WEBVTT - The Truth About Misinformation with Cailin O'Connor 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:05.479 There's a lot of misinformation that's developed for these extremely 0:00:05.600 --> 0:00:08.160 cynical reasons. I mean, part of why we're here is 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:11.800 to talk about climate change, and here we see industries 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:16.239 spending massive amounts of money so that they can make 0:00:16.320 --> 0:00:22.479 more money, and doing it purposely to confuse people, and 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:24.840 doing it in a way where they know they're going 0:00:24.920 --> 0:00:28.600 to kill people and potentially wreck theater. 0:00:29.760 --> 0:00:32.280 Oh fucked. 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:40.320 Welcome to I'm Fucking the Future, the show where we 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:45.240 learn about surprising and innovative ways of scientists, entrepreneurs, activists, 0:00:45.280 --> 0:00:50.400 and even philosophers are fighting for climate crisis. I'm your house, 0:00:50.520 --> 0:00:53.479 Chris Turney, and I believe that together we can unfuck 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:56.120 this mess. Let's get started. 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.800 Weird Fucking the Future. 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:05.959 Okay, you've been here a while. You've heard about the 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:06.880 bad a. 0:01:06.880 --> 0:01:12.040 Mass evacuation this morning along Australia's southeastern coast, with bushfires 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:14.200 looming and extreme danger ahead. 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:17.000 A fierce heat wave is gripping parts of Europe, with 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:20.720 temperatures reaching more than forty degrees celsius after. 0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:21.600 Twenty four hours. 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:25.160 All that remains our flooded homes and floating debris. On 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:29.480 Sunday and Monday, Mediterranean storm Daniel swept through eastern Libya, 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:31.560 washing away entire neighborhoods. 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:35.000 But let's pause for a moment and consider an amazing 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:40.120 possible future. It's twenty fifty and I'm Chris Turney, a 0:01:40.240 --> 0:01:45.360 retired climate scientist. Almost everything around me has been electrified. 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:50.760 Our homes, our work, are cars. People no longer live 0:01:50.800 --> 0:01:54.440 in those harmful little suburbs. We live in small communities 0:01:54.480 --> 0:01:56.919 where we know our neighbors, and it's just a short 0:01:57.000 --> 0:02:00.160 walk to the grocery store. And if we do need 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:03.680 to go further, we can just use for clean, affordable 0:02:03.720 --> 0:02:08.960 public transportation that's widely available across the world. Fossil fuel 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:11.760 companies are a thing of a past, and the people 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:15.560 who are working in coal and oil now working green jobs. 0:02:16.480 --> 0:02:20.520 At school, kids learn about smog and wildfires, but not 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:23.600 because they need to learn how to survive them. They're 0:02:23.680 --> 0:02:28.320 learning about these events in their history classes. Natural disasters 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:31.519 because of climate change have largely stopped, or at least 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:35.360 become less frequent and less extreme, And the world just 0:02:35.440 --> 0:02:41.120 feels pretty damn good. While this might sound like a 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:48.760 total fantasy, it's totally within our reach. We're going to 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:51.880 have to work really fucking hard to achieve this vision, 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:54.800 but one of the most pressing challenges is that a 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.960 world is full of bad actors pushing bad information in 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:03.400 bad faith. Misinformation cast out on the urgency of a 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.799 climate crisis, and it distracts us from a real issue. 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:10.959 We need to take immediate action at speed and scale. 0:03:11.600 --> 0:03:14.720 It's easy to find examples of how mis and disinformation 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:19.840 is influencing the climate crisis, like the idea a walkable 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:23.880 fifteen minute cities is some sort of plot for totalitarian control, 0:03:24.680 --> 0:03:27.280 or that the wildfires in Mary last year were started 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:30.920 by energy weapons or space lasers, or that shifts in 0:03:30.960 --> 0:03:35.160 the Earth's magnetic field and not human activity, is responsible 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:38.600 for a climate crisis. That one was promoted by Joe 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:42.120 Rogan and got millions of views on TikTok. All of 0:03:42.120 --> 0:03:45.560 this is easily disprovable, of course, by any of the 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:48.960 world's thousands of climate scientists who look at the actual 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:53.320 facts and data and models all day long. But too 0:03:53.520 --> 0:03:56.760 many people are believing these things, and that's all of 0:03:56.800 --> 0:04:00.720 our problem. Today we're going to talk about how and 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:04.520 why misinformation came for a climate crisis and what we 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:09.200 can do about it. Our guest is Kaylen O'Connor. She's 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:13.480 a professor of philosophy at University of California, Irvine, where, 0:04:13.760 --> 0:04:18.560 among other things, she researches misinformation and how false beliefs 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:22.600 spread between people. And Kaylen is not like other philosophers. 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.240 She's a cool philosopher. On her website, she's got this 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:30.680 beautiful photo of herself, her kids, and a chicken. It's 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:33.480 not the kind of headshot you see most academics posts. 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:36.760 They're normally quite formal. And I've been intimidating. 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:42.200 I'm in a discipline which is like very male, very. 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:45.480 White philosophy, even though it's in the humanities, has been 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:50.320 like the humanities discipline where it hasn't diversified as much 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:50.960 as other ones. 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.240 So as a you know, as a woman, as a. 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:57.680 Full professor, I sort of like to open the doors 0:04:57.680 --> 0:04:59.480 a little bit and be like I'm a real person 0:05:00.320 --> 0:05:02.520 to younger women who want to join the field, like 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:04.839 you can be a real person who So in this picture, 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:07.920 I have my three kids and I bring them along 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:12.080 to conferences sometimes and they show up one zoom with me, 0:05:12.279 --> 0:05:15.920 and I tell everyone who will listen about my chickens. 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.239 Yeah, those chickens are a pretty big part of her life. 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:22.240 I am zoned to have up to three chickens, and 0:05:22.320 --> 0:05:26.640 I have seven chickens, and I recently had to build 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:28.760 them a new enclosure because my neighbor was like, enough 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:33.160 with the damn chickens. They're all different breeds. They're very beautiful. 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:37.240 They are named Starfrost and red Velvet and Molasses and 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:41.240 cream puff and Oreo, mostly after desserts. That's a wolf. 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:44.480 So you must be dragging your eggs on you? Or 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:46.680 do you give them out to you? Maybe apiece your neighbor? 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:48.159 Do you give them a Yeah, I just I just 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:50.240 give them to neighbors if we have too many, And 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:52.760 like my neighbors and I, we have you know, like 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:56.080 someone brings over the extra lemons, someone brings over the 0:05:56.120 --> 0:05:58.719 extra ginger cake, someone brings over the extra eggs. 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:00.320 It's like a very nice little. 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:04.440 It sounds lovely. It sounds lovely. In that Star's hollow 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.839 esque setting, it could be easy to forget the existential 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:12.200 crisis we're facing, but Kayla says she's rarely not thinking 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:15.880 about the environment. Part of that is Judo her upbringing. 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:17.719 My dad was an environmentalist. 0:06:17.800 --> 0:06:20.960 I used to read Ranger Rick magazine, and my grandfather 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.760 wrote an article I think in the seventies about the 0:06:24.839 --> 0:06:30.760 threats of human omission and possible emergence of climate change 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:33.360 as a result. So yeah, I've been worried about climate 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:35.440 change literally since I was five or. 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:36.200 Six years old. 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:39.200 Really, that's sometimes. 0:06:38.800 --> 0:06:39.479 Depressing to be. 0:06:39.560 --> 0:06:43.040 Like now I'm forty and I'm even more worried about 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:44.000 it than before. 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:49.839 The twenty sixty US presidential debates made Caylen feel particularly 0:06:49.920 --> 0:06:51.200 concerned about our future. 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:54.640 I mean, I still remember in one of the Trump 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:59.960 Clinton debates, Hillary Clinton saying something like the Russian government 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:04.440 is making these claims about me, and kind of jumping 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:05.080 back up, like. 0:07:05.000 --> 0:07:07.680 The Russian government, what are we talking about? You know. 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.440 At that point, I at least was just not aware 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:14.560 of the way that big forces were starting to use 0:07:14.560 --> 0:07:19.160 social media to try to control or shape political events 0:07:19.160 --> 0:07:22.080 and outcomes. My collaborator James weather Or and I both 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:24.400 started thinking like, oh, this is really going to matter, 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:27.520 this is going to be important. But one thing that's 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:31.440 kind of funny is that we we even writing this 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:32.520 book on misinformation. 0:07:32.640 --> 0:07:34.440 So we wrote this book The Misinformation Age. 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:39.360 Starting then, we really underestimated how serious of an issue 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:42.520 it would be, and how long term, So we thought 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:44.480 we have to write this book really fast. 0:07:44.600 --> 0:07:49.280 The book for Misinformation Age, How False Beliefs Spread is 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:53.760 an impressive and stellar contribution to the field. It's totally 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:56.880 digestible for the general public, and it digs into how 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.560 people understand what is truthful and what is not, and 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:05.000 ultimately how misinformation has become such a huge issue in 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:10.160 our digital world. So getting into your work, you call 0:08:10.240 --> 0:08:13.480 yourself a philosopher of science. Now, if a word philosopher 0:08:13.520 --> 0:08:17.400 to me makes me think of Confucius or Aristotle, and 0:08:17.520 --> 0:08:20.520 people whose feels to study definitely do not overlap with 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:22.960 mine at all. So what does it mean to be 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:24.280 a philosopher of science? 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:27.280 Well, first of all, I'll just point out all the 0:08:27.360 --> 0:08:30.880 sciences used to be philosophers. I mean, Aristotle wrote on 0:08:30.960 --> 0:08:34.640 all sorts of things biology and physics and astronomy, you 0:08:34.679 --> 0:08:38.400 know everything, and then the science has kind of peeled 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:42.240 away and philosophy was what was left. But philosophy of 0:08:42.280 --> 0:08:45.360 science is an old discipline and there are a lot 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:48.160 of things philosophers of science do. So one thing is 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:52.280 work on understanding how science as an enterprise works. 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:54.160 You know, how do scientific progress work? 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:59.120 For thousands of years, philosophers have asked questions about the 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:02.160 way we live and why, about how we work together, 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:04.880 and why societies work the way they do. 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:09.800 One thing that's a very traditional question in philosophy is 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:11.600 how does knowledge work? 0:09:11.640 --> 0:09:13.240 How do we come to know anything? 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:15.600 And also what does it mean to have a belief 0:09:15.880 --> 0:09:20.160 in something that's justified. One thing that a lot of 0:09:20.200 --> 0:09:24.160 philosophers work on now is what's called social epistemology. 0:09:24.400 --> 0:09:27.200 That's the study of how people understand knowledge, how they 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:30.000 understand what is true, and how we search for truth. 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:33.720 So Descartes was focused on these really these questions about 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:37.800 individual knowledge, like how can I, as this one little 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:39.559 isolated unit. 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:41.880 Have confidence that the things I believe are true? 0:09:42.320 --> 0:09:45.600 But increasingly people came to understand that that's not really 0:09:45.640 --> 0:09:49.079 how human knowledge works. So other people tell us things, 0:09:49.440 --> 0:09:53.199 we choose to trust them, We uptake those things as beliefs. 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:55.880 We do some other things we reason about, like is 0:09:55.920 --> 0:09:59.040 this consistent with the other things I believe? Should I 0:09:59.080 --> 0:10:00.880 trust this person for what reason? 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:01.640 Or should I not? 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:05.600 Our knowledge, in fact, is just very very deeply social. 0:10:06.040 --> 0:10:09.240 So one thing a lot of philosophers study is social 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:13.360 epistemology that relates to philosophy of science, because a lot 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:16.120 of things in philosophy of science or work on how 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:18.640 groups of scientists come to know or believe things. 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.400 So how does a group. 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.000 Of humans who are interested in climate change come to 0:10:24.040 --> 0:10:26.960 believe the climate is warming and at these rates and 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:30.480 as the result of these causes. So those are things 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:31.679 that philosophers work on. 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:41.200 So with fake news, then it's an element of actually, 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:45.280 you've got a belief that's not true that is being 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:49.080 presented effectively as a truth. 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:52.760 So, first of all, I don't necessarily love to use 0:10:52.760 --> 0:10:55.199 the term fake news, because, as a lot of people 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:58.120 have pointed out, fake news was this term that was 0:10:58.200 --> 0:11:03.240 like very much applied to this specific phenomena happening in 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:06.839 twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, when people would make 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:10.040 fake news sites and fake news articles, and then the 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:13.280 term got co opted by the right to describe a 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:16.320 lot of true things as fake when they weren't. 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:19.840 They are the enemy of the people, and we could 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:22.640 have a country that would be able to heal and 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:27.600 get together, except the media fomens it. They're so corrupt, 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:29.640 and you know, I call it. I came up with 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:31.480 the term fake news a long time ago. I don't 0:11:31.480 --> 0:11:33.240 know if I'll get credit for that, but that's okay. 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:37.000 As Kaylin said, fake news has taken on a new 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.920 meaning for a lot of people. It just means anything 0:11:41.000 --> 0:11:42.480 I don't like, So I. 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:46.960 Often will use misinformation or misleading content. So that's why 0:11:47.000 --> 0:11:50.679 I'm like switching language a little bit. So there are 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:56.400 a lot of ways that people spread misinformation or misleading content, 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:59.440 and a lot of reasons why people like uptake it. 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:04.480 The most basic just has to do with this fact 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:08.240 that we're social learners, where we necessarily have to trust 0:12:08.280 --> 0:12:10.760 each other in order to learn most things we know 0:12:10.840 --> 0:12:14.600 about the world, which means that people tell us things. 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:17.720 You know, most of the time it's in our best 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:22.720 interest to believe those things, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:24.920 those things are wrong, but we just don't have the 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:29.319 ability to always differentiate between the stuff we're getting from 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:33.120 other people that's true and that's false. And so social 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:37.640 knowledge is tremendously powerful. But once you open up that channel, 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:41.720 this door for social information to come through, you're going 0:12:41.760 --> 0:12:45.520 to open up a channel for misinformation for fake news 0:12:45.520 --> 0:12:46.280 to come through too. 0:12:46.679 --> 0:12:49.480 That's a really powerful analogy. I really like that, Kayley, 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:53.079 so I have to ask. I mean, I'm very aware 0:12:53.120 --> 0:12:55.400 that I have done this. Have you ever fallen for 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:59.280 any news articles that are basically misinformed? 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:00.319 Oh? 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:01.240 One hundred times. 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:04.800 Yeah, I think people would find that reas. 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:08.120 I mean, it was stressful to write a book about 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:11.840 misinformation because I guarantee somewhere in that book we say 0:13:12.320 --> 0:13:15.400 something false, probably multiple things false, even though we did 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.400 the best research we could. But yeah, I'm a human, 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:22.320 and like all other humans, I often fall for misinformation. 0:13:23.679 --> 0:13:26.760 One of my favorite little examples is I was doing 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:31.320 an interview on misinformation and someone brought up an example 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:35.440 of like a propagated false belief, which is that Daddy 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:37.600 long legs these spiders in the US are the most 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.040 poisonous spiders in the world, but their mouth they're too 0:13:40.040 --> 0:13:40.840 small to bite you. 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:42.600 And as he was saying it, I was like, yep, 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:43.920 I believed that one. 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:50.400 Until I've not heard that one. Actually, that's amazing. It's 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:51.360 a crowd of story. 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:54.000 As soon as he said it, I was like, oh, yeah, 0:13:54.040 --> 0:13:56.880 that's very dumb. Of course that's false, but no, I 0:13:57.200 --> 0:13:58.439 hadn't believed it until that. 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:04.199 I've done it too. A few years ago, there was 0:14:04.240 --> 0:14:07.120 this news article about a polar bear who had become 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.800 stranded on a Scottish island after the melting Arctic ice. 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:14.440 Ha'd separated the poor animal from its home. And I 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:18.840 remember reading this piece and going, oh, that's amazing. But 0:14:18.920 --> 0:14:21.320 of course this is just an April fool's prank have 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:24.600 a newspaper, even I, as someone who studs as a 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:28.400 climate and melting ice fell for it. Now, that kind 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:32.600 of misinformation is fairly harmless, both to us and of 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:36.080 the Daddy long legs and polar bears not in Scotland. 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:40.960 But other misinformation is developed by bad actors to influence politics, 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:44.920 the economy, and the very social fabric of our communities. 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:57.000 We're a fucking the future. We're a fucking the future. 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:04.040 One of the most interesting, or perhaps most terrifying things 0:15:04.120 --> 0:15:07.960 about the miss and disinformation landscape today is how oil 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:12.560 and gas are using environmental and nature activists to spew falsehoods. 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:16.520 There's been a lot of stuff spread by oil and 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:21.680 gas about how windmills kill birds and how windmills harm whales. 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:26.480 So here are people trying to glom on to people's 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:31.160 environmental impulses, their desires to help other animals protect the environment. 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:31.960 But what they're. 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:35.600 Actually trying to do is to stop action our. 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:40.480 Climate change, really pressing those emotional buttons. Now, what if 0:15:40.520 --> 0:15:43.280 you could help clarify for me and the listeners as well, 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:47.680 what is the difference between misinformation and disinformation? 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:52.400 So the way people typically pull those apart is to 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:58.120 say that disinformation is false and it's intended to mislead, 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:02.160 it's misleading, and someone's trying to mislead you, whereas misinformation 0:16:02.560 --> 0:16:06.240 is misleading but there's no intention to. 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:08.480 Lead you astray. 0:16:09.040 --> 0:16:09.400 Ah. 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:12.240 So some of the times when we're talking about these 0:16:12.280 --> 0:16:19.200 climate issues which are being deliberately misleading, are actually effectively disinformation. 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:19.920 Is that right? 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:24.840 Yes? Though I think that when we talk about information 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:28.360 on social media, it's not like this is a bad 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:33.200 way to differentiate things, but it ends up not, I think, 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:36.400 always capturing what's happening on social media, because a lot 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:40.720 of what you see is disinformation created by cynical parties 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:42.600 that then becomes misinformation. 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:46.320 Ooh, so that they are actually sharing it not with 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:50.160 the intent to mislead, they think it's true exactly. 0:16:50.240 --> 0:16:53.360 So most of the people spreading, for example, say of 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:55.200 the whales, are not going to be people who are 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:57.400 trying to mislead to anyone or not going to be 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:03.280 people who want a bad outcome. Environmentalism so in that 0:17:03.360 --> 0:17:07.560 it sort of transforms into misinformation, and it's designed to 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:09.400 transform into misinformation. 0:17:10.119 --> 0:17:13.760 In Kalin's book The Age of Misinformation, she and are 0:17:13.800 --> 0:17:17.919 co author James Owen revel right about Roger Ravel, a 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.399 climate scientist who was one of the first people to 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:21.679 study global heating. 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:25.439 He was a major influence on al Gore, who of 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:30.480 course has been a climate activist. As a politician, he 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:33.639 did a lot of work showing that carbon diaxterrad was 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:36.400 increasing in the atmosphere as a result of fossil fuels. 0:17:36.640 --> 0:17:40.240 So he really spent his career showing that the climate 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:43.679 was changing and in fact raising alarms about global warming. 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:47.920 By the time Jim Hansen gave his testimony in front 0:17:47.960 --> 0:17:52.040 of Congress in nineteen eighty eight, Ravel was already seventy nine, 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:56.359 and as he aged he became very sick. Now during 0:17:56.400 --> 0:18:00.320 his time, a man named Fred Singer came along, took 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:03.359 money from oil and gas. He was basically paid to 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:07.520 sow skepticism and doubt about climate change. Fred Singer has 0:18:07.560 --> 0:18:10.760 a long resume to name some of his greatest hits. 0:18:11.160 --> 0:18:13.879 In the nineteen eighties, he helped promote confusion about the 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:17.480 causes of acid rain, the health effects of smoking, and 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:21.280 ye ozone hole depletion. And in nineteen ninety one, Fred 0:18:21.320 --> 0:18:24.679 took some of his previous writing, repurposed it into an 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:29.080 article and added Ravel's name as a co author. Now 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:31.439 all of this happened at a time when Revel was 0:18:31.560 --> 0:18:32.760 gravely ill. 0:18:32.880 --> 0:18:36.240 The paper was skeptical about climate change. 0:18:36.680 --> 0:18:40.480 So you've got this subject matter expert, now in old age, 0:18:40.640 --> 0:18:45.200 claiming that maybe the science behind global heating isn't as 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:49.440 solid as he previously claimed, maybe it shouldn't be believed, 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:52.960 Maybe there's nothing to be concerned about here. 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:59.240 And so Revel's reputation as a climate scientist was weaponized 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:01.520 for climate skepticism. 0:19:01.920 --> 0:19:05.360 But people who knew Revel, including his research assistant who 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:08.080 had been working with him for twelve years at this point, 0:19:08.320 --> 0:19:11.879 said Revel had been hoodwinked into attaching his name to 0:19:11.920 --> 0:19:12.480 the paper. 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:15.879 A lot of people cast doubts about whether Revel was 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:18.919 really able to consent properly to being an author on 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:19.960 this paper. 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:23.320 And the paper had serious repercussions on the public debate 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:27.800 around climate change. For example, the then Senator al Gore 0:19:27.880 --> 0:19:30.720 had been talking about the greenhouse effect and climate change 0:19:30.760 --> 0:19:34.280 for many years, but now the top scientist on climate 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:38.560 change was apparently doubting his own work. It cast doubts 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:39.240 on the whole thing. 0:19:39.680 --> 0:19:43.400 This was made to use to make Al Gore look foolish. 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:46.560 You know, the person who you told us had showed 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:48.560 all these things about how the climate is warming, even 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:51.480 he doesn't actually think it's warming. This is something we've 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:57.399 seen happen again and again in the climate skepticism movement. 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:00.600 Is that, you know, oil and gas. 0:20:00.800 --> 0:20:04.520 The people sort of working to fight understanding on climate change. 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:09.840 They get real scientists to take up climate skeptic positions. However, 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:13.880 these scientists are very rarely like climate scientists. 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:15.679 In fact, it's almost always physicists. 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:19.640 I don't know what is wrong with physicists producing these 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:21.720 people who are willing to do this, But so they'll 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:25.199 get these very prominent physicists to sort of be the 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:30.840 face of climate skepticism. And because these are actual scientific 0:20:30.920 --> 0:20:36.520 experts and people usually trust scientific experts, their skepticism ends 0:20:36.600 --> 0:20:38.200 up looking very powerful. 0:20:39.280 --> 0:20:43.000 Fred Singer was repeatedly interviewed about the paper Have the 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:47.400 Huge Change in Revel's view on global heating in the interviews, 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:49.960 he just outright lies about the situation. 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:53.000 When he joins US Live from Washington, DC, Doctor Singer, 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:57.320 what was Roger Ruvel's view of carbon dioxide as a 0:20:57.359 --> 0:21:01.399 greenhouse gas when you co author that caused most article 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:05.800 back in nineteen ninety, he was very relaxed about it. 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:07.639 He basically. 0:21:08.640 --> 0:21:12.040 Looked at this as a grand geophysical experiment. 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:15.600 And this, of course wasn't the first time something like 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:19.199 this happened. The Roger level case is just one of 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:23.240 many alarming examples of how a big oil lobby uses 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:27.120 real scientific experts to amplify their quack science. 0:21:27.640 --> 0:21:30.040 I mean, there have been others, so I mean, this 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:34.200 was a strategy that was really engineered by big tobacco 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:38.240 in the fifties and sixties. But for example, they created 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:41.879 a group called the Tobacco Industry Research Committee that was 0:21:41.880 --> 0:21:46.040 supposedly going to research whether tobacco was harmful. It was 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:48.720 in fact a propaganda body. But it was headed by 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:55.120 a molecular biologist who didn't like genetics, and so he 0:21:55.320 --> 0:21:58.800 again was a scientific expert. He of course was in 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:01.800 no way like a health expert or a doctor or 0:22:01.840 --> 0:22:05.000 a medical researcher, but he lent the sort of way 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:06.879 of expertise to this group. 0:22:07.119 --> 0:22:11.359 So when we think about misinformation, we think about Russian 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:14.160 state television, but one of the things you write about 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:17.240 is actually way way scarier. And it's our idea that 0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:21.680 these days the propagandis are family and friends, and that's 0:22:21.720 --> 0:22:24.480 because of social media. I wonder if you could take 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:28.080 us way back to twenty sixteen and explain how social 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:32.440 media really changed the state of misinformation. Yeah. 0:22:32.480 --> 0:22:35.960 So social media, we can think of it broadly as 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:41.240 having changed the way information can flow between people. It's 0:22:41.320 --> 0:22:44.760 kind of special in that it changes very quickly, and 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:47.800 there's always new platforms, and the way information is flowing 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:51.320 is always changing. First it soundbites, and then it's pictures, 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:54.359 and then it's words, and then it's words and pictures, 0:22:54.400 --> 0:22:57.280 and then it's videos, and so the change is so 0:22:57.720 --> 0:23:01.640 fast that it's sort of hard to respond regulate. Here's 0:23:01.680 --> 0:23:04.359 a few of the things that really matter about social 0:23:04.400 --> 0:23:07.600 media and why misinformation can spread so well on there. 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:11.720 So one thing is that people can get big platforms 0:23:11.920 --> 0:23:15.400 even when they don't really deserve big platforms. Another thing 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:18.119 is that it's hard to know the source of information. 0:23:18.840 --> 0:23:22.159 So if you're thinking about like person to person social 0:23:22.200 --> 0:23:25.080 exchange of information, you're looking at another person in the face. 0:23:25.240 --> 0:23:27.200 You can see who they are, you know where they live, 0:23:27.400 --> 0:23:29.400