{"id":419295,"date":"2025-12-31T18:07:19","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T17:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=419295"},"modified":"2025-12-31T21:52:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T20:52:15","slug":"the-misinformation-inquisition-how-censorship-shields-approved-narratives-from-scrutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=419295","title":{"rendered":"The Misinformation Inquisition: How Censorship Shields Approved Narratives from Scrutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Tilak\u00b4s Substack<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Tilak Doshi<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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As the year draws to a close, the guardians of climate orthodoxy have once again unleashed their ritualistic howls of indignation at the actions of the Trump administration. Last week\u2019s op-ed in <\/a>The Guardian<\/a><\/em>, Bob Ward and Michael Mann\u2014attack dogs of the alarmist establishment\u2014likened the US government\u2019s decision to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to tyranny, \u201cpaid for\u201d by fossil fuel interests. Their op-ed opens with the astonishing claim that the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin \u201cwould have understood and even appreciated\u201d Trump\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They accuse President Trump of suppressing climate science, evoking the spectre of Lysenkoism, that infamous episode where ideology trumped empirical inquiry under Stalin\u2019s regime. The irony is exquisite even if lost on its progenitors. Here are two figures who have spent their careers calling for the cancelling of dissenters, now projecting their own sins onto a political leader intent on liberating science from ideological captivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Orwellian Malignancy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This latest salvo is no aberration but a symptom of a deeper malaise. The climate alarmist narrative, much like its twin<\/a> in the COVID-19 hysteria, relies on a censorship complex that brands any deviation as \u201cmisinformation.\u201d Ward, a fixture in the environmental NGO circuit, has long specialized in ad hominem attacks<\/a> on respected academics like Richard Lindzen and Richard Tol, dismissing their peer-reviewed critiques as heresy. Mann, infamous<\/a> for his \u201chockey stick\u201d graph that conveniently erased historical climate variability to fabricate a crisis, has faced courtroom rebukes for his litigious zeal. In his defamation suits, judges have accused him and his legal team of misleading tactics, underscoring the fraudulence of his claims. Yet, in the pages of The Guardian<\/em>\u2014that reliable echo chamber for green ideologues\u2014the pair inverts reality, portraying Trump\u2019s defunding of activist institutions as censorship, when it is precisely the opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider the economic and institutional realities underpinning this charade. NCAR, after over five decades, has devolved into a taxpayer-funded propaganda mill, churning out models that predict apocalyptic futures while ignoring the stubborn facts of\u00a0atmospheric physics<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0human adaptation<\/a>. The Trump administration\u2019s move to shutter it aligns with a broader push to restore scientific integrity, as outlined in the president\u2019s \u201cGold Standard Science<\/a> \u201cexecutive order. This directive mandates transparency in federally funded research, ensuring that models and data are replicable and free from the biases that plague alarmist projections. Far from Stalinist suppression, this is a reclamation of science from the clutches of unelected bureaucrats and their\u00a0NGO allies<\/a>, who funnel billions into \u201cclimate education\u201d grants that invariably promote one-sided advocacy. NOAA, for instance,\u00a0routinely awarded<\/a>\u00a0multimillion-dollar sums to nonprofits peddling green dogma, all under the guise of environmental stewardship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The parallels with the COVID-19 debacle are striking, revealing how the misinformation label serves as a blunt instrument for silencing debate across scientific domains. Just as climate skeptics are tarred as \u201cdeniers,\u201d COVID dissenters were branded spreaders of falsehoods. Stanford\u2019s Jay Bhattacharya, a leading epidemiologist, recently highlighted this hubris in a post on X<\/a>: the notion that a cabal of bureaucrats and activist scientists can infallibly discern truth from error on complex matters is not just arrogant\u2014it\u2019s delusional. Bhattacharya himself endured censorship<\/a> orchestrated by Anthony Fauci who among others in the medical establishment pressured social media platforms to throttle views challenging lockdowns and vaccine mandates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the Atlantic, the European Union\u2019s censorship regime under European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen exemplifies this technocratic overreach. The unelected Eurocrat boasts of safeguarding free speech against \u201charmful and illegal activities\u201d online with its Digital Services Act<\/a>. It aims to restrict media platforms which host \u201cdisinformation\u201d and critical views on mass immigration, the Ukraine conflict, or the ruinous costs of the green agenda in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a rant that would impress Orwell, Ms. Von der Leyen speaks about how \u201cpre-bunking\u201d is preferable to \u201cde-bunking\u201d alleged untruths and where alleged \u201cmisinformation\u201d is a virus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201c\u2026we need to build up societal immunity around information manipulation, because research has shown that pre-bunking is much more successful than debunking. Pre-bunking is basically the opposite of debunking. In short, prevention is preferable to cure. Perhaps if you think of information manipulation as a virus\u2014instead of treating an infection once it has taken hold, that is debunking\u2014it\u2019s much better to vaccinate so that the body is inoculated.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Where have we heard that vaccination\/inoculation story before? Perhaps we should not digress into Ms. Von der Leyen\u2019s missing SMS phone messages<\/a> which sealed the EU\u2019s deal for 1.8 billion doses of corona \u201cvaccine\u201d costing \u20ac35 billion negotiated with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In New Zealand, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern went further, declaring government sources the sole arbiters of COVID truth<\/a>, effectively criminalizing legitimate critiques from sceptical doctors and scientists<\/a> upholding their Hippocratic oath. This Orwellian stance\u2014where state-approved narratives are sacrosanct\u2014mirrors the climate arena, where questioning net-zero fantasies invites professional ruin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Trumpian Pushback<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The EU\u2019s Digital Services Act plans to coerce social media giants into suppressing content that challenges Brussels\u2019 orthodoxies, leading to a chilling effect on open discourse throughout the world. Earlier in the month, the European Commission fined<\/a> Elon Musk\u2019s X $140 million for \u201cfailing to comply\u201d with regulations. But it is now a Trumpian world which frustrates Eurocrats to no end. America\u2019s commitment to First Amendment principles clashes with Europe\u2019s slide into regulatory authoritarianism. The US house judiciary committee describes<\/a> the digital regulations as censorship which is \u201clargely one-sided, almost uniformly targeting political conservatives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US Secretary of State Marco Rubio shot back<\/a> last week:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cFor far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship. Today, @StateDept<\/a> will take steps to bar leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex from entering the United States. We stand ready and willing to expand this list if others do not reverse course.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. state department\u2019s sanctions on NGO leaders and a former EU official involved in these efforts underscore the geopolitical rift. Under Secretary Sarah Rogers detailed the individuals and the reasons why they have been barred. On the US state ban list are Imran Ahmed (Centre for Countering Digital Hate), Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg (HateAid), Thierry Breton (former EU Commissioner) as well as Clare Melford (Global Disinformation Index).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s go through each of these censors. Thierry Breton was a key architect of the Digital Services Act. In August 2024, as European Commissioner for Internal Markets and Digital Services, he issued a letter to threaten Elon Musk ahead of his live stream interview with candidate Trump who was campaigning for his second term. The hubris of an EU functionary to warn Mr. Musk that his platform could be charged for amplifying harmful content in the EU can only be described as bizarre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Undersecretary Rogers accused the UK citizen ImranAhmed of collaborating \u201cwith the Biden Administration\u2019s effort to weaponize the government against U.S. citizens\u201d in a social media post<\/a> on December 23rd<\/sup>, writing that his organization published the \u201cinfamous \u2018disinformation dozen\u2019 report\u201d that spurred a campaign to de-platform those questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines including the current Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. . \u201cLeaked documents from CCDH show the organization listed \u2018kill Musk\u2019s Twitter,\u2019 and \u2019trigger EU and UK regulatory action\u2019 as priorities\u2026The organization supports the UK\u2019s Online Safety Act and EU\u2019s Digital Services Act to expand censorship in Europe and around the world.\u201d It is interesting and not coincidental that Imran Ahmed\u2019s CCDH was founded by Morgan Sweeny, Kier Starmer\u2019s chief adviser. Clare Melford is the founder of the Global Disinformation Index, another British NGO that vigorously pursues anti-\u201chate-speech\u201d activism, in fact hunting down anyone who has views different from the official dogma on climate change or so-called anti-vaxxers<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna Lena von Hodenberg is the leader and founder of Hate Aid, a German NGO founded after the 2017 German federal elections to counter conservative groups such as the AfD. Ms. Anna and her NGO is an official \u201ctrusted flagger\u201d under the EU\u2019s digital services act. Clare Melford. Ahmed is the CEO of The Center for Countering Digital Hate, and Melford is the founder of the Global Disinformation Index, both two entities extremely active in anti-\u201chate-speech\u201d activism, in fact hunting down anyone who has views different from the official dogma on climate change or so-called anti-vaxxers,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morally Bankruptcy of the Eurocrats<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Von der Leyen\u2019s pronouncements on \u201cinoculated information\u201d ring hollow amid Europe\u2019s deindustrialization, where energy policies driven by climate ideology have shuttered factories, spiked power prices, and eroded competitiveness. Germany\u2019s Energiewende<\/em>, once hailed as a model, now stands as a cautionary tale of economic self-harm<\/a>, with manufacturing output shares plummeting and GDP growth stagnating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the heart of this EU-led censorship complex lies a modern Lysenkoism, where ideology masquerades as science. Today\u2019s climate Lysenkoists similarly dismiss empirical inconveniences: satellite data showing no acceleration in sea-level rise<\/a>, historical records of globally warmer periods like the Medieval Warm Period<\/a>, or the economic models demonstrating that net-zero targets would cost trillions<\/a> while yielding negligible climate benefits<\/a>. But Eurocrats will condemn as \u201cmisinformation\u201d self-evident arguments<\/a> that cheap, reliable energy is the bedrock of human welfare. Witness Asia\u2019s ascent<\/a>, where coal, oil and gas have fueled GDP growth rates averaging 7% over decades, slashing poverty from 60% to under 5% in regions like East Asia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The institutional incentives behind climate alarmism are pernicious. Multilateral agencies like the IMF and World Bank, alongside green lobbies, perpetuate myths of \u201cfossil fuel subsidies<\/a>\u201c that distort markets, penalizing hydrocarbons while subsidizing intermittent renewables<\/a> to the tune of $1.3 trillion annually globally. In Africa, the push for \u201crenewable leapfrogging<\/a>\u201c ignores the continent\u2019s dire need for baseload power, condemning millions to energy poverty under the banner of climate justice. Western elites, insulated from the consequences, preach degrowth while developing nations in BRICS+ reject such masochism, opting for pragmatic energy mixes that prioritize growth over virtue-signaling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The contradictions of the censors of \u201cmisinformation\u201d are glaring: alarmists decry \u201cmisinformation\u201d while propagating doomsday scenarios that fail to materialize\u2014recall the 50 years of apocalyptic predictions<\/a>. Europe\u2019s precipitous industrial decline exposes the folly of subordinating energy policies to ideology. In the U.S., the virtue signalling ESG investment drive — pushed by BlackRock\u2019s Larry Fink among others — which funnelled trillions into underperforming green assets, is unravelling<\/a> as returns lag and lawsuits mount over fiduciary breaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A New Year\u2019s Gift<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, there is cause for optimism in this twilight of technocratic hubris. President Trump\u2019s re-election signals a pivot toward evidence-based policy, unshackling science from the misinformation inquisition. By defunding activist enclaves like NCAR and enforcing transparency via executive order, the administration paves the way for genuine inquiry. Imagine a world where debates on climate sensitivity, the role of solar cycles, or the costs of adaptation are conducted openly, without fear of cancellation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Jay Bhattarcharya reminds us, free speech and replication as the standard of truth are necessary conditions for science to flourish. We need rational argument and data, not the censorship of state-defined \u201cmisinformation\u201d. The US state department censoring the censors is good news as the New Year beckons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A version of this article was published in the Daily Sceptic https:\/\/dailysceptic.org\/2025\/12\/31\/the-misinformation-boondoggle-how-the-eu-led-censorship-industrial-complex-shields-approved-narratives-from-scrutiny\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\t

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