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Scandal-ridden RMIT ABC Fact Check has been caught spreading more misinformation, even as the Australian government demands social media sites censor content deemed false by fact-checkers.

RMIT ABC Fact Check has authored a demonstrably false fact check claiming that Nepal is among a handful of nations that have been running on 100 per cent wind, water and solar since 2021.

Published last Thursday on the taxpayer-funded ABC News website, the fact check purported to correct Australian businessman Dick Smith’s statement on Sydney radio station 2GB that “this claim by the CSIRO that you can run a whole country on solar and wind is simply a lie”.

“It is not true,” Mr Smith said during his radio appearance. “They are telling lies. No country has ever been able to run entirely on renewables. That’s impossible.”

Speaking with host Ben Fordham, Mr Smith argued that the limitations inherent to renewables mean that Australia “should be making a decision to go nuclear now” if the country has any hope of achieving “net-zero emissions” by 2050.

Hoping to counter his statements, the public broadcaster claimed that “experts consulted by RMIT ABC Fact Check suggested Mr Smith’s statement doesn’t hold up”.

However, it is the ABC’s supposed “fact check” that does not hold up, given the well-known reality that Nepal is heavily reliant on the burning of wood, agricultural waste and dung for cooking and heating, all of which have high CO2 outputs, not to mention that many Nepalese people get by simply living without power.

Fossil fuels likewise power the majority of transportation in Nepal, while diesel generators are used widely as a power source, especially in areas with unreliable grid electricity supply. As reported by Foreign Policy:

Air pollution was directly linked to at least 42,100 deaths in Nepal in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available. A surge in diesel and petrol-run vehicles, along with growing fossil fuel imports, has worsened the country’s air quality. In 2019, Nepalis consumed 90 percent more fuel than they did five years before, and, currently, around 60 percent of Kathmandu’s air pollution is related to the transportation sector.

Setting the Record Straight on Nepal

In a follow-up interview on 2GB on Monday, Dick Smith offered his own fact check of the misinformation taxpayers were forced to fund on ABC News.

“I’m angry. The whole document is full of misinformation and lies, it’s designed to discredit me. Absolutely disgusting,” he told Ben Fordham.

“They say on the document… this is ‘your inoculation against misinformation’ and their document is just completely misinformation because the left at the ABC have to be against nuclear so they just make up every lie they can to distort anyone who says we have to move to nuclear.”

Mr Smith took aim at the ABC’s claim that Nepal operates entirely on renewables, noting the country’s high reliance on burning biomass such as wood as a main source of energy for households.

“I’ve been to Nepal,” he said. “The lodges have diesel generators and most of the people in Nepal burn wood which has probably got the most carbon output you could ever imagine.”

The businessman also alleged that the behemoth broadcaster engaged in sleight-of-hand by changing the subject from energy in general to electricity in particular.

“What the ABC has done is distort that just to look at electricity which is only 25 per cent of our problem,” he explained. “Our government and our scientists say we have to go to zero carbon. That’s all energy, not just electricity.”

Countering Claims About California

According to Mr Smith, the “most dishonest” part of the RMIT ABC Fact Check article concerned California, the most populous state in the US which has set a goal of 100 per cent clean electricity by 2045.

The fact check claimed that California had been been running on “more than 100 per cent WWS (wind, water, sunlight) for 10 out of the last 11 days for between 0.25 and 6 hours per day,” citing Stanford University Professor Mark Jacobson.

Mr Smith countered: “Probably the most dishonest thing they’ve done, because they are opposed to me talking about nuclear energy, is say that California at certain times of the day now runs 100 per cent on renewables.”

“What they don’t tell you anywhere in the document is that California has nuclear power and it’s connected to the nuclear grid of Arizona and Washington State,” he explained.

“That’s the reason it can sometimes have renewable[s]. It has the base-load of nuclear which is the part that I’m trying to bring out that they so dishonestly distort.”

“But at the ABC, there’s this sort of code that says not only must you never give any publicity to the advantages of nuclear, but you must write lies against it and that’s what they do,” Mr Smith added.

Not the First Scandal for RMIT ABC Fact Check

As reported by Sky News, this is just “the latest of several high-profile errors made by RMIT fact checkers”.

RMIT has faced heavy criticism after being exposed in a Sky News investigation dubbed the Fact Check Files and previously covered by The Daily Declaration.

In response to that investigation, the ABC announced that it planned to cut ties with RMIT, though it will continue to collaborate with the university until the contract ends later in 2024.

The latest fiasco also drew the attention of independent journalist Michael Shellenberger, who played a lead role in breaking both the Twitter Files and WPATH Files scandals.

“The Australian government is demanding that X, Facebook, and other social media companies censor content that its fact-checkers say is inaccurate. But now, one of the government’s main fact-checker groups has been caught spreading misinformation about renewables and nuclear,” Mr Shellenberger tweeted, noting the Orwellian irony.

“The fact check by @ABCFactCheck is false,” he stated.

“It’s clear that @abcnews is going to need to correct this and apologise. After that, it should shut down its fake “fact checker” program. Leaked emails had already shown that it was corrupted by activists.”

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Image courtesy of RMIT University.