fact finder
Status: 09/02/2022 09:44 a.m
Declarations appear again and again that cast doubt on man-made climate change – signed by scientists. On closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent that the supposed experts are not climate researchers at all.
A data analysis by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) and the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition shows that climate disinformation is being disseminated in a targeted manner to prevent or delay climate action.
The Deny, Deceive, Delay Report comes to the conclusion that “junk science, climate propagation and attacks on climate experts” were able to assert themselves because insufficient action was taken against disinformation on the Internet. A few actors are responsible for very much of the widespread disinformation about climate – many of them have scientific or academic backgrounds 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 evidence
Scientific documents are repeatedly circulating that cast doubt on global warming. A contribution by the Austrian right-wing media portal “AUF1” in relevant channels was one of the most successful telegram contributions of the past week. The title of the video says: “Climate madness: Over a thousand real scientists fight back against CO2 lies”.
It is about a letter with the title: “There is no climate emergency”. The letter has more than 1,107 signatories worldwide, including numerous scientists. The letter makes claims to prove that there is no climate emergency. For example, it is said that warming is taking place more slowly than assumed and that climate policy is relying 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 about half of the signatories was already circulating in 2019. The “World Climate Declaration” was published by the “Climate Intelligence Foundation” (CLINTEL). According to DeSMog, a platform for investigative environmental journalism, 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. The document also contains a statement that is often used by climate change deniers, stating that temperatures are not rising excessively and that there have always been fluctuations in the weather.
This assertion is not only listed in the current document, it can also be found in the AfD election program of 2021. It says: “It has not yet been proven that humans, especially industry, are largely responsible for climate change. The most 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, strongly disagrees. The immense rise in temperatures worldwide would never have happened before, the scientific figures clearly demonstrated man-made climate change. The global warming we are currently seeing is definitely not natural, but extraordinary.
No denial of man-made climate change
However, the theses of the briefs do not per se deny that humans have an influence on climate change. Instead, it says: “Both natural and man-made factors cause warming”.
For example, one of the German signatories, Fritz Vahrenholt, former Hamburg Senator for the Environment from the SPD, assumes that natural factors such as the activity of the sun are responsible for about half of global warming. A thesis that has been advocated in a similar way by AfD politicians like Alice Weidel in the past.
Jennie King, head of climate disinformation at ISD, says that “climate disinformation has become more complex, evolving from outright denial to recognizable ‘discourses of delay'” to abuse the gap between acceptance and action for the energy transition. It is considered that the current climate change is almost exclusively due to anthropogenic – i.e. man-made – factors extensive scientific consensus.
“Scientifically worthless”
“This so-called ‘World Climate Declaration’ is scientifically worthless,” says Toralf Staud, specialist journalist at the knowledge portal klimafakten.de. There was no evidence whatsoever to support the claims made. “But that is exactly a basic requirement in research: not just expressing an opinion or a claim, but being able to demonstrate well-substantiated scientific findings as a basis, which have been published in so-called peer-reviewed journals.”
The method of presenting a mass of pseudo-experts who claim that there is still no reliable knowledge in research on a certain question is one of the most common disinformation strategies of scientific denial. With as many names as possible that have academic titles, professional expertise is suggested. “On closer inspection, however, these are people who may have a certain level of competence in their own field, such as chemistry or combustion engine development, but have practically no technical expertise on the subject on which they are expressing themselves here.”
Technical expertise is characterized by the fact that current research is published on specific technical issues in the specialist discipline. “But that’s exactly what the vast majority of those who sign such ‘declarations’ practically never have,” says Staud.
Pseudo-experts as a typical disinformation strategy
This can be confirmed using the example of the “World Climate Declaration”. The letter was initiated by Ian Giaver, a retired physics professor who received a Nobel Prize in 1973 for work on superconductivity. For several years, the Giaver emeritus has appeared publicly mainly by questioning climate change.
According to Giaver’s statements on climate change, they are based on half a day to a day of Google research. According to 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 they know 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.”