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Open letters or declarations that cast doubt on man-made climate change appear again and again – signed by scientists. However, upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that the supposed experts are not climate researchers at all.
Data analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition shows that climate disinformation is being deliberately spread to prevent or delay climate action.
The “Deny, Deceive, Delay” report concludes that “junk science, climate change and attacks on climate experts” were able to prevail because not enough action was taken to combat disinformation on the Internet. A few actors are responsible for much of the widespread climate disinformation – many of them have a scientific or academic background and could thus claim credibility for their analyses. Many accounts from corona and climate skeptics overlapped, both structurally and in terms of content.
Supposedly scientific Proofs
Allegedly scientific documents are circulating again and again that cast doubt on global warming. A post by the Austrian right-wing media portal “AUF1” in relevant channels was one of the most successful Telegram posts of the past week. The title of the video says: “Climate madness: Over a thousand real scientists defend themselves against the CO2 lie.”
It is about a letter entitled: “There is no climate emergency”. The letter has more than 1,107 signatories worldwide, including numerous scientists. The letter makes claims intended to prove that there is no climate emergency. For example, it is said that warming is occurring more slowly than expected and that climate policy relies on inadequate models. In addition, CO2 is essential for life, an increase in environmental disasters has not been proven and a zero CO2 policy is harmful and unrealistic.
An almost identical letter with around half of the signatories was already circulating in 2019. The “World Climate Declaration” was published by the “Climate Intelligence Foundation” (CLINTEL). According to DeSMog, an investigative environmental journalism platform, CLINTEL is a Netherlands-based climate science denial group founded in 2019 by retired geophysics professor Guus Berkhout and journalist Marcel Crok.
Recurring claims
If you take a closer look at the claims, it quickly becomes apparent that they are anything but new. There is also a statement often used by climate change deniers in the document, which states that temperatures will not rise excessively and that there have always been fluctuations in the weather.
This claim is not only listed in the current document, it can also be found in the AfD election program for 2021. It says: “It has not yet been proven that humans, especially industry, are largely responsible for climate change. The recent warming is in the range of natural climate fluctuations, as we know them from the pre-industrial past.”
Silke Hansen, head of the ARD-Weather Competence Center, contradicts this fact finder podcast decided. The rapid rise in temperatures worldwide is very extraordinary. This would go far beyond the temperature fluctuations that we know from the history of the earth. Science has proven that humans are involved in the global warming that we are currently seeing.
No denial of that man-made climate change
However, the theses of the letter do not per se deny that humans have an influence on climate change. Instead, it states: “Both natural and man-made factors cause warming.”
One of the German signatories, Fritz Vahrenholt, former Hamburg environmental senator from the SPD, assumes, for example, that natural factors such as the activity of the sun are responsible for around half of global warming. A thesis that has also been advocated in a similar way by AfD politicians such as Alice Weidel in the past.
Jennie King, director of climate disinformation at ISD, says that “climate disinformation has become more complex, evolving from outright denial to recognizable ‘discourses of delay'” to exploit the gap between acceptance and action for the energy transition. It is considered that current climate change can be traced back almost exclusively to anthropogenic – i.e. man-made – factors widespread scientific consensus.
“Scientific worthless”
“This so-called ‘World Climate Declaration’ is scientifically worthless,” says Toralf Staud, a specialist journalist Knowledge portal klimafakten.de. There was a lack of any evidence to support the claims made. “But that is exactly what is a basic requirement in research: not just expressing an opinion or a claim, but also being able to provide the basis for well-established scientific findings that have been published in so-called peer-reviewed specialist journals.”
The method of presenting a mass of pseudo-experts who claim that there is no reliable knowledge in research on a particular question is one of the most common disinformation strategies for science denial. Using as many names as possible with academic titles suggests professional expertise. “If you look closely, however, these are people who may have a certain level of expertise in their own field, such as chemistry or combustion engine development, but who have practically no technical expertise on the topic they are commenting on here.”
Technical expertise is characterized by the fact that current research is published on specific technical questions in the discipline. “But that’s exactly what the vast majority of signatories of such ‘declarations’ practically never have,” says Staud.
Pseudo-experts as typical Disinformation strategy
This can be confirmed using the example of the “World Climate Declaration”. The letter was initiated by Ivar Giaver, a retired physics professor who won a Nobel Prize in 1973 for his work on superconductivity. For several years now, Giaver, who has retired, has appeared publicly mainly by questioning climate change.
According to his own admission, Giaver’s statements on climate change are based on half a day to a day of Google research. According to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Oslo and Google Scholar, Giaever has not published any work in the field of climate science.
Just because someone has a professorship in physics doesn’t mean that person knows anything about the climate, says Staud. He explains clearly: “If my car breaks down, I don’t ask my dentist what I should do, I ask a competent car mechanic.”