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Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpLIBY9nReU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpLIBY9nReU In includes phrases like: "If all you know is climate

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpLIBY9nReU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpLIBY9nReU In includes phrases like: "If all you know is climate scientists then every weather event you blame on climate change. If not climate change, what is to blame? [...] Foolish policies." "You could have had this amount of warming and not had these fires." "Bad policies were the biggest cause of this year's fires, not the slightly warmer climate." "While climate change is a problem, Schellenberger's new book explains it's not an apocalypse: natural disasters aren't getting worse, in fact they're getting better. [...] A small change in temperature is not the difference between normalcy and catastrophe." To summarize: the video heavily implies throughout that the fires are not caused by climate change, and literally says so a couple times. Facebook did not falsely attribute that claim. They didn't fully summarize the entire video, but I don't think the fact check is intended to - it just pulls out one particular claim it wants to address. Aside: this video wasn't that bad, and I don't know if it needed a fact check, but that's not what the lawsuit is about. It did acknowledge that climate change is real and happening. However, it exclusively talked about climate change as a warming phenomenon, which is not the main issue and is a misleading characterization of why climate change is bad. Warming causes many other issues which are much more harmful than just "a small change in temperature". The discussion about forest management was valid and important, it should just be happening at the same time as discussion about climate change. Edit: Here's the original Facebook post where you can see the fact check: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10157121971976621&id=46675576620 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1015712197.... I believe this is visible even if you don't have an account. Here's the fact check: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores.... Here's the fact checkers response to the lawsuit: https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-on-our-rating-process/ https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-o....

PKop 5y ago
Sounds like the discussion is nuanced. But this nuance is lost by Facebook slapping a label on his content as "misleading", which for all intents and purposes means "wrong". Sounds like defamation to me. Why is Facebook involved in adjudicating the nuance of unsolved public policy debates?
- burkaman 5y ago
  Totally agree that Facebook's label bypasses any nuance, but that isn't illegal and we can't make it illegal. It isn't defamation by the dictionary definition (it isn't a false claim), and it certainly isn't defamation by the stricter legal definition. Imagine what would happen if you could sue anyone for accurately quoting you but leaving out a piece of context. Could you sue a movie critic for a bad review that misunderstood the director's intentions? Could you sue for an internet reply that quoted only part of your comment and misrepresented your views? Could you sue a journalist for not printing every interview unedited in its entirety? Could you sue the NFL for stating that a team lost without explaining that a star player was injured at the time? Edit: Actually, the fact check includes a lot of nuance and discussion, it's not just a "misleading" label with no other context. Read it here: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores...
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  > Why is Facebook involved in adjudicating the nuance of unsolved public policy debates? Indeed, and what does anyone at Facebook even know about the subject, other than what the prevailing opinion bubble of everyone else working there is?
- CobrastanJorji 5y ago
  Where is the nuance? It opens by mocking politicians for blaming the fires on climate change, then it spend the rest of the video explaining that forest management is the cause of these large fires. Facebook's brief version is an excellent summary of his video's content. What is this nuance that it has left out?
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I don't know. From what I have seen, so-called "nuance" is often explicitly invoked as an excuse to be deliberately misleading.
- danShumway 5y ago
  > But this nuance is lost by Facebook slapping a label on his content as "misleading", which for all intents and purposes means "wrong". Sounds like defamation to me. I can't speak for other countries, but in America reducing nuance is not defamation; provably false statements of fact are defamation. The 1st Amendment protects your right to oversimplify things.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
> The discussion about forest management was valid and important, it should just be happening at the same time as discussion about climate change. I disagree. From where I sit, if you want to have a discussion about forest management, you first have to address the "it's all climate change's fault" smokescreen. Otherwise everybody shrugs and says "climate change, what can you do" and nobody will talk about what you actually can do.
starik36 5y ago
> fires are not caused by climate change Maybe it's wrong to base the entire premise exclusively on climate change. I am pretty sure we had forest fires before the current age. For example, 1920s in California were particularly bad. Sierra Nevada forests were on fire and even made it all the way down to Oakland and Berkeley resulting in hundreds of homes being lost. Facebook's fact checkers need to be a bit more educated and exercise greater finesse regarding these types of subjects.
- burkaman 5y ago
  Sorry if I was unclear, when I said that the video implies fires are not caused by climate change, I was referring to the specific fires discussed in the video, not all forest fires. I'd encourage you to read the fact check, I think they demonstrate quite a bit of education and finesse: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores..., https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-on-our-rating-process/ https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-o...
  - starik36 5y ago
    I read your link and, frankly, I find their science shoddy at best. They seem to simultaneously dismiss and indirectly state that forest management is important. For instance, they state dismissively: "While forest management practices, specifically fire suppression, have increased the fuel load, scientific evidence... [it don't matter cause climate change]" The question that's not answered is whether or not we would have these fires had the forest management been done aggressively as it has in the past. This guy (http://www.excelhero.com/blog/2010/04/california-climate.html http://www.excelhero.com/blog/2010/04/california-climate.htm...) analyzed NASA weather station data for the last 120 years in California only (https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v4_globe/ https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v4_globe/). The average temperature has increased by 1 degree over that time. He then filtered only to stations that have been in service for 100 years to produce stability in the dataset. That reduced the temperature increase to half a degree. He then further filtered the set to rural weather stations only to remove the Urban Heat Island Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island). That reduced the number of stations from 114 to 26, but the temperature change actually showed slight cooling. So given that forests in CA are largely in the rural regions where temperature hasn't changed much, wouldn't it stand to reason that the other change (reduced forest management) is largely responsible?
hartator 5y ago
In the video, it also says "climate change is real", "climate change has made things worse", and "CA warmed up by 3 deg in the last 50 years". And they blame the CA gov for stopping controlled fires in the last couple of years for no real reason that made this huge time bomb that we've experienced. There is nothing misleading in that.
- dmoy 5y ago
  > And they blame the CA gov for stopping controlled fires in the last couple of years This is what is crazy to me. Growing up in the Midwest, we always had controlled burns on extended family's rural farmland near forests, to prevent future wildfires. It was a regular occurrence Looking up how absolutely little CA does for controlled burns compared to the Midwest and Southeast was an insane eye opener to me. Florida alone does like 50x the amount of controlled burns than CA. Minnesota, which is tiny by comparison, does more controlled burns than CA (or at least used to within the last few years)
  - sharkmerry 5y ago
    Minnesota is 50% of the land mass of California and 1/8 the population. easier to burn with less people affected CA, also is largely federal forests. Not sure how florida compares to that.
  - etc-hosts 5y ago
    The multi year drought probably influences number of controlled burns in CA
- burkaman 5y ago
  I'd encourage you to read the fact check to understand why they described it as misleading: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores..., https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-on-our-rating-process/ https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-o...
cblconfederate 5y ago
> Our review was based on one specific formulation of a claim we saw frequently appearing amidst record-setting wildfires on the US West Coast: “Forest fires are caused by poor management. Not by climate change.” We relied on comments supplied by three scientists for a previous appearance of this exact claim by Michael Shellenberger—who was also the guest Stossel interviewed in his video. The scientists explained that this claim is misleading They re definitely in defensive mode with regards to this. It's funny to see the liability being thrown around like a hot potato. Stossel says it's facebook's, FB says it's the fact-checker's, the fact checkers say it's the scientists'. Yeah something smells bad when such things happen Possible he could sue facebook in countries that have stronger libel laws?
slowmovintarget 5y ago
In none of your quotes is Stossel saying climate change was not a cause. All of your quotes support the assertion that Stossel was claiming they aren't the main cause. It's as though language is failing as us as a culture when public discourse is impossible due to constant strawman fallacies. The claim quoted by the fact checkers is reworded to omit "main."
cwkoss 5y ago
I'm not sure how someone could watch that video and think "not climate change" was the main takeaway vs "forest management was the more-primary factor, though climate change contributes" The video talks about how climate change contributed and is getting worse, it just points out that there is a clear policy factor that are the main cause for these factors, and climate change is being used as a political scapegoat to justify policy inaction.

PKop 5y ago

Sounds like the discussion is nuanced. But this nuance is lost by Facebook slapping a label on his content as "misleading", which for all intents and purposes means "wrong". Sounds like defamation to me. Why is Facebook involved in adjudicating the nuance of unsolved public policy debates?

burkaman 5y ago
Totally agree that Facebook's label bypasses any nuance, but that isn't illegal and we can't make it illegal. It isn't defamation by the dictionary definition (it isn't a false claim), and it certainly isn't defamation by the stricter legal definition. Imagine what would happen if you could sue anyone for accurately quoting you but leaving out a piece of context. Could you sue a movie critic for a bad review that misunderstood the director's intentions? Could you sue for an internet reply that quoted only part of your comment and misrepresented your views? Could you sue a journalist for not printing every interview unedited in its entirety? Could you sue the NFL for stating that a team lost without explaining that a star player was injured at the time? Edit: Actually, the fact check includes a lot of nuance and discussion, it's not just a "misleading" label with no other context. Read it here: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores...
throwawayboise 5y ago
> Why is Facebook involved in adjudicating the nuance of unsolved public policy debates? Indeed, and what does anyone at Facebook even know about the subject, other than what the prevailing opinion bubble of everyone else working there is?
CobrastanJorji 5y ago
Where is the nuance? It opens by mocking politicians for blaming the fires on climate change, then it spend the rest of the video explaining that forest management is the cause of these large fires. Facebook's brief version is an excellent summary of his video's content. What is this nuance that it has left out?
tshaddox 5y ago
I don't know. From what I have seen, so-called "nuance" is often explicitly invoked as an excuse to be deliberately misleading.
danShumway 5y ago
> But this nuance is lost by Facebook slapping a label on his content as "misleading", which for all intents and purposes means "wrong". Sounds like defamation to me. I can't speak for other countries, but in America reducing nuance is not defamation; provably false statements of fact are defamation. The 1st Amendment protects your right to oversimplify things.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

> The discussion about forest management was valid and important, it should just be happening at the same time as discussion about climate change. I disagree. From where I sit, if you want to have a discussion about forest management, you first have to address the "it's all climate change's fault" smokescreen. Otherwise everybody shrugs and says "climate change, what can you do" and nobody will talk about what you actually can do.

starik36 5y ago

> fires are not caused by climate change Maybe it's wrong to base the entire premise exclusively on climate change. I am pretty sure we had forest fires before the current age. For example, 1920s in California were particularly bad. Sierra Nevada forests were on fire and even made it all the way down to Oakland and Berkeley resulting in hundreds of homes being lost. Facebook's fact checkers need to be a bit more educated and exercise greater finesse regarding these types of subjects.

burkaman 5y ago
Sorry if I was unclear, when I said that the video implies fires are not caused by climate change, I was referring to the specific fires discussed in the video, not all forest fires. I'd encourage you to read the fact check, I think they demonstrate quite a bit of education and finesse: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores..., https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-on-our-rating-process/ https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-o...
- starik36 5y ago
  I read your link and, frankly, I find their science shoddy at best. They seem to simultaneously dismiss and indirectly state that forest management is important. For instance, they state dismissively: "While forest management practices, specifically fire suppression, have increased the fuel load, scientific evidence... [it don't matter cause climate change]" The question that's not answered is whether or not we would have these fires had the forest management been done aggressively as it has in the past. This guy (http://www.excelhero.com/blog/2010/04/california-climate.html http://www.excelhero.com/blog/2010/04/california-climate.htm...) analyzed NASA weather station data for the last 120 years in California only (https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v4_globe/ https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v4_globe/). The average temperature has increased by 1 degree over that time. He then filtered only to stations that have been in service for 100 years to produce stability in the dataset. That reduced the temperature increase to half a degree. He then further filtered the set to rural weather stations only to remove the Urban Heat Island Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island). That reduced the number of stations from 114 to 26, but the temperature change actually showed slight cooling. So given that forests in CA are largely in the rural regions where temperature hasn't changed much, wouldn't it stand to reason that the other change (reduced forest management) is largely responsible?

hartator 5y ago

In the video, it also says "climate change is real", "climate change has made things worse", and "CA warmed up by 3 deg in the last 50 years". And they blame the CA gov for stopping controlled fires in the last couple of years for no real reason that made this huge time bomb that we've experienced. There is nothing misleading in that.

dmoy 5y ago
> And they blame the CA gov for stopping controlled fires in the last couple of years This is what is crazy to me. Growing up in the Midwest, we always had controlled burns on extended family's rural farmland near forests, to prevent future wildfires. It was a regular occurrence Looking up how absolutely little CA does for controlled burns compared to the Midwest and Southeast was an insane eye opener to me. Florida alone does like 50x the amount of controlled burns than CA. Minnesota, which is tiny by comparison, does more controlled burns than CA (or at least used to within the last few years)
- sharkmerry 5y ago
  Minnesota is 50% of the land mass of California and 1/8 the population. easier to burn with less people affected CA, also is largely federal forests. Not sure how florida compares to that.
- etc-hosts 5y ago
  The multi year drought probably influences number of controlled burns in CA
burkaman 5y ago
I'd encourage you to read the fact check to understand why they described it as misleading: https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-forest-management-and-several-other-causes-contribute-to-wildfire-severity-and-total-area-burned-in-the-western-united-states/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/climate-change-fores..., https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-on-our-rating-process/ https://climatefeedback.org/responding-to-stossel-tv-video-o...

cblconfederate 5y ago

> Our review was based on one specific formulation of a claim we saw frequently appearing amidst record-setting wildfires on the US West Coast: “Forest fires are caused by poor management. Not by climate change.” We relied on comments supplied by three scientists for a previous appearance of this exact claim by Michael Shellenberger—who was also the guest Stossel interviewed in his video. The scientists explained that this claim is misleading They re definitely in defensive mode with regards to this. It's funny to see the liability being thrown around like a hot potato. Stossel says it's facebook's, FB says it's the fact-checker's, the fact checkers say it's the scientists'. Yeah something smells bad when such things happen Possible he could sue facebook in countries that have stronger libel laws?

slowmovintarget 5y ago

In none of your quotes is Stossel saying climate change was not a cause. All of your quotes support the assertion that Stossel was claiming they aren't the main cause. It's as though language is failing as us as a culture when public discourse is impossible due to constant strawman fallacies. The claim quoted by the fact checkers is reworded to omit "main."

cwkoss 5y ago

I'm not sure how someone could watch that video and think "not climate change" was the main takeaway vs "forest management was the more-primary factor, though climate change contributes" The video talks about how climate change contributed and is getting worse, it just points out that there is a clear policy factor that are the main cause for these factors, and climate change is being used as a political scapegoat to justify policy inaction.