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Human-caused climate change is already leading to widespread negative impacts and related losses and damages to people and the natural environment that we depend on across the globe.
Climate disinformation and misinformation have been acknowledged by the IPCC, NATO and the UN Secretary General’s office as a threat to our collective ability to mitigate and adapt to the escalating and widespread harms of climate change. Fossil fuel companies, adjacent industries and other vested interests are using sophisticated tactics to undermine decades of work towards building consensus and driving action at the international, national, and local level - while other actors are simply looking to profit from the outrage economy online.
This report reveals that social media platforms are contributing to the spreading of false, harmful narrative by incentivising and amplifying climate disinformation in the pursuit of advertising revenue.
In the short term, climate disinformation and misinformation put citizens facing the impacts of extreme weather caused or exacerbated by climate change at risk, and hampers government and first responder efforts to provide assistance. In the longer term, they erode public trust and political will to take the action urgently needed to prevent the worst
impacts of climate change.