This year, Amazon began its push towards a politicized book ban. pull A three year old book about transgender politics by a conservative think tanker from his webshop. Facebook does not sell books, but it can suppress the distribution of books if they conflict with a political agenda. The social media giant now appears to be throttling a review of a book on climate science by physicist Steven Koonin, former top scientist in the Obama Energy Department and provost of the California Institute of Technology, in the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook uses so-called fact checkers to indicate which news articles should be suppressed. The project went well beyond containing viral jokes or dangerous misinformation and aims to limit the scientific debate. In March Facebook marked A journal by Johns Hopkins surgeon Marty Makary on the pace at which Americans would develop herd immunity to Covid-19.
The company is aiming now the book review of the journal Several false and misleading claims are repeated in Steven Koonin’s new book, Unsettled, based on a multi-million dollar post on a website called “Climate Feedback”, headed “The Wall Street Journal”.
Mr. Koonin, whose meticulous book relies largely on existing scholarships, can respond on another forum on merits. Suffice it to say here that many of the “fact check” claims cited by Facebook do not contradict the underlying material, but argue with its perceived implications.
The fact-check attacks Mr. Koonin’s book for saying that “the net economic impact of man-made climate change will be minimal, at least until the end of this century”. Is minimal in the eyes of the beholder, but the US National Climate Assessment projected America’s climate costs at around $ 500 billion a year in 2090 – a fraction of the recent Covid boost in an economy that could be four times as big.
