed hundreds of new think tanks around the world to defeat climate policies such as carbon taxation and an effective United Nations treaty.
In Australia, Walker says, Atlas affiliates include the Institute of Public Affairs, the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance, the H.R. Nicholls Society, Australian Institute for Progress, LibertyWorks, Mannkal Economic Education Foundation and election campaigning vehicles Advance Australia and Australians for Prosperity. He does not claim these are members of a legal entity called Atlas, or that they are all directly funded – since there are many wealthy Australians willing to fund them – but that they are in regular contact and use co-ordinated messaging.
Most of the more-established organisations did not respond directly, though CIS anticipated it in its own submission, saying it was founded several years before Atlas and did not take Atlas funding or direction.
Advance Australia responds that Walker is a “conspiracy theorist” and the progressive climate movement in general are “humanity-hating anti-prosperity scolds who want to make your life worse” and who use the term “disinformation” to discredit people who disagree with them.
‘Climate policy has not failed, it has been defeated.’
Dr Jeremy Walker, University of Technology Sydney
Walker also argues that No Offshore Turbines, Responsible Future Illawarra and National Rational Energy Network are astro-turfing efforts linked to the Atlas Network, while Rainforest Reserves Australia is a legitimate charity that has been co-opted. These organisations have strongly contested his claims and their responses are published alongside Walker’s submission. Responsible Future Illawarra, for example, states it is a grassroots community organisation with identifiable leadership and members, engaged in normal civic participation. The inquiry report discusses these allegations but does not make adverse findings or identify evidence supporting such claims against these individual groups.
It is depressing how impotent we are to prevent misinformation without risking further harm.
The committee’s recommendations include joining global efforts to combat misinformation, strengthening the role of regulators to tackle greenwashing, ensuring greater transparency in campaign materials, providing more funding for social science and independent monitoring, and greater oversight of corporate involvement in school systems. But it also rightly calls “for a nuanced approach that does not dismiss legitimate community concern or stifle public debate”.
One of the dystopian findings is the ways in which the sources of misinformation are multiplying. The committee finds that widespread use of generative AI has led to a self-perpetuating cycle of misinformation in which AI uses existing misinformation to create new content, which then becomes the basis for further AI-generated misinformation – described as “AI slopaganda”.
The inquiry considers the role of certain mainstream media companies (not this one) in amplifying climate obstruction, but finds false information has been spreading fastest via digital platforms, including recommendation algorithms and bot networks.
When the information environment is so heavily polluted, quality independent journalism is more important than ever. It is also under increasing threat. This is not the time to roll back copyright protection so that AI companies can simply grab whatever they want.
Big Tech has stolen our attention, mental health, children’s wellbeing, livelihoods and elections. Now it’s coming for reality. We shouldn’t fall over ourselves to help it.
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CLARIFICATION
An earlier version of this story included a photograph of an artist’s impression image and accompanying caption that characterised material distributed by Responsible Future Illawarra as potentially misleading if not correctly used. This has been removed from the story as it was unrelated to the inquiry.
The story has also been updated with further information about Responsible Future Illawarra and makes it clear the inquiry report did not make adverse findings against any individual group.
Caitlin Fitzsimmons is the environment and climate reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald. She was previously the social affairs reporter and the Money editor.Connect via email.