UN Silences the Critics of Climate Measures
The Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change obliges countries to combat "misinformation" on the matter.
At the COP30 climate conference held recently in Belém, Brazil, several countries signed the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change, committing themselves to combating “misinformation” in regards to climate change. The signatory countries must promote the integrity of climate change information at the international, national and local levels, in accordance with international human rights and the principles of the Paris Agreement, according to the United Nations. So far, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Uruguay, and Belgium have approved the Declaration on Information Integrity on Climate Change.
Governments, the private sector, civil society, academia, and funders must combat climate misinformation, disinformation, and denialism, as per the declaration. Climate change information must be consistent, reliable, accurate, and evidence-based. The UN believes that the provisions of the declaration are urgently needed to raise awareness, enable accountability, and build public trust in climate policy measures and actions.
The problem, however, is the way such declarations can be used to restrict people’s freedom of speech as well as scientific freedom, and although the UN claims that approaches to climate change must be diverse and science-based, so far the organization’s statements and conduct have rather seen it treat itself as the only the reliable source of the “correct” or reliable viewpoints – even if its claims have, upon a closer examination, often proved to be exaggerated, misleading or outright false.
Claims, opinions and studies that contradict the UN’s mandatory consensus have therefore usually been considered the work of malicious provocateurs and sceptics, and automatically labelled as ‘disinformation’ or ‘misinformation’.
The Critique from Renowned Scientists
This is the attitude that has been evident in a number of interviews here at Freedom Research too, when noted scientists have shed light on the background of the current climate science and talked of a possible commonsense approach to the matter. All of these speakers have experienced a level of smear campaigns and attempts to silence them. Judith Curry, a renowned climatologist and professor emeritus of Georgia Institute of Technology, remarked, for example: “Scientists who did not vocally support the IPCC (the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) consensus are heavily ostracized. Not just in the media, but also by what I would call the establishment climate scientists – those who participate in the international and national assessment reports and have an outsized media presence. Many of these scientists are behaving as political advocates, and they are trying to stifle any disagreement, not just about the science, but even about the proposed policy solutions. Scientists who aren’t going along with that are not only marginalized, but things become very uncomfortable for them in the universities.”
Dr. Richard Lindzen, atmospheric scientist and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told us in an interview that none of the UN IPCC reports claim that climate change is a huge problem. The only fact that emerges there is that further warming is slightly more likely than cooling, but even that by not very much. Neither do any scientific reports predict extreme weather conditions, flooding or ‘the end of the world’ – that is the language of politicians. “Politicians have arranged the UN reports so that you do have one section on science, and then you have lots of other sections that are not on science, that say crazy things. And so you say, the UN says this, but it doesn’t say it in the science section. They designed it so that they would have a platform for issuing crazy statements. That there would be one section that is the science – that no one would read – but which allows them to say they had hundreds of scientists working on this,” Lindzen criticized the reports.
Guterres’s boiling planet
UN Secretary-General António Guterres is one of the political figures who is known for his apocalyptic messages. For example, in July 2023, he declared that global warming was over and that planet Earth had entered an era of boiling. So when Guterres talks about disinformation, he is now including all those who just say that the planet is not boiling.
“We must fight mis- and disinformation, online harassment, and greenwashing,” Guterres said, adding that the current declaration (Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change) is a way “to fund research and action promoting information integrity on climate issues. Scientists and researchers should never fear telling the truth.”
He was seconded by several other politicians. For example, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil, the country which was hosting the COP30 climate conference, stated that climate change is “no longer a threat of the future; it is a tragedy of the present. We live in an era in which obscurantists reject scientific evidence and attack institutions. It is time to deliver yet another defeat to denialism.” At the same time, President Lula has been accused of hypocrisy since in the run-up to the very same conference, he approved the clearing of a large area of the Amazon rainforest so as to build a four-lane highway for the guests of the conference. He has also favoured exploratory oil drilling at the mouth of the Amazon River.
UNESCO has also joined the so-called information integrity initiative, with Director-General Audrey Azoulay explaining that without reliable climate change information, climate change is impossible to overcome. “Through this initiative, we will support the journalists and researchers investigating climate issues, sometimes at great risk to themselves, and fight the climate-related disinformation running rampant on social media,” Azoulay said.
The UN believes that the more countries that join the climate information declaration, the more it will be recognized that threats to information integrity are “one of the defining challenges of our time, weakening the foundations of public debate and undermining societies’ capacity to build collective solutions to the climate crisis.” The UN is also asking donors to contribute to a global fund and calling on them to support data integrity projects, with the fund being managed by UNESCO.
Scientific Consensus as Policy
A number of renowned professors have discussed scientific consensus and the suppression of dissenting opinions at our Freedom Research website. Dr. William Happer, Professor Emeritus at Princeton University, for example, described that the further one moves from actual research, the more alarmist and crazy everything becomes. “So if you read about climate in the newspapers or listen to some talk about climate on television, it will be very, very far from the truth. And it won’t be the same thing that the professors at the universities are normally talking about. But that said, you know, I think there’s been a lot of corruption because of all of the money available. There are huge funds if you do research that supports the idea that there is a climate emergency which requires lots of government intervention. And if you don’t do that, you’re less likely to be funded. You can’t pay your graduate students. So it’s a bad situation. It has been very corrupting for this branch of science.” Happer explained that science has really nothing to do with consensus, and once someone uses the word “consensus,” they are already talking about politics rather than science. “Science is determined by how well your understanding agrees with observations,” Happer clarified, and added: “And so that’s what the climate scientists are trying to claim, that science is made by consensus. But it is not made by consensus. There really is a science that is independent of people. There is a reality that couldn’t care less what the consensus is. It’s just the way the world works. And that’s real science.”
Dr. Matthew Wielicki, a geologist, expressed similar thoughts to us and described how the corrosion between money and power has led to a situation where climate scientists must tacitly acknowledge a climate crisis of catastrophic consequences, regardless of the actual data. If a scientist fails to do so, he is likely to be labelled a climate denier, he might lose his funding or job, etc. Such scientists are also no longer welcome to publish their work at recognized scientific journals, which is another major setback in terms of their scientific career. The funding of universities and research institutions as a whole may also be at risk if anyone in the institution tends to deny the basic positions adopted on climate issues. Wielicki calls this situation the politicisation of science, in which an artificial consensus is created on a specific topic and all the scientists are then required to acknowledge this consensus. Understandably, such tendencies will eventually yield science, which should always examine and re-examine different hypotheses and ideas and welcome debate and all pursuit of truth, unscientific and turn it into ideology, or an item of faith. Creating a consensus means procuring control over information, so as to rule out any narratives that do not coincide with the agendas of those that are in power. The reputation of scientists who disagree with the narrative, or with the accepted consensus, can thereafter be destroyed by declaring them ‘spreaders of false information’. “We saw that with Covid. That was a rapid politicisation of science. And we’re seeing it with climate change. Climate change has been a little bit more slow in moving into politicisation of science,” commented Wielicki, who has also been publicly smeared for his scientifically sound positions on climate.
Based on the work of theirs, and that of many other scientists, it is clear that there is no actual consensus on climate, even if such is proclaimed by the authorities. Nor is there any need to impose any irrevokable “truth” in the matter. What feels far more certain is that the UN’s definition of “accurate, evidence-based information on climate issue” will be quite the opposite of what it claims to be – and with its so-called climate information declaration, the UN has made another step in its fight against scientists who express diverging opinions. The document is once again likely to provide leverage, i.e. money, to those who will try to further suppress opinions that disagree with the so-called mainstream, and label them ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’.
Rational people with a sound case, rather than an emotional preference, do not generally feel the need to compel their opponents' silence through the courts. Governments, supranational bodies, and lobby groups, by contrast, like little better than controlling the public conversation through threat of criminal sanction. Do not trust any of them.
I'm surprised the UK is not first on the list of capitulating countries, wanting to silence the truth about the Great Climate Hoax.
Starmer is the worst Prime Minister in UK's long political history and is always at the front of the queue to bow down to his masters in Davos. He lied to the UK public with his immediately broken manifesto promises and has publicly declared that "I'd rather be in Davos"!
In my opinion, he's a New World Order, WEF-promoting, Traitor!
If someone tells (me and) the population to stop reading and listening to propaganda about the Great Climate Hoax, our immediate reaction is to believe it's all true, and they're just hoping to scare us into submission and capitulation! Well, they got that wrong - Big Time!
Unjabbed Mick (UK Patriot!)