In one of those news stories that can be taken either way, CAAD, standing for Climate Action Against Disinformation – a global coalition of “leading climate and anti-disinformation organisations” – highlights the lack of trust people have in government information. In this case, in government narratives/ official narratives concerning the causes of the Great Iberian Blackout which plunged Spain and Portugal into many hours without power (and consequently quite a few without mains water, too).
After another strangely repetitive ‘report’ on the causes of the blackout last week, CAAD has ridden into the foreground to suggest that the incident was “exploited by malicious actors, who spread false claims.
“The disinformation campaign included narratives about cyber attacks from Russia, atmospheric anomalies, renewable energy failures and government experiments”, writes SIC.
“More than half of those surveyed believed at least one of the false narratives about the causes of the blackout, with ‘excessive dependence of the electricity grid on renewable energies’ being the most common, particularly among far-right voters.
In this sense, “beliefs about climate change and partisanship are the main factors determining differences in attitude’ towards climate misinformation”, says CAAD.
“People who intend to vote for far-right parties and who reject climate change have less favourable opinions about the climate,” stresses the document, advocating that social media should be ‘forced’ to “prevent the amplification of misleading content”, while governments should invest more in “public awareness campaigns to combat misinformation and promote information integrity”.
This harks back to that moment in 2020 during the pandemic when New Zealanders were exhorted by their then political leader not to listen to anything that had not come from the government. Did it reduce people’s belief in other narratives? It was largely seen to have backfired. Thus, this may be what happens to the strategies outlined by CAAD.
Says SIC, the authors of the study “insist that companies should be prevented from using advertising that disseminates misleading information and/ or promotes behaviour that is harmful to the environment, such as excessive consumption of fossil fuels.
“Giving more resources to fact-checking organisations to debunk false claims about climate change” should also be a priority, says the report, which surveyed 2,400 people in Spain and the UK for the purposes of its latest research calling for “decisive and unified action against climate misinformation”.
Again, the question has to be do people trust in ‘fact checking’, or do they believe it too may be following an agenda?
Blackout: cascading failures in renewable production cause collapse
As SIC recalls, “last week, the panel of experts investigating the April 28 power blackout concluded that the collapse was caused by a succession of sudden shutdowns of renewable production and subsequent loss of synchronisation with the European continental grid.
“A final report is expected in the first quarter of 2026, which will include concrete recommendations aimed at preventing similar incidents not only in the Iberian Peninsula, but throughout the European electricity grid”.
Reading and re-reading those two paragraphs does suggest that the blackout was triggered by a vulnerability in systems involving renewable energy production, thus why CAAD has objected to the term “renewable energy failures” is not instantly clear.
Source material: SIC Notícias
