Fake News and Manufactured Outrage – Fossil Fuel’s Global Megaphone

Above, a clickbait article in a bogus news site registered in Pakistan. This showed up on a Michigan Facebook page as “news”, although anyone who lives in Michigan will know that picture does not depict anything like local landscapes.

The outrage centers on a supposed plan to cut down 420 acres of pristine, old growth virgin forest in Northern Michigan for a solar farm. What followed was a case study in how a massive, global disinformation machine disseminates fake news in service of the fossil industry’s agenda.

Peter Sinclair in the Midland Daily News (Gift Link):

Michigan has recently witnessed a pretty good example of how a well oiled (pun intended) disinformation machine manufactures synthetic outrage over an invented story.
A breathless viral meme told the story of devious deep-state plotters who were conniving with greedy globalist solar developers to cut down a pristine tract of virgin old growth forest near Gaylord.

A global misinformation machine swung into action.

A spokesman for Michigan’s right wing “think tank” posted a reaction video of somber outrage backed by an image of an untouched primal forest, complete with a babbling brook.

A Facebook post featured a news item from a Pakistani website, which amplified the story, above a picture of virgin old growth rainforest that looks more like a Pacific Northwest rainforest than scrub pine in Northern Michigan. (see above)

The clean energy project in northern Michigan that inspired the “controversy” involves a proposal by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to lease over 420 acres of state-managed forest near Gaylord for solar energy development. The most critical point missed in most reporting is that the land was considered, and turned down, by a solar developer some months ago.

The entire premise of the story is bogus.

According to the Michigan Advance, RWE Clean Energy is developing a 200 megawatt solar project in Otsego County on more than 1,000 acres of privately-owned land.

“The project footprint does not contain any state-owned land,” said Patricia Kakridas, senior manager for media and public relations for RWE. “It is being developed on private property we are leasing from two private landowners.”

Kakridas indicated the decision not to lease state land was made some time ago – not because of manufactured “outrage” over the project.   

“We did not just make that determination. We started working with two private landowners in 2019 and during the development process, we conducted outreach to all landowners adjacent to the project location, including DNR,” she told Michigan Advance. “Ultimately, we decided to move forward with leasing property from the two private landowners for this particular project.” 

In fact, the 420 acre parcel in question has been clear cut and replanted many times. It is pockmarked with oil and gas wells — that apparently triggers no similar outrage. It also is crisscrossed with large transmission lines, which converge at a large utility substation nearby.

Satellite images show red pines in neat rows, a tree plantation slated to be clear cut, solar or not. A large tract is treeless, having been scoured by a highly-unusual, climate change-enhanced tornado in 2022.

In other words, exactly the kind of land that should be considered for producing urgently needed clean electricity.

The Michigan DNR controls about 4.6 million acres of Michigan land. To date, fewer than 1,500 acres have been leased for solar development. DNR expects fewer than 4,000 acres will be leased — less than one thousandth of the total — and less than the number of acres allocated for gas and oil wells.

For comparison, the DNR also contracts with timber companies that log roughly 50,000 acres annually — there is no manufactured outrage about that.

According to DNR Director Scott Bowen, revenue from any project would be used to buy more desirable acreage elsewhere. That means there will be no net loss of public land.

In fact, data shows that solar farms hold promise for actually improving both soil and aquifers on degraded land.

University of Minnesota’s Dr. David Mulla told me that researchers are looking at solar fields as a way of cleaning up polluted ground water, as very little pesticide or fertilizer is needed for the native plants and pollinators that are standard plantings around panels.

A four year trial performed for Argonne National Laboratory shows that solar farms, properly maintained, greatly enhanced native plants, pollinators, and beneficial insects, and, over a four year study, increased the number of native bees by a factor of 20. Similarly, recent European research showed an increase in bird diversity around solar developments.

So why would a small story from an obscure corner of Michigan draw so much global attention?

It’s not an accident — it’s just a small example of fossil fuel’s lavishly funded, elaborately coordinated, 40 year global disinformation campaign, aimed at covering up the devastating effects of their products, and trashing the rapidly rising competition from clean energy.

That manufactured meme in Pakistan then starts to make sense. It’s not because Pakistanis are following Michigan news. Rather, it’s clickbait  manufactured to show up on search engines and feed the dopamine addiction of ideologically-driven keyboard warriors who are the self deputized gatekeepers at hundreds of walled off internet echo-chambers, which are the only news source for a frightening number of of low information voters.

Legislators, corrupted by fossil fuel industry funding, and inhabiting those same echo chambers, then vie for attention from a media now almost entirely controlled by billionaires and their interests.

A decent respect for our children’s future, and the wellbeing of our state, and our planet, demands that we look deeper, think harder, and do better.

Peter Sinclair is a Midland resident and internationally-recognized videographer who studies climate change and renewable energy issues.

UPDATE:
I drove up and walked the land near Gaylord, and photographed several of the 14 stripper wells on the site.

Later that night, I went to the meeting of the Otsego County Planning Commission, which granted the Special Use permit for the solar facility, by a 7 to 1 vote.

Among the speakers at that meeting was a former Planning Commission chair person who put the issue in perspective.

In addition, I spoke also to Mary Sanders, the long time Supervisor of Hayes Township, where the facility is to be located. She pointed out that the whole area is “Swiss cheese” from oil development, and that residents have historically had no say about oil development on their land.