Climate science is not only interpreted in laboratories and assessment reports. It is also filtered through advertising, political language, news coverage, social media, and repeated talking points. Understanding that information environment is part of understanding climate change itself.
Evidence and communicationWhy this belongs at ACC
Information affects whether people recognize a risk, trust a proposed response, and believe collective action is possible. The IPCC has concluded that organized misinformation, rhetoric, and the deliberate undermining of climate science have contributed to public misperceptions and polarization.
That does not mean every disagreement about costs, technology, regulation, or policy is misinformation. Legitimate debate is necessary. The distinction is whether a claim represents the evidence fairly, identifies uncertainty honestly, and can be traced to a credible source.
The documented record
Some influential organizations understood the risk while publicly minimizing it.
Archival documents and peer-reviewed analyses make it possible to compare private technical knowledge with public communication. The record is not a theory about hidden motives; it is a body of documents that researchers have examined directly.
Warnings were circulating decades ago.
Historian Benjamin Franta documented that petroleum-industry leaders were being warned about carbon dioxide pollution and climate risks by the mid-20th century. In 1965, the American Petroleum Institute relayed a prominent scientific warning to its members.
Review the archival research →Internal projections were often accurate.
A 2023 study quantitatively evaluated global-warming projections reported by Exxon and ExxonMobil scientists from 1977 to 2003. Most were consistent with later observed warming, even as some public statements contradicted the company's own scientific data.
Review the projection analysis →Different audiences received different messages.
A 2017 content analysis of 187 ExxonMobil climate communications found that peer-reviewed and internal documents generally acknowledged human-caused climate change, while public-facing advertorials more often emphasized doubt.
Review the content analysis →Important scope: These studies document particular organizations, documents, and periods. They do not establish that every energy company, employee, advertisement, or argument has the same history.
Delay narrativesFrom outright denial to climate delay
Modern climate messaging does not always reject climate science. It may accept the problem while arguing that meaningful action should be postponed, weakened, assigned entirely to someone else, or treated as impossible.
Researchers studying “discourses of climate delay” grouped common arguments into four broad patterns. An argument can contain a partial truth and still function as delay when it is used selectively or without context.
Redirect responsibility
Focus only on another country, company, or individual so the speaker's own practical responsibility disappears.
Question to ask:Can several actors have responsibility at the same time?Promote weak substitutes
Present a small or distant measure as sufficient while avoiding the larger changes needed to meet the stated goal.
Question to ask:Does the proposal match the scale and timing of the problem?Emphasize only the downsides
Describe every cost or disruption of action while leaving out benefits, avoided damages, and the costs of continued inaction.
Question to ask:Are both sides of the comparison being counted?Declare action impossible
Argue that change is politically, technically, or socially unrealistic, or that it is already too late for any action to matter.
Question to ask:What evidence supports the limit, and what options remain?Context matters: Concerns about affordability, reliability, land, materials, jobs, community consent, and government design can be legitimate. They should be examined with evidence, not dismissed simply because they complicate a preferred policy.
Media influenceMedia can clarify the evidence or distort its weight.
The IPCC notes that media can build support for climate action or impede it. False balance is one recurring problem: presenting a well-supported scientific conclusion and a weakly supported opposing view as though they carry equal evidentiary weight.
Repetition also matters. A claim can feel familiar long before it has been verified, and emotionally charged posts can travel faster than corrections. Good climate communication links to original material, states what is known, labels uncertainty, and separates scientific findings from policy preferences.
A practical method
Check the claim before sharing the conclusion.
You do not need to be a climate scientist to make a much better judgment. A short, repeatable source check can reveal missing context quickly.
- Find the original source.Move past a screenshot, quote card, or repost. Look for the paper, dataset, assessment, filing, speech, or full interview.
- Check the date, baseline, and scope.Ask what years, location, technology, population, or emissions boundary the number actually covers.
- Compare it with stronger evidence.Look for major assessments, peer-reviewed research, transparent datasets, or several credible institutions reaching similar conclusions.
- Separate science from policy opinion.A source may describe the evidence accurately and still advocate for a debatable policy. Those are different claims.
- Examine incentives and conflicts.Funding does not automatically invalidate evidence, but undisclosed interests, selective methods, or promotional framing deserve scrutiny.
- Look for corrections and newer evidence.Reliable sources explain methods, acknowledge limitations, and update conclusions when better information becomes available.
Political recordsPolitical investigations are records, not neutral scientific assessments.
Congressional investigations can surface internal documents, testimony, contracts, and public statements that deserve examination. Their staff reports also reflect the priorities and interpretations of the members who produced them.
ACC labels those reports accordingly. Readers should distinguish the underlying documents from a committee's interpretation, and compare scientific claims with peer-reviewed research and major assessments rather than treating a partisan report as the final authority.
ACC's roleClear evidence needs enough reach to compete.
Part of ACC's mission is to counter climate misinformation with accessible, source-based communication. Powerful interests can use advertising, selective framing, manufactured uncertainty, and repetition to distort public understanding or delay action.
ACC uses education, daily news, social media, practical tools, and transparent references to make the scientific record easier to find, check, and act on. The goal is not to tell people what to think. It is to make stronger evidence easier to recognize than a persuasive but unsupported claim.
ACC takeaway
Ask what the evidence shows, who is making the claim, and what context is missing.
Climate information is strongest when original sources are visible, uncertainty is stated honestly, and scientific findings are kept distinct from political or commercial persuasion. Skepticism is useful when it is applied consistently to every side.
References & further reading
Review the underlying material.
- IPCC AR6 WGIII, Chapter 13Assessment of institutions, public policy, media, misinformation, and climate action.
- IPCC AR6 WGII, Chapter 14Assessment of adaptation decisions, risk perception, polarization, and misinformation.
- Franta (2018), “Early oil industry knowledge of CO2 and global warming”Archival research in Nature Climate Change.
- Supran, Rahmstorf & Oreskes (2023), “Assessing ExxonMobil's global warming projections”Quantitative analysis published in Science.
- Supran & Oreskes (2017), “Assessing ExxonMobil's climate change communications”Content analysis published in Environmental Research Letters.
- Lamb et al. (2020), “Discourses of climate delay”Framework for recognizing arguments that delay or weaken climate action.
- Joint Democratic congressional staff report (2024)A political investigative report containing documents and staff conclusions; labeled here by authorship.
- ACC Research StandardsHow ACC evaluates, cross-checks, labels, and updates information.