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Dan Peña is a self-described “quantum growth strategist” who you may recognize from a particular video, shot during a 2017 Q&A, in which he screams at an audience member for suggesting that climate change exists.
During the exchange, Peña, who begins by bragging about being one of the “first public endorsers” of President Donald Trump, makes several assertions, including that “not one single investment prospectus written since 2000 … has alluded to global warming.”
@all_about_climate Do these guys even bother to fact check their claims? #onthisday #climate #climatechange #environment #debunked #globalwarming #explained #science #planetearth #lie #factcheck #investment ♬ original sound – Rosh
This assertion, as pointed out by Ph.D. student Rosh D’Arcy, who has degrees in earth and climate sciences and runs multiple social media channels under the moniker All About Climate (@all_about_climate), is false.
“I’m not in finance but I am aware of several economic and financial reports which absolutely look at climate risk,” Rosh explains in a TikTok video, showing his receipts with screenshots of the various economic and financial reports to which he is referring. “This claim … is demonstrably wrong.”
Rosh went into even more detail on his YouTube channel, also called All About Climate (@AllAboutClimate), carefully and painstakingly breaking down all the scientific evidence (which is agreed upon by 97% of publishing climate scientists) for why climate change is indeed real and happening, largely due to humans burning dirty energy sources like gas and oil.
All of that is somewhat beside the point, however. As the BBC pointed out in an article about the Peña viral video, TikTok has promised to take action against videos that spout misinformation. Specifically, in its Community Guidelines, it says that “misinformation that undermines well-established scientific consensus, such as denying the existence of climate change or the factors that contribute to it” is not allowed on the platform.
The question then becomes: Why is this video still apparently allowed on the platform? For that, there doesn’t seem to be any good answer. “Rules become irrelevant, if they’re not applied consistently, accurately, and fairly,” Jennie King, head of climate research and policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told the BBC.
It is clear that climate change is real, but some people wish to muddy the waters and spread misinformation about it. In order to seriously combat the latter problem, social media platforms need to do what they say they will in regard to banning proven cases of misinformation.
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