Pardon me, your intent is showing
How a National Academy of Science event created an organization that legitimizes severe constraint on open debate about climate and energy
The meaning of anything is found in its context.
A recent paper “Intent in climate delay discourses” in Global Sustainability by William Lamb and Maisa Mattila (hereafter as LM2025) claims to differentiate between discussions with the intent to “obstruct” climate policy and those representing “legitimate concerns of citizens.”
LM2025 explain that the paper is a “companion to ‘discourses of climate delay,’” an article they wrote with a larger author team in 2020 (hereafter as L2020).
On its surface, the paper is just the latest addition to the work of what LM2025 refer to as “climate obstruction scholars.” A phrase I will stick with for purposes here.
The work of climate obstruction scholars includes an ever expanding conception of what it means to be ‘a denier’ in an effort to shut down, if not also, criminalize the speech of those in which climate obstruction scholars disagree.
Today, a large number of climate obstructionist scholars are organized under the Climate Social Science Network (CSSN), the grant making arm of the Climate Development Lab at Brown University and founded in late 2020
However, there appears to me a broader game at play.
LM2025 engages a literature review beginning with L2020 and Coan et al. 2021 (hereafter as C2021). L2020 includes the lead of the CSSN. C2021 includes the lead of Skeptical Science.1
It turns out these two papers (to which I suspect LM2025 will be added) have practical meaning for internationally focused advocacy efforts and governing of “information integrity” at the United Nation’s level.
This all goes back to a couple of workshops that took place in 2021 and 2023 called the Nobel Prize Summits organized by the National Academy of Science, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), National Academy of Science (NAS), and the Stockholm Resilience Center/ Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics.
The first Nobel Prize Summit took place in April 2021 and participants discussed development of an International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE), modeled after the IPCC,
to analyze the global information environment and provide governments with science-based recommendations for a healthy global information environment.
IPIE announced itself at the second Nobel prize Summit in 2023.
Co-Directors, Sheldon Himelfarb and Phil Howard, explain their vision that the IPIE will serve as a “trusted science advisor” to help coordinate the research to develop evidence based techniques to insure the information environment that serves society.
The concern by IPIE leaders was the impact of misinformation and propaganda on public trust in science and government institutions. The announcement featured a video linking extreme weather, conflict, and civil unrest to online misinformation (below).
The IPIE scientific committee includes Stephan Lewandowsky, a long time collaborator of John Cook, head of Skeptical Science. Over the years, they developed an argument that ‘climate denial’ is indicative of conspiratorial thinking. The IPIE Science Panel on Information Integrity about Climate Science includes Cook plus three additional members of the CSSN.
And so, not surprisingly, when the IPIE released its climate change focused report, “Information Integrity about Climate Science,” in 2025, there was a focus on the work of climate obstruction scholars and a touch on conspiracies.
Thus, under the guise of the National Academy of Science and the Nobel Foundation, IPIE legitimizes the obstructionist narrative as a means of reducing conflict and social unrest.
There is a larger framework at play, though.
I previously explained that IPIE and the NGO coalition, Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD), advises the UN level Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change, which in turn, is used by the UN Department of Global Communications (GIIIC) as demonstrating excellence in its pursuit of information integrity.
CAAD was established as an NGO coalition in the summer of 2021. The coalition was founded in part by a former program director at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD).
From its first Deny, Deceive, Delay report CAAD featured the work of the climate obstructionist scholars.
CAAD via the ISD partnership with CASM Technology leaned heavily on two key works to monitor online media, launch advocacy campaigns, and target select individuals: L2020 and C2021.
At least in 2021, reached the inner workings of UK government:
ISD and CASM used Beam to power a Climate Disinformation Dashboard over the course of the COP-26 Summit in Glasgow in 2021. This involved a systematised, live assessment of coordinated disinformation and malign influence activities targeting climate action. The team also developed strategies to expose, disrupt and mitigate malign coordinated influence campaigns around climate.
In 2021, the team worked with the Counter-Disinformation Unit at [Department for Digital, Culture, Media, & Sport] to integrate its monitoring with cross-Whitehall efforts. Twelve climate action NGOs – known collectively as the Climate Action Against Disinformation Alliance - were on-boarded onto the data system. This first-hand and real-time engagement allowed the teams to produce over 100 pieces of media and journalistic coverage (NPR, Guardian, BBC, New York Times) and reactive factchecks from the COP26 Presidency. [emphasis mine]
It seems to me that extreme climate advocacy is increasingly targeted towards lower resourced communities around the world frequently in regions prone to political instability.
The confluence is climate, conflict, deception. I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, but I think it is worth noting. For instance, discussion of climate and conflict appears set to receive mention in the upcoming IPCC special report on cities. World Weather Attribution connects these ideas through disasters (as shown below).
In addition, CAAD in collaboration with the organization Roots connects the work of climate obstruction scholars with oppressive colonial structures in Africa and aims to discredit any disagreement with National Academy of Science (below).
I note further, Himelfarb’s expertise is not in science advisory mechanisms; it is in bringing messages to fragile regions.
I have no reason to doubt the merits of the work by Peacetech or Himelfarb’s intentions with IPIE. But like most things in climate politics, nothing is quite as it seems and can never be understood outside of its context.
LM2025’s reference to Skeptical Science as an effort meriting replication warrants considerable pause. The blog, Skeptical Science, led by Australian psychologist John Cook, originated at the height of the climate blogosphere in the early 2000’s. Skeptical Science made a name for itself in the naming and shaming campaigns of so-called climate “skeptics” or “deniers” popular at that time. Skeptical Science succeeded in making at least one notable climate scientist “unhirable.” The Skeptical Science team was also found to be creating altered images to depict their teammates as Nazi leaders for internal use.
The gatekeeper aspect instituted at the NRC with respect to who can assess climate science has been there for years. Here is one of a number of experiences I documented
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/protecting-the-ipcc-turf-%e2%80%93-there-are-no-independent-climate-assessments-of-the-ipcc-wg1-report-funded-and-sanctioned-by-the-nsf-nasa-or-the-nrc-a-repost-of-and-comment-on-a-january-13-2009/
https://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/protecting-the-ipcc-turf/
This leads me to wonder if these organizations have ties to the various international censorship organizations that Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi have been identifying.