“Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the mind of the general public.” [1] That is the strategy a Brown & Williamson executive put in writing in 1969, in an internal memo later entered as evidence in US federal litigation against the tobacco industry. The oil industry copied it. Climate disinformation is a coordinated, funded campaign built to delay action. Four decades of arguments. One goal.
ExxonMobil’s internal research confirmed climate science while the company funded external denial groups. The American Petroleum Institute’s 1998 strategy memo explicitly targeted public Uncertainty [3]. These documents are now evidence in climate litigation cases across Europe and North America.
The tobacco playbook works through three core tactics:
- Manufacture doubt without disproving science.
- Attack scientists as ideologically motivated.
- Cherry-pick one dataset, one cold winter, one divergent study. All technically defensible. All structurally dishonest.
The manipulation worked:
- Fake Experts (Willie Soon received $1.2 million from fossil fuel companies between 2005 and 2015 without disclosing it, as revealed by documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center [2])
- Logical Fallacies (arguments that look like reasoning but don’t hold),
- Impossible Expectations (demanding 100% certainty never required for asbestos or lead paint regulation),
- Cherry-Picking,
- Conspiracy Theories requiring implausibly large coordination.
The FLICC framework reveals the strategies employed to deny the climate crisis.
Denial evolved into delay.
1990s: “It’s not happening.” Exxon funds sceptic scientists.
2000s: “It’s natural, not us.” Solar cycles, natural variation.
2010s: “Too expensive to fix.” Job losses,economic damage.
Today: “We’re already working on it.” Net zero pledges, carbon offsets, green hydrogen.
Same playbook, updated talking points.
Generative AI multiplies the reach of mis- and disinformation. In December 2025, Global Witness tested major chatbots on climate questions. Grok, now integrated into X and parts of US federal infrastructure, called COP30 attendees “globalist parasites” and described climate agreements as “genocide by policy.” Google Gemini produced misinformation in 78 out of 100 test cases [4]. A Nature study found that chatbot conversations shifted electoral preferences by up to 15 percentage points.[5]
Case Studies
Valencia floods, October 2024. The DANA (Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos, a cut-off low pressure system) killed 237 people. False information about the disaster was viewed 21 million times in 30 days on YouTube and TikTok alone. The hoaxes: government destroyed dams deliberately, Morocco weaponized weather via HAARP (the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, a US atmospheric research facility), meteorologists failed to warn (false, red alerts were issued days before), fake footage from other countries. Political function: deflect from the actual failure (regional president at lunch when the catastrophe escalated) and redirect anger toward central government, environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and the EU Green Deal. Climate policy was blamed for a climate disaster.
The pattern repeated after Australian bushfires, European heatwaves, Canadian wildfires, Libyan floods. Every climate disaster now triggers coordinated disinformation designed to protect fossil fuel interests and delay action.
Counteracting Disinformation
The SIFT method counters manipulation:
- Stop before sharing.
- Investigate the source.
- Find better coverage.
- Trace claims to origin. The funding trails are public. The legal cases are ongoing.
What remains is whether to treat disinformation as a governance problem requiring structural solutions or keep pretending better facts will be enough.
Check out this detailed presentation created by the author for further information below:
Loading Viewer...
