Essay by Eric Worrall
“False claims obstructing climate action” – like claiming the Spanish blackout was caused by renewables
Climate misinformation turning crisis into catastrophe, report says
False claims obstructing climate action, say researchers, amid calls for climate lies to be criminalised
Damian Carrington Environment editorThu 19 Jun 2025 21.00 AEST
Rampant climate misinformation is turning the crisis into a catastrophe, according to the authors of a new report.
…
The researchers found climate denialism has evolved into campaigns focused on discrediting solutions, such as the false claims that renewable energy caused the recent massive blackout in Spain.
…
Climate misinformation – the term used by the report for both deliberate and inadvertent falsehoods – is of increasing concern. Last Thursday, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change, Elisa Morgera, called for misinformation and greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry to be criminalised. On Saturday, Brazil, host of the upcoming Cop30 climate summit, will rally nations behind a separate UN initiative to crack down on climate misinformation.
…She said states should “criminalise misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the fossil fuel industry” and “criminalise media and advertising firms for amplifying disinformation and misinformation by fossil fuel companies”. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, called in June 2024 for a ban on advertising by fossil fuel companies, calling the firms the “godfathers of climate chaos”.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/19/climate-misinformation-turning-crisis-into-catastrophe-ipie-report
More on the Spanish blackout explicitly mentioned in the article;
The Guardian confusingly conflates two separate events, a new report by our old friend John Cook, and a UN report presented by Elisa Morgera.
On this occasion, UN rapporteur Elisa Morgera actually produced a more extreme report than John Cook. The UN report includes a demand to immediately cancel all fossil fuel exploration. From Morgera’s UN report;
The imperative of defossilizing our economies
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change, Elisa Morgera*
…
58. States should adopt and enforce explicit and time-bound legislative measures:
(a) expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure;
To prohibit new fossil fuel exploration and exploitation, as well as any
(b) To revoke licences for existing fossil fuel exploration and exploitation,163 including for captive and on-grid coal plants;164
(c) To strictly regulate the import and export of fossil fuels;
(d) To prohibit the abandonment of fossil fuel infrastructure without remediation, requiring financial guarantees to cover costs for the environmental management of facility closure and subsequent phases, including regarding extraterritorial impacts;
(e) To clarify how energy services will be maintained and improved through other sources, prioritizing the energy needs of rights holders in vulnerable situations domestically and abroad.
…
73. States should:
(a) Inform the public about the fossil fuel industry’s deliberate contributions to the planetary crises and about their human rights impacts over decades;
(b) Ensure that accurate, science-based information is made available to the public on defossilization plans, including the underlying economic and technological assumptions, fossil fuel subsidies inventories, emissions embedded in fossil fuel exports, and plans for the decommissioning of infrastructure;
(c) Avoid loopholes in responsible decommissioning,190 and require independent verification of defossilization and decommissioning plans, and of their implementation;
(d) cross-border advertising;
Ban fossil fuel advertisements, promotion and sponsorship, including
(e) Ensure access to comprehensive education on the human rights risks of fossil fuels, and on the benefits of fossil fuel-free production, consumption and lifestyles; 191
(f) Prohibit lobbying by the fossil fuel industry;
(g) Require private financial institutions and universities to disclose publicly, including on social media, funding amounts, durations and any conditions from the fossil fuel industry;
(h) Criminalize misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the fossil fuel industry, including failure to disclose corporate lobbying activities or to provide remedies for harm;
(i) Criminalize media and advertising firms for amplifying disinformation and misinformation by fossil fuel companies;
(j) Criminalize attacks against environmental human rights defenders, including from judicial harassment tactics,192 in addition to enhancing environmental human rights defenders’ protection and access to justice and effective remedies.193
…
Read more: https://docs.un.org/en/A/HRC/59/42
Morgera’s report is available here. Cook’s report, Recommendations for Improving Information Integrity about Climate Issues, is available here.
Cook’s report also calls for more censorship, of course, but you have to wade through over 100 pages of what looks like AI generated gibberish to get to the censorship call;
Legislation and regulation. Legislation represents collectively agreed rules of social and human coexistence, including principles and procedures governing the exchange of information and the expression of opinion. While digital platforms and other media of communication, to an extent, regulate themselves internally and in dialogue with their users, the record regarding information integrity about climate science, as documented in this report, indicates the need for enhanced governance in the public interest.
Read more: John Cook’s report
Despite the absurdity of UN demands for a total stoppage of fossil fuel exploitation, and John Cook’s ongoing global conspiracy claims, the climate censorship movement is a very real threat to our freedom. The censorship movement is much bigger than a bunch of disgruntled academics and big oil conspiracy theorists, and may even threaten free speech in the USA.
In 2024 Elon Musk accused the European Union of offering a secret deal to X, where X would be immune from prosecution for violating Europe’s Digital Services Act, in return for allowing European officials to secretly censor the entire X platform – including content US citizens produce and read. Musk claimed other major social media platforms accepted the secret deal.
If Musk’s claim is true, the only reason the majority of US social media content is not being routinely illegally censored remotely by Europe is Musk had the guts to stand up to the EU, and because President Trump and Vice President Vance backed Musk with threats to withdraw the USA from NATO if Europe persisted with trying to censor free speech.
I applaud people like Musk, Trump and Vance for standing against the forces of global censorship and tyranny, I just wish more global leaders were standing next to them.
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One can imagine these censor nut jobs being deprived of their high life styles and daily FF usage, how they would scream in agony without their cars, phones, heat/AC, jet travel, plastics, etc. WHAT HYPOCRITES! They use FF every minute of every day.
Maybe the ice free arctic and boiling oceans (not) should earn Al Gore a trip to Guantanamo.
I think you misunderstand, these are the elites who will be allowed to enjoy the luxuries and conveniences of modern life, purely in the interests of “protecting the climate”, it’s the rest of us who’ll have to go back to the middle ages.
They really want to be able to censor us.
Climate is just a convenient fiction.
They want to control our lives. They think they know better than anyone else.
The reason for the effort to censor free speech is they sense they are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the public. And they are correct, they are losing the battle. That’s because all their dire predictions never come true. They have “cried Wolf” too many times, when there is no Wolf and people are starting to figure this out.
If you control the language, you control the argument
If you control the argument, you control information
If you control information, you control history
If you control history, you control the past
If you control the past you control the future.
– Big Brother 1984
the effort to censor free speech
Did you happen to catch Obama’s comments about this a couple days ago? “We don’t want a diversity of facts” – and how are those facts determined? Government regulations apparently.
Truth has become lies and lies have become truth. And the clowns at The Guardian are psychologically incapable of seeing it. A kind of climatose hysterical blindness.
Truth is misinformation, so misinformation is the truth! Does that make sense?
If a double negative is positive, is a double positive a negative? I’ve had a hard day.
All in a day’s rapportage for the official rapporteur.
If the standard is spreading false climate information, they will be very surprised at who lands in jail.
That was my initial thought too. But that is not what she wanted to do; she wants to go after information that hinders climate action.
Yes, it is the Climate Alarmists who are spreading climate disinformation. They are the ones who should be punished, for lying about the climate situation. Elisa Morgera should be the one going to jail for lying to the world about the Earth’s climate. She is a climate change propagandist. She is losing this battle because there is no evidence that CO2 is anything other than a benign gas, essential for life on Earth.
I am keeping track of all the commenters here who will be indicted, prosecuted and convicted merely for what they write here. The powers that be are watching.
I tend to agree–that the willful spreading of climate lies and other misinformation should be criminalized. Charges need to be brought against the UN climate bunch and certain western governmental agencies.
If you include Made-Up and Manipulated Data as Climate Lies/Misinformation then Mann, Briffa, et.al. could/should be included.
Not possible. Keith Briffa died in 2017.
So find him guilty in perpetuity
Actually, Biffa’s tree ring data after 1900 is quite revealing…
Big peak through the 1930s,40s
… a much cooler period to a minimum in 1979
And around 1990 cooler than basically any period from 1900-1960.
Very similar to most raw NH temperature data. 🙂
Briffa had it right. His tree ring temperature profile is quite close to the U.S. regional chart profile. The Climate Alarmists bastardized his contribution, too, by only using part of his data.
Better still get those still surviving to do the time Briffa is unable to do. Double time for Mann and Jones. 🙂
Yes, Imo, Mann and Jones deliberately lied about the Earth’s climate in order to promote the idea that CO2 is the temperature control knob of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Don’t leave out Phil Jones, the original bastardizer of the global temperature record, who changed a benign historic climate temperature profile into a scary, “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile in his effort to promote CO2 as the cause of the Earth’s warming.
None of the original temperature data Phil Jones had available to him at the time of his creation of the bastardized instrument-era Hockey Stick global chart had a “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile. Instead, the original temperature data had a benign temperature profile where it was just as warm in the recent past as it is today, which debunks the claim that increasing CO2 causes any noticeable changes in the Earth’s temperatures since it was just as warm in the past with less CO2 in the air as it is today with more CO2 in the air. CO2 amounts have made no difference in the Earth’s temperatures.
Phil Jones wanted to kill this concept, so he created in his computer a completely different temperature profile than what the original data shows in order to promote the concept that CO2 is a danger to humans.
I would say Phil Jones is the mastermind of the BIG LIE that CO2 is the cause of warming on the Earth.
Phil Jones deliberately lied about the Earth’s climate. That’s the only conclusion one can reach considering that none of the original temperature data from around the world has a “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile, yet Phil Jones fired up his computer and came up with a completely different temperature profile that supports a CO2 Crisis.
So to the Climate Alarmist promoters of Climate Disaster here is the question you need to answer:
How do you get a “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile out of original data that has no “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile?
Answer: It is not possible to honestly get a “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile out of data that has no “hotter and hotter and hotter” profile. This should be the reply of honest Climate Alarmists (if there are any).
Phil Jones made up the global temperature out of his fevered, ideological imagination. He has done TREMENDOUS damage to the Earth and its people because of his dastardly lies about the Earth’s climate.
Climate Alarmists are invited to described how you get a Hockey Stick temperature profile out of data that has no Hockey Stick profile. I don’t expect I will get any replies from the Climate Alarmists because they know they are pushing lies when they promote the bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick chart as representing reality. They want it to be real, so they make it real in their minds. But it is not real in the Real World. They are living a lie, some wittingly, and some unwittingly.
No, it is not legitimately possible to get a Hockey Stick chart “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile out of original data that does not have such a profile. Prove me wrong. Prove Phil Jones right.
Don’t expect any answers from Climate Alarmists. They know they don’t have any good answers because they know I’m correct. Logic would tell you I’m correct. Why can’t our resident Climate Alarmists do logic? Or maybe they can and just don’t want to do it on this subject.
There is now a TRILLION-dollar whole industry built on this Phil Jones Climate Change BIG LIE.
“No, it is not legitimately possible to get a Hockey Stick chart “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile out of original data that does not have such a profile. Prove me wrong. Prove Phil Jones right.”
The only way to get there is to grossly overweight any proxies which go the “right way”. That’s what just about all of these charlatans have done.
And so many academics and journalists.
Remember, ALL “climate action” taken for 40 years by ALL governments worldwide has resulted in ZERO reduction of atmospheric CO2.
Those are the facts, not misinformation.
Somebody needs to tell the UN that it is all over. They have lost the Climate Crisis game.
What Morgera is proposing is what should actually be done to the True Believer Climatistas and the renewables industry. I object to the tactics of 1930’s Italian or Soviets, which she evidently does not.
Poor sad Milliband in the UK says he is after ‘clean energy’ with his impossible programme. A lie of course. What has been’cleaned’? Why, some/most of efflux from gas power stations. That’s all. Are they ‘dirty’ today? Sue them.
She is a lawyer by training. Quite how that equips her to opine on climate science I cannot guess. But since she has the job of doing that she is going to propose legal actions.
The “legalness” of her proposals tell us nothing about the need for them. On the need she is (wisely) silent. No one should try fill in the gaps for her.
If she were really a lawyer she would know that her proposals are blatantly unconstituional.
Depends on the country.
Thankfully, here in the UK, we should be OK.
/sarc
Yep, they’re too busy arresting people for singing Kung-fu Fighting while under the influence of being white.
Were they arrested fast as lightning?
The Ministry of Climate Truth has spoken. Ignore at your own peril.
Criminalizing Climate Change Misinformation would make the UN one of the largest CC Misinformation Criminal Organizations in the entire Globe…if not THE Largest!
The IPCC, etc., has dubbed CO2 as having magical global warming power, based on its own “science”
The IPCC, etc., claims, CO2 acts as Climate Control Knob, that eventually will cause runaway Climate Change, if we continue using fossil fuels.
The IPCC, etc., denies the Little Ice Age, uses fraudulent computer temperature projections.
.
Governments proclaimed: Go Wind and Solar, Go ENERGIEWENDE, go Net zero by 2050, etc., and provided oodles of subsidies, and rules and regulations, and mandates, and prohibitions to make it happen.
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Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to 1) increase command/control by governments, and 2) enable the moneyed elites to become more powerful and richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people, already for at least 40 years.
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CO2, just 0.042% in the atmosphere, is a weak absorber of a small fraction of the available low-energy IR photons.
CO2 has near-zero influence on world surface temperatures, less than a 0.5 C increase, due to CO2, from 1900 to 2025..
Greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere is an absolutely essential ingredient for: 1) increased green flora, which increases fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to better feed 8 billion people.
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PHYSICS DEMONSTRATES INCREASING GREENHOUSE GASES CANNOT CAUSE DANGEROUS WARMING, EXTREME WEATHER OR ANY HARM
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/physics-demonstrates-increasing-greenhouse-gases-cannot-cause
By Richard Lindzen and William Happer, both well-known radiation physicists.
Read their entire report here as a pdf:
Lindzen Happer GHGs and Fossil Fuels Climate Physics 2025 06 07
The article illustrates how to avoid blaming wind and solar for a blackout.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/spain-s-historic-blackout-blamed-on-poor-voltage-control
This article by John Kemp is very wordy and dances around the problem for political reasons, because no blame shall ever fall on too much wind and solar systems.
Having lots of unreliable wind/solar systems on the grid around noon-time is an absolute no-no for unprotected, poorly managed grids, in Spain/Portugal, California, Germany, etc.
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Over-voltage occurs when uncontrolled production from wind and solar pumps up the grid at noon-time, but there was not sufficient demand, which would have reduced the over-voltage, plus the traditional power plants did not decrease their outputs fast enough to offset the wind/solar output increase.
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Over-voltage switches caused a number of wind/solar systems to go offline. The output drop had to be IMMEDIATELY offset by an increase in output from already-running, traditional power plants, which did not happen.
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Soon, demand exceeded production, which caused a drop in frequency and voltage.
Grid frequency dropped to well below 50 Hz, which caused more wind/solar and other power systems to go offline, due to low frequency.
As a result, the grid cascaded to blackout mode.
.
The main problem is, the Spain/Portugal grid did not have sufficient capacity, MW, of traditional power plants in synchronous, standard operating procedure, SOP, mode, to INSTANTLY feed sufficient power to the grid or draw power from the grid, as needed.
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Spain/Portugal would have needed about 10,000 MW of CCGT plants in SOP mode to avoid its recent blackout.
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As a fleet, they would operate at up to 75% output throughout the year, and INSTANTLY provide to the grid, or draw from the grid, up to 2500 MW, in case of a sudden W/S output change. See URLs
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-physics-behind-the-spanish-blackout
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/analysis-of-spain-s-april-2025-blackout-causes-low-inertia-grid
The official government report makes it quite clear all the solar plants were operating on fixed power factor ie they were NOT providing grid support to prevent overvoltage. As the government was really pro unreliables, I suspect the European System Operators report will be quite scathing of this setup.
Wind and solar systems draw positive reactive power from the grid.
They only provide energy.
They do not provide synchronized rotational inertia, SRI, to the grid.
Traditional power plants are automatically set up to provide positive reactive power and SRI to the grid.
See referenced URLs.
We’re going to need a lot of private prisons to house all of the climate crusades water carriers.
El Salvador has volunteered its penal resorts for the worst offenders
The quotes show a strong rejection of free speech supported by a strong belief in impartial tyranny. I wonder whether she believes it’s true or whether saying those things is just part of her job? I usually assume people are being honest. She looks too old to be so unwise.
They have no argument. The end.
What is “climate action”? Why does she keep using FF every day? Because she believes the skeptics? What a maroon!
If someone says we’re all going to die in 3 years, if we don’t fix climate change. Should that be criminalized? Or is that different?
Thats why I don’t like comments saying Morgera (the lady quoted) should suffer the same punishments she prescribes. What happens when…
Someday, even if it seems silly today, someday the opposite worldview will be in charge.
They bought the MSM which eventually lost all credibility due to their spreading of misinformation. It started with Obama and took a decade and a half for the MSM to eat itself. Now they’re trying to control the internet by censoring it because they can’t buy every podcast and news aggregator, and when they do succeed in buying one it quickly fails and more pop up. The Marxists are on the run and this is a last gasp for control.
Did it start with Obama?
I remember Dan Rather on 60 minutes.
Others remember much earlier stories.
Reading old literature, which is often not fun, shows “ever has it been”.
Others remember much earlier stories.
Rigging a truck to explode in the early 90’s comes to mind.
So long as the start with Manns Tree Ring Circus, Hockey Shtik & Hide the Decline … I’m all for busting junk scientists!
The UN is now totally irrelevant. The lights will still go out if we pursue this path regardless of how many engineers, geologists and ordinary people they manage to lock up if they get this policy up.
The US should stop funding the dysfunctional UN
What would they do with their poly sci degree?
They will have to prosecute themselves. Everything that has been said since the formation of the The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been a lie. The UNFCCC entered into force on 21 March 1994. Along with all 198 countries that ratified the Convention. Literally nothing that has been claimed is true. The ultimate aim of “Preventing “dangerous” human interference with the climate system” has been a plot to control the universe..
Are there enough jails for all the UN climate profiteers ??
The UN is one of the MAJOR source of climate malinformation. !
Please, immediately cut of all fossil fuel electricity, supply deliveries etc to the UN building. !
“UN special rapporteur”…..
Shouldn’t that be “racketeer” ⁈
No. “SPECIAL racketeer”.
Crapporteur would seem appropriate.
That is a bad lady.
ICE will soon pick her up for inciting unrest in the US
Lazy Saturday morning down here…. so……
58. States should adopt and enforce explicit and time-bound legislative measures:
(a) expansion of unreliable wind and solar infrastructure;
To prohibit new wind turbine and solar industrial estates installation,
(b) To revoke licences for existing wind and solar, until they can supply reliable dispatchable electricity
(c) To strictly regulate the import and export of wind turbines and solar panels manufactured by slave labour using fossil fuels.;
(d) To prohibit the abandonment of wind and solar infrastructure without remediation, requiring financial guarantees to cover costs for the environmental management of facility closure and subsequent phases, including regarding removal and disposal of all components in a non-polluting way.
(e) To clarify how energy services will be maintained and improved through dispatchable sources, thus prioritizing the energy needs of rights holders in vulnerable situations domestically and abroad.
…
73. States should:
(a) Inform the public about the fossil fuel industry’s contributions to the planetary wellbeing and about their incredible benefit to human rights over decades;
(b) Ensure that accurate, science-based information is made available to the public on climate agendas, including the underlying economic and technological assumptions and the massive cost of the Net-Zero decarbonisation agenda and its effect of destroying civilisations… wind and solar subsidies inventories, slavery and massive pollution in the production of wind and solar infrastructure, and plans for the decommissioning of infrastructure;
(c) Avoid loopholes in responsible decommissioning of wind and solar, such as landfill, leached toxins, mass concrete structures left in the ground and require independent verification of decommissioning plans, and of their implementation;
(d) cross-border advertising;
Ban wind and solar advertisements, promotion and sponsorship, including
(e) Ensure access to comprehensive education on the huge human rights benefits of fossil fuels, and on the benefits of fossil fuel production, consumption and lifestyles;
(f) Prohibit lobbying by the renewables industry;
(g) Require private financial institutions and universities to disclose publicly, including on social media, funding amounts, durations and any conditions from the renewables industry;
(h) Criminalize misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the renewables industry, including failure to disclose corporate lobbying activities or to provide remedies for harm;
(i) Criminalize media and advertising firms for amplifying disinformation and misinformation by the “climate agenda” and renewables companies;
(j) Criminalize attacks against environmental human rights defenders, including from judicial and lawfare harassment tactics (such as that by the UN racketeer Elisa Morgana, and John Cook), in addition to enhancing environmental human rights defenders’ protection and access to justice and effective remedies against the harm and societal degradation cause by the Net-Zero climate agenda.
“To strictly regulate the import and export of wind turbines and solar panels manufactured by slave labour using fossil fuels.”
To be consistent, the turbines and panels are neither good nor evil. They did not choose how they would be manufactured.
Turbines don’t kill birds- people with turbines in their grid kill birds.