Climate Misinformation Leads People To Lose Faith In Science: Report
Roads destroyed during the 2021 floods in Maharashtra. Misinformation about climate change leads people to lose faith in climate science and in a hopeful future for themselves, finds a new report (Representative image by Varsha Deshpande via Wikimedia Commons)
Corporations, governments, and political parties are intentionally spreading inaccurate or misleading narratives about climate change, according to a new global assessment of information integrity about climate science. The fallout is a decline in public trust in science, weaker policy coordination, and scientific denialism fuelling political inaction, said the International Panel on Information Integrity’s systematic review of 300 peer-reviewed studies published between 2015 and 2025.
A decade of research reviewed showed that “strategic scepticism” about climate change is replacing climate denialism and that policymakers are key targets of the misinformation. The review also noted that “misinformation leads people to lose faith in climate science and in a hopeful future for themselves.”
The authors of the report highlighted that there is a severe gap in research on climate information integrity in the Global South, where impacts are likely to be significant but poorly documented. “Out of the papers we reviewed, there was only one out of 300 carefully studied papers, that dealt with the entire content of Africa,” said Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Chair of the International Panel on the Information Environment’s (IPIE) Scientific Panel on Information Integrity about Climate Science, at the online report launch, while giving an example of the lack of research on the issue from the Global South. IPIE is a consortium providing actionable scientific knowledge on threats to the global information environment. Jensen highlighted the study finding that policymakers should secure more comparative evidence, especially from countries in the Global South, about climate information integrity.
The review also recognises that climate science knowledge and discourse has been “historically articulated by intellectual elites in the Global North” which can create barriers for communities in the countries that rely on indigenous knowledge in their daily lives. For example, the review refers to a 2015 study that found “state authorities in the Indian Himalayas have wrongfully labelled local environmental narratives as conspiracy theories” and pointed to perspectives including intersectional research to recognise local solutions to the global climate crisis.
The review recommends legislation and regulation, litigation against greenwashing and misinformation, forming coalitions to counter disinformation campaigns, and strengthening scientific and media literacy among citizens and policymakers.
Information integrity refers to the accuracy, reliability, and trustworthiness of information, especially in how it is produced, shared, and received. In the run up to COP30, the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, first established in 2024 by the UN, UNESCO and the Brazil government, is developing a network of partners to research and report on how mis/disinformation, ranging from conspiracy theories to orchestrated campaigns, is affecting climate action, particularly in the Global South.
