The Integrity Gap Report has described pervasive climate misinformation, warping and dulling our perceptions of what is an existential threat. How does Big Carbon pull it off? Andrew Gardiner reports.

The Senate Select Committee’s report on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy was published last month. The 294-page report reveals bots deployed with the sole purpose of spreading climate falsehoods, paid influencers, and well-funded astroturf “community groups”, much of it paid for by a right-wing activist cadre propped up in turn by dark money from anonymous sources.

The report mentioned swarms of climate-denying bots, calling for powers compelling social media platforms to crack down on their fakery. This followed submissions by the University of Queensland’s Pro Bono Centre (among others), which sounded the alarm: bots were pushing “conspiratorial narratives” as well as the standard climate scepticism, and platforms were struggling to “keep pace with (their) sophistication and scale”.

It also singled out bot accounts and networks of fake social media profiles, which launched automated attacks on the Australian Greens in the weeks leading up to the 2025 Federal election.

Stunned by the assault, and by what seemed suspiciously like a coordinated anti-Green narrative from mainstream media, the party lost 75 per cent of its lower house numbers last May.

Last year, some 66 fake accounts impersonated real Australian farmers, using Australiana imagery (like Vegemite and flags) to flood the web pages of and attack a Green-aligned group, Farmers for Climate Action. “The deliberate corruption of our information ecosystems that prevents (voters) getting accurate, trustworthy and timely information (is) one of the greatest challenges of our time”, the Greens submission to the committee read.

Another submission from Queensland University of Technology’s Digital Media Research Centre points to online influencers as vital to campaigns against the carbon pricing scheme, Great Barrier Reef protection, renewable energy, and our legislated commitment to Net Zero by 2050. One such influencer is former MP Craig Kelly (“our next Prime Minister”, per 2022 election ads for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party), who these days has mystery links to a group called the Australian Foundation for Economic Education (AFEE).

It’s difficult to confirm whether Kelly (or @CraigKellyAFEE as he’s now known) is in the pay of this recently-formed south west Sydney-based body, but his posts this year seem hand in glove with its apparent, renewables-bashing agenda. “FACT: There is no climate emergency … but three groups of people are viciously pushing this climate emergency scam”, Kelly posted on Monday, going on to name those groups as “gullible idiots”, “sleazy grifters”, and “authoritarian control freaks”.

One confirmed case of influencers paid in the service of fossil fuel may have helped slow the move away from carbon-emitting gas appliances. Utility Jemena paid Instagram influencers like Melissa Lucarelli (a Married at First Sight contestant with more than 100,000 followers) and ‘Hayden & Sara’ (The Block 2018 winners) both of whom “greenwashed” methane via nearly identical posts, which claimed a “natural flame” reduces blood pressure and increases relaxation.

Citing work by the University of Canberra’s News and Media Research Centre, the report says Australians are more concerned than people in other countries about influencers driving misinformation. “Influencers are more likely to be seen as a major misinformation threat than politicians” in Australia, the centre’s 2025 Digital News Report stated.

On “astroturfing” (in short, posing as grassroots organisations to mask ties with vested interests), submissions singled out Australians for Prosperity and the Australian Institute for Progress, to which Coal Australia gave almost $4.3m for pre-election campaigns federally and in Queensland, including targeted ads against pro-climate candidates.

On a smaller scale, groups such as (if you can believe it) ‘Mums for Nuclear’ ran niche, targeted pre-election ads federally last year, before landing in hot water over a failure to list on the AEC Transparency Register or provide electoral authorisations for $16,000 in social media ads (then there’s its links to atomic poster child Will Shackel and international pro-nuclear networks, not to mention its dubious messaging on energy costs).

Finally, we come to Advance Australia spokesperson Sandra Bourke, who – when she’s not spruiking the multi-million dollar operation as “the biggest grassroots movement in Australian political history” – has been accused of posting dubious claims on local Facebook groups in an effort to stop solar, wind, and offshore projects in Queensland and NSW.

“Astroturfing in climate and energy debates is not the work of fringe actors (but) a systematic strategy of mainstream political and corporate players”, an ADM+S submission read.

Far from being grassroots, Advance Australia is a major player on the Australian political scene, its $14m pre-election warchest seen as a major factor in reducing the Greens to one lower house seat, and preventing the ‘Teals’ from expanding their parliamentary footprint last year. That windfall was followed by another $13.45m in 2024-25, $900,000 of that from Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting and a whopping $8.3m from anonymous ‘dark money’ donors. 

A kaleidoscope of chicanery has infiltrated Australia’s zeitgeist, from widespread rumours battery storage sites are at risk of “blowing up”, to solar farms which are “fire prone” and “don’t work when it’s cloudy”,  to nausea, fatigue or headaches from inaudible wind turbine infrasound.

Catapulted into our consciousness by conservative politicians like Malcolm Roberts or Matt Canavan, right-wing think tanks and corporate media, this misinformation assumes a life of its own on social media. Above and beyond the bots, influencers and astroturf groups, it gets amplified by algorithms, rendered realistic by AI and embellished by online zealots to the point where the urban myths they peddle seem plausible to many.

And myths they are: battery storage systems boast multiple protective layers to prevent explosions, solar panels still work on cloudy days (with a mere 1 in 10,000 chance they’ll cause a fire), and a study published in 2023 found 72 hours of listening to wind farm infrasound had no effect whatsoever. The sheer audacity of many such myths echoes what we’ve seen in America, where ‘Obamacare’ legislation was supposed to create “death panels”, and 60 million Americans thought Obama himself was born in Kenya.

Advance Australia is believed by many to be a part of the Atlas Network, a US body opponents say “finances the hatred and hoaxes of the extreme right”. Atlas has close ties to Donald Trump, and Advance seems to want something similar for us.

Climate misinformation is easily debunked, but it’s everywhere. Committee chair, Senator Peter Whish-Wilson (Greens, Tasmania) spoke of

a “denial machine” which has hindered new climate and energy policy for decades.

“The integrity of Australia’s information ecosystem is threatened by (this misinformation), which is polarising public discourse and eroding trust in science and knowledge institutions,” the report states. But the consequences don’t stop there: it impacts the health of Australian democracy, hurts projects and job creation in renewables, delays the kind of energy self-sufficiency we need with the Strait of Hormuz largely closed and endangers our right to a clean environment, and security from harassment by fanatics emboldened by all this agitprop.

Worst of all, the “denial machine’s” talking points are so well-amplified they’re often seen as “common sense realism” rather than fringe denial. This generates a confidence and a permission structure for the roughly 40 per cent of climate sceptics among us to repeat those talking points – “the climate has always changed naturally,” or “renewables will wreck the economy” – without feeling the need to don a tin foil hat.

No, we’re not living in The Matrix, but sometimes it feels like we do.

https://michaelwest.com.au/big-carbons-alternative-reality-of-climate-misinformation/

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