And so it begins: YouTube is now adding “fact checks” to videos which question the man-made global warming scare narrative.

According to Buzzfeed News:

YouTube is now adding fact checks to videos that question climate change, BuzzFeed News has confirmed, as a part of its ongoing effort to combat the rampant misinformation and conspiratorial fodder on its platform.

On July 9, the company added a blurb of text underneath some videos about climate change, which provided a scientifically accurate explainer. The text comes from the Wikipedia entry for global warming and states that “multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.” This new feature follows YouTube’s announcement in March that it would place descriptions from Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica next to videos on topics that spur conspiracy theories, such as the moon landing and the Oklahoma City bombing. In doing the same for climate videos, the company seems to be wading into more fraught and complex intellectual territory.

Sure, in many ways it’s a trivial and pathetic gesture. Quoting Wikipedia as your credible source is a bit like citing CNN as the go-to site for all the latest info on Donald Trump. And anyway, that “scientifically accurate explainer” is at best vague, at worst far more misleading than the videos it is supposed to be “fact checking.”

It says:

“Global warming, also referred to as climate change is the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth’s climate system and its related effects. Multiple lines of scientific evidence show that the climate system is warming.”

So the records show that there has been some gentle warming of less than 1 degree C since the world began emerging from the Little Ice Age a century and a half ago. So what? This whole line of argument is a Straw Man, which wilfully misrepresents the sceptical position. It’s not whether or not climate changes that preoccupies sceptics. It’s whether recent warming is significantly man-made – and if it is, whether, it’s something we should worry about, and whether it’s within our means or in our interest to do anything about it anyway.

But the real issue here, of course, is that like Big Tech’s near-blanket banning of Alex Jones, it’s the thin end of the wedge.

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