24-06-2025
Climate Change Deniers Are Switching Tactics
Coal-fired power station with smoking chimneys.
Climate misinformation has shifted focus, moving away from denying that climate change is happening, and instead working to cast doubt on proposed solutions.
An analysis of thousands of academic papers on climate misinformation published over the last ten years by the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) has revealed that complete denialism is on the wane. However, it showed, misinformation is rife when it comes to the effectiveness, costs or fairness of mitigation measures.
Fossil fuel companies, along with associated political groups and think tanks, are carrying out sophisticated campaigns that sow doubt about climate solutions, the research found.
Key targets include political leaders, civil servants and regulatory agencies, in efforts to delay climate policy, with automated and coordinated bots playing a central role.
"Climate misinformation is being amplified by institutions with the power to shape narratives and suppress inconvenient truths", said Dr Ece Elbeyi, lead author of the report.
"As long as these actors continue to manipulate the flow of information, the prospects for effective and equitable climate action will remain dangerously out of reach."
The fossil fuel industry, said the report, has been denying the reality of climate change, denying or distorting scientific facts, while also casting doubt on proposed solutions.
Meanwhile, other business sectors have been shifting to the same tactics. While, for example, American electric utility companies were primarily denying or sowing doubt about climate change between 1990 and 2000, they are now obstructing and delaying solutions, while trying to shift the responsibility for climate change to other sectors of society.
Researchers have documented extensive organized collaboration between fossil fuel companies, states and political actors.
In Europe, meanwhile, studies have found right wing populist parties to be actively working against mitigation measures, with the Swiss People's Party, for example, trying to obstruct the transition to renewable energy, arguing that this imposes an excessive economic burden on the country.
And, said the researchers, individual politicians are working to discredit climate solutions too.
"Based on a network analysis of 7.3 million tweets, one study identified U.S. president Donald Trump as the key influencer of the network, whose logical fallacies, unfounded claims, and cherry-picking of findings were heavily retweeted by other users", the researchers said.
A comparative analysis of the rhetoric of U.S. political parties showed that while Democrats presented scientific facts, Republicans tend to rely on anecdotes and storytelling - both more persuasive and more difficult to refute, they said.
Skepticism may be gradually taking precedence over denial globally, with a variety of messages questioning the relevance, feasibility, and effectiveness of potential solutions.
Russia, for example, has been labeling EU policies of transitioning to renewable energy sources as "hypocritical' and 'politically motivated,' and even claiming
that renewables are harmful to nature.
"We are dealing with an information environment that has been deliberately distorted", said Dr Klaus Bruhn Jensen, professor at the University of Copenhagen.
"When corporations, governments, and media platforms obscure climate realities, the result is paralysis. Addressing the climate emergency therefore demands not only policy reform, but an unflinching reckoning with systems that spread and sustain falsehoods."
