Press Release - Climate Misinformation Threatens Global Action, Says IPIE Assessment

June 20, 2025 - Zürich, Switzerland - The International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) has released a landmark assessment revealing the greatest barrier to climate action may not be a lack of scientific knowledge, but the global spread of misinformation that targets public trust and political will.

The IPIE's Scientific Panel on Information Integrity about Climate Science latest assessment, Information Integrity about Climate Science: A Systematic Review, and its accompanying Summary for Policymakers, represents the most comprehensive scientific assessment yet of how misinformation undermines climate science.

The scientific assessment followed the latest open science protocols for conducting major reviews, collecting thousands of academic papers published over the last decade, from across the computer, social and behavioral sciences, and selecting 300 most well-known for systematic analysis. Based on the latest research:

• Denialism has evolved into strategic skepticism: Campaigns now focus less on denying climate change and more on discrediting the effectiveness, costs, or fairness of proposed solutions.
• Misinformation is targeted and intentional: Political leaders, civil servants, and regulatory agencies are key targets in efforts to delay climate policy.
• Bots and trolls amplify falsehoods at scale: Automated and coordinated actors play a central role in pushing misleading narratives, not just fringe commentary.

The reports show that fossil fuel companies, aligned with political interests, and affiliated think tanks have pivoted from outright denial to more sophisticated campaigns that sow doubt about climate solutions.

The Chair of the Panel, Dr. Klaus Bruhn Jensen, a Professor at the University of Copenhagen said:

We are dealing with an information environment that has been deliberately distorted. 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.

Dr. Ece Elbeyi, the IPIE's Consulting Scientist and lead author of the report, added:

Climate misinformation is being amplified by institutions with the power to shape narratives and suppress inconvenient truths. 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.

Unfortunately, there are critical problems with the research on climate misinformation:

1. The Global South remains excluded: Research from Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia is vastly underrepresented, limiting the global picture.
2. We lack real-time transparency from digital platforms: Without access to platform data, we can't see how misinformation spreads or disrupts it.

In terms of solutions, the systematic review finds a strong, global, expert consensus that public-interest laws must require accurate climate reporting from corporations and ensure transparency in digital communications.

"The integrity of climate information is under systemic attack and this is not an accident", says Sebastian Valenzuela, Chair of the IPIE's Scientific and Methodology Committee. "When trusted institutions - corporate, political, and media - become the engines of falsehood, they weaken our ability to act in the public interest."

The Scientific Panel is an 11-person group drawn from a global pool of experts. Dr. Frederik Ogenga, a Panel member from the University of Rongo. "If we want meaningful climate action, we must first address the machinery that is manufacturing confusion," he said. "Our response to the climate crisis begins with restoring credibility to the information systems we all rely on."

The IPIE's findings offer a wake-up call: the success of climate action depends on as much on the integrity of the information environment as on technological innovation or policy targets. Without confronting misinformation, progress will remain stalled.

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Further details about the IPIE, and full details on the report methodology, can be found at www.IPIE.info. For media inquiries, interviews, or more information, please contact Press@IPIE.info.

‍About the IPIE

The International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) is an independent and global science organization providing scientific knowledge about the health of the world's information environment. Based in Switzerland, the IPIE offers policymakers, industry, and civil society actionable scientific assessments about threats to the information environment, including AI bias, algorithmic manipulation, and disinformation. The IPIE is the only scientific body systematically organizing, evaluating, and elevating research with the broad aim of improving the global information environment. Hundreds of researchers worldwide contribute to the IPIE's reports.

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