30 years after the first World Climate Conference (COP), the international community remains far from meeting its climate targets. Disinformation strategies bear part of the responsibility, often visible on social media. Climate change sceptics are attempting to sow doubt, including ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil. A collaborative investigation by European media outlets, including ORF, took a closer look at the claims circulating most frequently in the lead-up to the conference, examining tens of thousands of posts on X.

Fear of economic decline, hostility towards science, and the CoV pandemic all play a role. The broad acceptance of human-caused climate change as a scientific fact has declined in recent years, as surveys from Germany show. Marc Olefs, who heads climate impact research at GeoSphere Austria, observes a setback in Austria as well. "We're now back down a level, where the focus is once again on scientifically underpinning the very legitimacy of climate policy," he told ORF.

Dominik Hammer, as research director of the German think tank Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), also works on the spread of climate misinformation… Read everything about it at: orf.at