The Invisible War: The Clean Heat Market Mechanism .vs The Bots

You would probably have heard that the UK government is launching the Clean Heat Market Mechanism (CHMM). In the middle of a war?

And you might not even know the which side you are on.

Let's explain. There's some details to work through.

Clean Heat & Energy - The Two Sides

The UK government wants to switch millions of UK homeowners on to clean heat and energy sourced from renewables. Overseas governments. Want us to remain on volatile price shifting oil and gas energy.

The UK government wants UK citizens to have healthier homes, to reduce fumes from gas cookers poisoning households, open fires and log burners producing particulates, better air quality in our homes - so we spend less time in hospital, and being ill.

Overseas actors do not want us to achieve this. They like weak, pliable unhealthy broken countries.

They want dependency on them, not independence for us. And gas and oil is not freedom, it is dependence.

Heat Pumps - The Opening Shots

Heat pumps are one of the methods we are attempting to wean ourselves off the gas and oil supply. They have had a mixed reception from the UK public.

So a mallet was applied to the problem, and we were told, and (it was badly communicated) that boilers (sic) "perfectly good boilers are going to be ripped out" and replaced by these electricity hungry pumps.

And some frontlines in a brief skirmish were established, and the usual suspects piled in with stories where inept installers had put heat pumps in homes that (usually) were not properly insulated. Which meant the poor customers had astronomically huge electricity bills.

Then things got real.

The Information War - Battle Commences

PsyOps is a term that has been around more recently, but as far back as the great Armada in British history, way back in fact to the times of the Greeks - disinformation campaigns have been a great way to get your civilian population to revolt against the rule of law, or state power.

In more recent times, and revealed in a fascinating podcast from the popular duo of Rory Stuart and Alistair Campbell - you can learn how foreign governments actively manipulate the popular narrative, the "water cooler moments" - "the word on the street", by using social media to activate campaigns, which in the case of Sudan, or the Rohinghya in Myanmar - have devastating consequences.

In their podcast they reveal what many firms like the infamous Bell Pottinger (A British PR firm which blew itself up after revealing the how it influenced politics with disinformation) already knew. Information is a weapon. And disinformation is a cheap and easy weapon to use in social media.

So what, by jiminy, does this have to do with the CHMM? You could ask.

Combating Disinformation in Retrofit

Interestingly, it was the US government that issued a great little easy learner about disinformation. With it's catchy title Weapons of Mass Distraction - Foreign State Sponsored Disinformation In The Digital Age. We'll quote it directly for context;

"To understand the disinformation environment, it is useful to dissect the different elements it encompasses. Disinformation can include authentic material used in a deliberately wrong context to make a false connection, such as an authentic picture displayed with a fake caption. It can take the form of fake news sites or ones that are deliberately designed to look like well-known sites. Disinformation can further include outright false information, shared through graphics, images, and videos. It can also take the form of manipulated image and video content, where controversial elements are photoshopped into innocuous contexts to evoke anger or outrage."

How is this relevant to British heat pump adoption? In a simple scan of the "authority" Youtube channels for builders, DIY experts and home renovators in the UK.

You can find evidence of lone commentators who rubbish the qualities of heat pumps. Check out the comments lists underneath for random channels with quotes which use keywords to describe heat pumps as a scam.

You can find out of context clips of these authority figures, which are clipped out, when they refer to a negative experience of a homeowner, then repurposed as Twitter or Facebook posts.

Re-shared on closed Facebook groups or WhatsApp groups, the disinformation is then magnified in an effect which in India or Brazil, they nick name the "Bad Uncle" or "WhatsApp Uncle" and have entire campaigns that rage across family WhatsApps, powerful enough to nearly overthrow legitimate elections.

The counter to this. Is a play, the UK government have just made.

And it might just work.

Back to the Weapons of Mass Distraction - Foreign State Sponsored Disinformation In The Digital Age for a quote which is relevant here:

"So, what strategies might work to counter disinformation? Recent research is more positive regarding potential approaches. One study of 7,200 participants found that counterfactual information can change partisan opinions when the information is presented with strong evidence. Of note, this study also found that participants generally maintained an openness to opposing information unless they were primed to feel adversarial, or if the opposing arguments were laden with insulting language. Combining these insights with the aforementioned research on fight or flight reactions offers a potential roadmap for countering misleading information on polarizing topics: present corrective information in a tactful and well-supported manner that avoids disparaging those with opposing views."

How did HM Government make a play? Well, the easy to fuel argument that perfectly good boilers are being ripped out was a bad move.

But the truth, now, which is going to be actively communicated now the CHMM will actively nudge more heat pumps into British homes, is that the numbers will speak for themselves.

Well installed, correctly fitted heat pumps, can be put in your home now, from pretty much the same price as a replacement boiler, as long as you access the correct grants and assistance.

In fact for some homes they may pay less if they qualify for local government additional funding (better hope your council isn't on an S114).

And as long as we don't poke those angry Uncles and Aunts, you know, the ones that send you the meme's describing prisoners as animals, or woman as chattels, those ones.

We can gently, using the numbers, the facts, the truth about how our government is making the switch easier, and we can all, peacefully make ourselves a bit healthier and warmer and smug about being clean and green.

So get your case studies made, collect the testimonials, publish, republish and promote the good news.

Britain is going clean, it is going to be energy independent.