Written evidence submitted by the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment

  1. This submission has been produced by Bob Ward, Policy and Communications Director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The Institute was established by the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2008 to create a world-leading multidisciplinary centre for policy-relevant research and training on climate change and the environment, bringing together international expertise from across LSE and beyond, including on economics, finance, geography, the environment, science, law, international relations, development and political science. The Institute’s mission includes promoting better informed decision-making about climate change and the environment by engaging with a wide range of key stakeholders and audiences around the world. It has throughout its existence challenged concerted efforts to mislead decision-makers through misinformation about climate change and the environment. Further information about the Institute can be found on its website at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/.

 

  1. Misinformation about climate change that is disseminated through the legacy and social media continues to harm lives and livelihoods in the UK and around the world. The impacts of climate change, particularly sea level rise and more frequent and intense extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall, heatwaves and droughts, are having growing effects on health, living standards, economies and societies (IPCC, 2022a). Most countries are now responding through domestic and international actions to tackle the drivers, particularly emissions of greenhouse gases, and to improve resilience to those impacts that cannot now be avoided (IPCC, 2022a, 2022b). However, these efforts are being partly undermined by a small but effective group of campaigners, lobbyists and politicians who promote denial of the causes and potential consequences of climate change.

 

  1. In the liberal market economies of the UK, United States, Canada and Australia, a major source of misinformation about climate change stems from individuals and organisations who are ideologically opposed to the regulation of markets and businesses (Ward, 2018b). These promoters of climate change denial are mostly, but not entirely, found on the right of the political spectrum (Yu and Jiaying, 2019). They use strategies and tactics that have been developed to oppose regulation of risks to health and the environment caused by, for instance, tobacco smoking and pesticides (see, for example, Oreskes and Conway 2010). In many cases, the creation of uncertainty about the science of climate change is designed to prevent serious public and policy discussion about actions that should be taken to manage the risks. In doing so, the sources of misinformation make it more difficult for citizens and consumers to make well-informed decisions about how to manage the risks they face individually and collectively.

 

  1. The main focus of misinformation about climate change has shifted in the UK over the past few years. Outright denial of the basic physics of the greenhouse effect (i.e. warming and climate change are driven by rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels) has become less common, and has given way to a ‘lukewarmer’ narrative, i.e. human activities might be driving climate change but the impacts are likely to be small and actions to reduce emissions will do greater harm (Ward, 2018a).

 

  1. One of the most common subjects of misinformation about climate change focuses on the use of models. Modelling is used in every scientific discipline for a wide variety of purposes. The global climate is so complex that it would be impossible to understand its details without the use of models of the atmospheric, oceanic and terrestrial processes that influence it. ‘Lukewarmers’ attack the use of all modelling in climate change. For instance, they will claim falsely that climate models omit ‘natural’ processes. However, the main aim of these attacks on models is usually to try to discredit any projections that suggest the future impacts could be significant. These projections often attempt to capture the uncertainties in modelling the climate. They usually include several scenarios to represent a range of different assumptions about the future, such as the magnitude of annual emissions of greenhouse gases over a given period. The tactic of attacking the use of models that reveal significant future risks has also been applied to other subjects such as infectious diseases. Such attacks often arise from the same sources (Ward, 2021c). For instance, representatives of the Global Warming Policy Foundation have written newspaper articles attacking the use of models to project future potential impacts of COVID-19 (Peiser and Montford, 2020).

 

  1. The Global Warming Policy Foundation is a major source of misinformation about climate change in the UK. It is a group that was set up by Lord Lawson of Blaby in 2009 to campaign against policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels (Ward, 2011). The Foundation is a registered educational charity, but in 2013, Bob Ward of the Grantham Research Institute [this submission’s author] complained to the Charity Commission that it was promoting information about climate change that was inaccurate and misleading. Following an extensive investigation, the Commission ruled in 2014 that the Foundation was in breach of charity rules (Ward, 2014). In response, the Foundation set up an affiliated organisation, the Global Warming Forum, to circumvent charity rules. The Foundation and the Forum continue to promote misinformation about climate change, including through media releases, newspaper articles, broadcast interviews, pamphlets and events in Parliament. It keeps its sources of funding secret, but it claims on its website not to receive any money from individuals or organisations who have significant financial interest in energy. It is notable that the Foundation is overwhelmingly dominated by men (Ward, 2018c). It has just one female trustee, and no women among its honorary president, staff, academic advisory committee or annual lecturers.

 

  1. In 2021, the Global Warming Policy Forum created a new identity, Net Zero Watch, so that it could focus its campaign against the UK’s statutory target of cutting annual emissions to net zero by 2050. According to Craig Mackinlay, leader of a small group of MPs who call themselves the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, the Foundation is a major source of the campaign information they use (Ward, 2021a). The Net Zero Scrutiny Group and Net Zero Watch have been particularly active over the past year in promoting the demonstrably false claim that the recent increase in energy prices in the UK and elsewhere is due to climate policies.

 

  1. In the UK, newspapers on the right of the political spectrum have been a major source of misinformation on climate change, exploiting the feeble system of press self-regulation (Painter and Gavin, 2015; Ward, 2016). Historically, the daily and Sunday versions of the Sun, Express, Mail, Telegraph and Times have all promoted inaccurate and misleading information about climate change, primarily through their leading articles and opinion columns. They have argued that the science of climate change is still a matter of opinion and the publication of inaccurate and misleading information is protected by their right to be politically partisan. It is significant that all of these titles are currently members of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, which has a track record of rejecting complaints from experts about inaccurate and misleading coverage of climate change (Ward, 2021b).

 

  1. Misinformation about climate change has been historically much less common in the UK broadcast media, with some clear exceptions. The launch of GB News and Talk TV, both of which air programmes that target audiences at the fringes of the political spectrum, has led to an increase in broadcast coverage for outright denial of the physics of the greenhouse effect. During summer 2022, many programmes on GB News and Talk TV featured extensive interviews with Brian Catt, who has an undergraduate degree in physics and a postgraduate degree in business administration, but no formal qualifications or training in climate science. During these interviews, Mr Catt was allowed, unchallenged, to make demonstrably false claims about climate change, particularly that recent warming is “normal” (Ward, 2022). It is notable that Ofcom does not actively monitor the output of broadcasters to ensure compliance with its rules, and instead will only respond to complaints from viewers and other parties.

 

  1. Following a long interview with Mr Catt on 14 August 2022 on a programme hosted by Richard Tice, the leader of the Reform Party, Talk TV posted clips on its Facebook page which was shared extensively by others who deny climate change (Lloyd Parry, 2022). This demonstrates the way in which the legacy media and social media can together lead to the wide dissemination of misinformation about climate change. Only better regulation of the legacy media and social media can provide the public with protection against the current epidemic of harmful misinformation about climate change.

 

  1. In keeping with the tactic of portraying the promotion of climate change denial as an exercise of the right to free speech, or ‘balanced’ coverage and debate, these programmes have sometimes invited actual climate experts to appear before, during or after interviews with Mr Catt or representatives of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. Unfortunately, this does not result in the audience being left with a clear understanding of what is fact and what is fiction. Proponents of climate change denial often cite technical arguments that are entirely false but that can sound plausible to lay audiences, and may appear indistinguishable from the facts as laid out by real experts.

 

  1. Climate change experts can often fail to convince audiences of the falseness of the claims by proponents of climate change denial because of a lack of skill in engaging in public debate in front of lay audiences (Ward, 2018b). Public debate in front of expert audiences can be solved by reference to technical evidence, which is often not accessible to lay audiences.

 

References

 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2022a) Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-ii/

 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2022b) Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. Al Khourdajie, R. van Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, J. Malley, (eds.)]. Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/

 

Lloyd Parry R (2022) Interviewee makes false claims about warming, CO2, climate models. Agence France Presse Factcheck, 23 August. Available at: https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32GX2YQ

 

Oreskes N, Conway EM (2010) Merchants of doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. 1st U.S. ed. New York, Bloomsbury Press.

 

Painter J, Gavin N (2015) Climate Skepticism in British Newspapers, 2007–2011. Environmental Communication 10: 432-452. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17524032.2014.995193?journalCode=renc20

 

Peiser B, Montford A (2020) Coronavirus Lessons From the Asteroid That Didn’t Hit Earth. Wall Street Journal, 1 April. Available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-lessons-from-the-asteroid-that-didnt-hit-earth-11585780465

 

Ward RET (2011) Lord Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation is spreading errors. The Guardian, 21 October. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/oct/21/lord-lawson-global-warming-errors?

 

Ward RET (2014) Climate change ‘sceptics’ breached charity rules. LSE Blog, 30 September. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/climate-change-sceptics-breached-charity-rules/

 

Ward RET (2016) Why are some British newspapers still denying climate change? The Guardian, 25 January. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/25/why-are-some-british-newspapers-still-denying-climate-change

 

Ward RET (2018a) Why being right is not enough for climate researchers. Commentary, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment website, 20 April. Available at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/why-being-right-is-not-enough-for-climate-researchers/

 

Ward RET (2018b) Who are ‘lukewarmers’ and how should climate change researchers respond to them? Presentation at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Available at: https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm18/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/432379

 

Ward RET (2018c) Do male climate change sceptics have a problem with women? LSE Blog, 24 February. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2018/02/24/do-male-climate-change-sceptics-have-a-problem-with-women/

 

Ward RET (2021a) Misinformation and propaganda campaign on net zero. Commentary, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment website, 10 September. Available at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/misinformation-and-propaganda-campaign-on-net-zero/

 

Ward RET (2021b) The climate crisis cover-up. Hacked Off website, 26 February. Available at: https://hackinginquiry.org/special-report-chapter-one-the-climate-crisis-cover-up/

 

Ward RET (2021c) How science denialism contributes to the spread of Covid-19 disinformation. Hacked Off website, 16 March. Available at: https://hackinginquiry.org/bob-ward-how-science-denialism-contributes-to-the-spread-of-covid-19-disinformation/

 

Ward RET (2022) Countering bogus climate claims made on British television. Commentary, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment website, 26 August. Available at: https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/countering-bogus-climate-claims-made-on-british-television/

 

Yu L, Jiaying Z (2019) Motivated attention in climate change perception and action. Frontiers in Psychology 10. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01541