CheckMate is a weekly newsletter from RMIT FactLab which recaps the latest in the world of fact checking and misinformation, drawing on the work of FactLab and its sister organisation, RMIT ABC Fact Check.
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CheckMate September 16, 2022
This week, CheckMate rounds up some of the furphies being spread about the death of Queen Elizabeth II, who passed away in Scotland last week.
We also debunk claims that vaccines have killed tens of thousands of cows in India, and ask: can eating beef really save the planet?
Queen's death prompts outpouring of … misinformation
As Australians awoke last week to news of the Queen's death, misleading, inaccurate and incorrect claims about the monarch's passing were already taking hold online.
Fact checkers around the world have worked tirelessly to dispel the ensuing myths and misinformation — from mix-ups about UK news coverage to conspiracies touted by QAnon supporters.
So, what have been some of the claims debunked over the last week?
Following the release of a statement by Buckingham Palace regarding the Queen's declining health in the early hours of Friday morning (Australian time), Twitter users asserted that the BBC's trademark red had been replaced on its website by more melancholy black.
"BBC has changed its website banner from red to black as the entire UK Royal Family goes to Elizabeth's bedside," a post from a verified Twitter account claimed. "Looks like the inevitable news is being prepared."
But while that "inevitable news" did eventuate, the colour displayed on the BBC homepage had not been altered in preparation.
As pointed out by fact checkers at Reuters and Lead Stories — as well as in a follow-up Tweet from the original poster — the BBC homepage always features a black header, while red was (and continues to be) the preferred colour of BBC News.
Staying with the British broadcaster, the BBC station Radio 1 Dance did not resume playing music immediately after announcing news of the Queen's death, PolitiFact found.
According to the fact checkers, a clip shared to Instagram purported to show that the station had returned immediately to its regular programming. But that wasn't so: rather, the clip appeared to have been edited.
All BBC radio programming was interrupted by extended coverage of the royal demise.
Meanwhile, AFP Fact Check, Lead Stories and the Associated Press all took aim at a clip showing a group of young Irishmen dancing outside Buckingham Palace that was shared widely alongside captions suggesting it was filmed in the immediate aftermath of the Queen's passing.
In reality, the video was first posted online by an Irish dance troupe in January.
And what of the Queen's precious corgis?
As AFP Fact Check and the Associated Press discovered, a seemingly heartwarming photo of the dogs returning to London last week after supposedly being by the Queen's side in Balmoral was actually taken in 1993.
The corgis pictured belonged to the Queen Mother, who died in 2002, rather than to her daughter.
Elsewhere, old QAnon-related claims about the Queen and the British monarchy belonging to a global paedophile conspiracy have been revived in recent days, with PolitiFact pointing out that a video showing a child apparently escaping from Buckingham Palace was, in fact, taken from an old TV promotion.
The same conspiracy theorists also suggested the Queen had been "dead for a while now" — a claim which earned a "pants on fire" rating from PolitiFact.
And no round up of royal misinformation would be complete without mention of COVID-19 vaccines, which had nothing to do with the Queen's death, as PolitiFact reported.
Can eating beef save the planet?
A suggestion that it is "absolute nonsense to claim that beef farming accelerates hypothetical global warming" and that "we are saving the planet by eating beef" is false, RMIT FactLab has found.
Writing in The Spectator Australia, geologist and climate sceptic Ian Plimer claimed that "the number of carbon atoms returned to the atmosphere from beef farming is less than that removed by grass growth".
"The cycle of atmospheric carbon dioxide via meat production and digestion removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then later releases this carbon dioxide back to its source. What's the problem?" the emeritus professor wrote.
"Whether grass is used to grow meat, decomposed, or burned, no new carbon atoms are created in this carbon cycle and, by growing beef, some carbon atoms are removed from the cycle for short-term sequestration."
Plimer based his argument on a "mass balance calculation" in which no new carbon atoms are created; rather, "carbon atoms are just being recycled".
But experts consulted by FactLab dismissed the premise of this calculation because it ignores the changing chemical composition of carbon in the carbon cycle and how it affects the atmosphere.
In other words, what's important is not whether more carbon atoms are added to the atmosphere as a result of beef farming, but whether the process results in a changed composition of chemicals that ultimately accelerates global warming.
Mark Howden, the director of the Australian National University Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions, told FactLab that Plimer was "wrong in almost every respect of what he talks about in the article".
He noted that all methane emissions make the Earth warmer than it would otherwise be.
"It's a simple truth that climate change is demonstrably affecting agriculture across the globe and in most circumstances negatively, and is driving agricultural productivity down," he said.
Richard Eckard, a professor of sustainable agriculture at the University of Melbourne, added that The Spectator Australia article revealed a "serious flaw in the author's understanding of basic atmospheric chemistry".
No, vaccines aren't decimating Indian cattle
In more livestock news, footage of cow carcasses piled up and strewn across a muddy field has been shared on social media as purported evidence of both vaccine harms and conspiracies about planned food shortages.
"This is [the] Indian state of Gujarat…. Where tens of thousands of cattle suddenly started to fall dead after they were injected with a vaccine by [the] Indian govt," reads one popular Twitter post. "They are destroying cattle globally."
Telegram users, meanwhile, suggested the deaths were caused by a "mysterious virus" spread "on purpose to give the global agenda a justification for beginning the global distribution of mRNA vaccines for livestock".
But the reality is much less sensational.
In a July 31 tweet, a government official confirmed that the scene had indeed been filmed in Gujarat, which, according to local reports, was battling its third outbreak of lumpy skin disease (LSD) in as many years.
LSD is a highly infectious and potentially fatal virus affecting livestock, with symptoms including raised nodules that develop into holes in the skin.
"All cattle (lumpy and normal death) have been properly disposed [of] as per the procedures," the official wrote in a subsequent tweet.
Kaushik Kantheca, a journalist who visited the site, confirmed to CheckMate that he saw lumps on many of the carcasses, and supplied multiple photos as evidence.
Scenes of rotting cows were recorded in several towns in Gujarat. By August 9, more than 2,600 of the state's cattle had died from the disease, while the government had responded by vaccinating around 2.8 million animals.
Notably, another 6,000 head of cattle had reportedly died in the neighbouring state of Rajasthan, roughly two weeks before the government said it had begun its vaccination drive there. (The death toll has continued to climb).
So far, cows and buffalo have been inoculated using a pre-existing vaccine for combating goat pox, which a senior official with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research told reporters was 60-70 per cent effective against LSD.
An LSD-specific vaccine was now being developed in India, he said, though it did not rely on mRNA technology.
Various social media users have baselessly linked the cattle deaths to the World Economic Forum, a popular target for conspiracy theories during the pandemic.
CheckMate has previously covered false claims that suggest the WEF and global elites are orchestrating food shortages that would force people into eating insects.
Edited by Ellen McCutchan and David Campbell
Got a fact that needs checking? Tweet us @ABCFactCheck or send us an email at factcheck@rmit.edu.au
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2022-09-15 22:00:33Z
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