By Issues & Insights Editorial Board
ast week, we published an editorial arguing that government data didn’t support various claims about climate change. And we predicted Google would demonetize it. We were right. (See: Heat Wave Sets Off New Round Of ‘Climate Crisis’ Lies.)
Shortly after that article was published, Google’s AdSense informed us that it had “disabled ad serving” on that page because the article contained “unreliable and harmful claims.” (We have one spot on our pages for AdSense ads, mostly to track Google’s efforts to demonetize content. See the list of related editorials below.)
So what was “unreliable” or “harmful” about that editorial? Google doesn’t say. It just says we have to “fix” it if we want their ads to run on that page.
What we can say is that Google has effectively labeled official government data as “unreliable and harmful,” since all the evidence we provided was from official sources.
The editorial pointed out that claims about more frequent heat waves, tornadoes, hurricanes, and wildfires – claims that get repeated ad nauseam by the mainstream press and by climate activists – are not supported by the official data.
We included charts and cited the sources of the data – sources such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Interagency Fire Center, the government-run GlobalChange.gov, etc.
Here’s how Google defines “unreliable and harmful.”
It’s the last line that Google uses to censor any content that doesn’t toe the climate “crisis” line.
Anything that “contradicts authoritative scientific consensus” just means whatever the climate change fanatics say it means, since there is in truth no “consensus” about many of the claims made about global warming.
In truth, the very notion of an “authoritative scientific consensus” violates the basic principle of science.
“Doubt in science is a feature, not a bug,” notes an article in Scientific American. “Indeed, the paradox is that science, when properly functioning, questions accepted facts and yields both new knowledge and new questions — not certainty,”
Imagine if Google had been around when Einstein contradicted the “authoritative scientific consensus” about Newtonian physics.
Or when Copernicus contradicted the “authoritative scientific consensus” that the Sun revolved around Earth.
Or when, in 1543, Andreas Vesalius challenged the “authoritative scientific consensus” about human anatomy that had been in place for 1,300 years.
What Google is doing here (supposedly on behalf of advertisers who use its ad network) isn’t protecting the public against false information – it is attacking true information that undermines climate change dogma.
It is, in other words, just a thinly veiled attempt to enforce a pseudo-religious orthodoxy. Google is nothing more than a 21st-century version of the Spanish Inquisition.
The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.
Originally published by Issues & Insights. Republished with permission.
To read more about truth in climate science, click here.