On the climate, the most effective lie has stopped coming with the crude sign of “all false”. Today the material is more slippery. Accept global warming, perhaps even with an air of reason, then move the conversation elsewhere. Climate disinformation has entered its adult phase: he speaks less as a denier and much more as a prudent administrator, as a worried commentator, as a neighbor who has “just a few doubts”. It’s a shame that those doubts, when put together, produce the same old result: postponement.
A scientific analysis published in PLOS Climate describes precisely this shift: climate disinformation as a central obstacle to 21st century climate action, now shifted from frontal rejection of the crisis towards more sophisticated tactics of delay, deviation and false caution. This change of pace includes generative artificial intelligence, the money that keeps certain lies alive, social platforms, polarization and a very concrete question: how does a society protect itself when falsehood stops appearing false and begins to disguise itself as reasonableness?
The old lie has changed clothes
For years the script produced a false equality. It worked, for goodness sake, especially when it was enough to sow doubt, quote the isolated scientist, inflate uncertainty, put two voices on television as if physical reality needed televoting. The ground, however, has shifted. Human activities, especially through greenhouse gas emissions, have unequivocally caused global warming; Between 2011 and 2020, global average surface temperatures reached approximately 1.1°C above 1850-1900 levels. Each additional increase in warming intensifies multiple, simultaneous risks, while delaying mitigation and adaptation locks out high-emitting infrastructure, increases costs, and reduces the feasibility of responses.
So climate disinformation has learned to use another route. He says: the problem exists, of course. Then he adds that acting costs too much, that the transition is imposed from above, that renewables are a bubble, that gas is a bridge to be crossed very calmly, that “clean coal” can save our consciences. It focuses on the families who pay the bills, on the urban elites who demand sacrifices from others from the living room with the heating on. Or move everything to other countries, as if the climate crisis were a geopolitical buck-passing game: China and India move first, then we’ll see. It is a more difficult form to dismantle because it uses pieces of truth, legitimate fears, real bills, real territories, real jobs. He takes them, tilts them, uses them to defend the status quo.
Here climate communication often stumbles. Talking about global average degrees, probabilistic scenarios, emissions curves and carbon budgets requires patience. Propaganda, on the other hand, works with more immediate images: the factory closing, the truck driver affected by European rules, the farmer crushed by bans, the terror over the next bills. If climate policy comes only as a sacrifice, bureaucracy and cost, the hostile narrative finds its way. For this reason the analysis insists on a concrete step: translating the abstraction of global temperature into local impacts, health, breathable air, work, energy security, nearby benefits, without slipping into sterile catastrophism.
AI makes lying faster
The new, and most uncomfortable, part concerns artificial intelligence. Large generative models can produce texts, graphs, images, videos, mock interviews, non-existent expert testimony, synthetic documentaries, manipulated visualizations, and even materials that mimic the form of scientific communication. The old hoax often had visible seams.
The new one can arrive well dressed, with a bibliography, measured tone, clean graphics, technical vocabulary and the air of a serious document. It can bring with it invented temperatures, manipulated satellite images, pseudo-scientific articles constructed to resemble the real thing, economic data fabricated to suggest that every green investment is a scam or a new form of extraction. At that point climate misinformation stops just selling opinions. Sells counterfeit evidence.
The risk indicated by the analysis is clear: in the short term, an increasing part of climate disinformation could be generated by AI, personalized for different audiences and adapted in real time to denials. A falsehood corrected today may reappear tomorrow in another form, another title, another graphic, a new nuance different enough to escape traditional debunking. The denial works with the times of verification, but the machine works with the times of infinite production.
The climate becomes a political weapon
Climate misinformation also travels beyond national borders. In Brazil it can be linked to sovereignty over the Amazon. In India it can present climate policies as a Western brake on development. In Europe and North America it tends to bang on the costs of the transition, on the fear of economic decline, on the idea that the Green Deal is a matter for the well-educated and wealthy cities. The content changes language, accent, target. The function remains recognizable: transforming climate action into an identity threat.
Added to this is the game of international echo chambers. Fake news originates in one place, is picked up, shared, commented on, legitimized by transnational online networks, then re-enters the public debate with a patina of external confirmation. Some state media, for example, amplify skeptical Western voices which are then used elsewhere as evidence of international validation. It’s a recycling of credibility: the thesis starts out fragile, goes through enough mirrors, comes back dressed as consensus.
The next round will be worse. Hostile narratives will increasingly use the language of economic crisis, financial risk, national security. They will say that disinvesting from fossil fuels destroys wealth, that renewables are speculative, that the transition steals resources from working-class and rural communities, that the climate serves the elites to control territories. Some of these fears arise from real problems: a poorly managed transition really affects those who have less margin. Misinformation enters there, in the crack between promised justice and daily toil, and widens it.
Then there is the harder geopolitical side. The climate crisis can exacerbate conflicts over water, arable land, migration, energy resources, technologies and food supply chains. In that context, disinformation campaigns can serve to deflect responsibility, justify militarization, make resource hoarding acceptable, sabotage international agreements and climate finance negotiations. The lie acts as a cover. Meanwhile, governments and economic interests are keeping their hands where it is convenient.
Fact-checking comes late
The classic response, that is, correcting the single falsehood, remains useful. But it often arrives when the emotional damage has already entered the system. Climate misinformation thrives when the action appears distant, punitive, incomprehensible. The attention-based economic model tends to favor what retains the user, even when that content depletes the quality of public discourse. For this reason, the fight against lies also requires policies that are better implemented, more equitable, less top-down, capable of withstanding the test of the territories. Where the transition leaves people behind, propaganda finds fuel. Where the transition shows visible benefits, propaganda has to work harder.
We need to learn to read better: sources, data, graphs, images, titles. We also need more credible voices in places where the green slogan stops at the door. A doctor, a teacher, a local administrator, a technician who knows the area can talk about health, air, bills, work, houses, water. The transition holds up when it gets in there.
The harshest fact remains: every delay adds heating, increases adaptation costs, makes it more difficult to stay within manageable thresholds. The battle against climate misinformation concerns the quality of public debate, of course. It also concerns roads, houses, fields, hospitals, bills, borders, water. The lie about the climate has long since ceased to be an armchair discussion. It’s a piece of the machinery that decides how much we will pay the bill, and who will be sent to the checkout first.
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