A “World Declaration on Climate” is circulating on social networks, signed by more than 1,100 people. It was first shared on June 27 and has since been replicated multiple times. This text states that there is no scientific consensus that global warming exists through human action.
The circulating post is a summary of a text published in 2020 by the Climate Intelligence Foundation (Clintel), a Netherlands-based organization that describes itself as an “independent foundation” and founded by Guus Berkhout and Marcel Crock. He is a retired geophysicist who worked for the oil giant Shell and a journalist.
The two were accused of receiving money from fossil fuel companies to finance their work, but both deny the allegations and deny published reports in the Netherlands. According to this news, the money from fossil fuel companies would have financed the work of the geophysicist. However, in an email response to Agence France Presse on September 2, 2022, journalist Marcel Crok said that “Clintel never received a penny from the oil industry.”
Taking a closer look at the list of signatories of the 2020 text, we see that there are 1,348 signatures on the latest version, 5 of them from Portugal. Two chemical engineers, a retired agricultural researcher, a professor of Electronics and Informatics at the University of Algarve and a member of a project entitled Sea Level Project. Upon investigation of the document, we found that eight signatories are former employees or researchers linked to the oil giant Shell. About 100 of the signatories describe themselves as involved in climate research, but only about 10 claim to be climate researchers. There are also those who say that it is linked to paleoclimatology (the study of climatic variations throughout the history of the Earth).
This statement argues that there is no scientific consensus that humans are to blame for global warming because “Earth’s climate has varied since the planet existed, with naturally occurring warm and cold phases.”
Global Warming Is “Unequivocal Evidence”
Despite the fact that this “World Climate Declaration” claims a scientific basis to say that global warming does not exist, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) invited more than 700 experts from 90 countries to be authors and editors of the Sixth Report of Evaluation. , published between August 2021 and April 2022. It is the most comprehensive assessment to date of scientific knowledge on climate change and concludes that there is “unequivocal” evidence that the climate is warming as a result of action human.
In November 2019, the European Parliament also declared a “climate emergency”. In a resolution approved with 429 votes in favour, 225 against and 19 abstentions, MEPs assume the existence of a climate and environmental emergency. Therefore, they call on the European Commission, the Member States and all actors around the world to urgently take the necessary concrete measures to combat and contain this threat, “before it is too late”.
In another resolution on the United Nations Climate Change Conference, to be held in Madrid later that year, MEPs called on European leaders to express their support, at the European Council, for the European Union’s long-term goal to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions “as soon as possible and no later than 2050”.
In addition to the European Union, 18 other countries have already declared a “climate emergency.” In total, 2,268 jurisdictions from 39 countries also made this declaration. According to the “Climate Emergency Declaration” website, the population covered by this declaration is one billion people.
conclusion
The document circulating on the internet entitled “World Climate Declaration” has little scientific basis compared to more complete studies that have been published. Also, looking at who signed it, we can see that practically none of the signatories is a scientist or researcher in the area of climate. Some even have ties to the oil industry. Data evaluated by scientists around the world show that global warming by human action is “unequivocal.”
Thus, according to the Observer classification, this content is:
WRONG
In the Facebook rating system, this content is:
FAKE: The main content claims are factually inaccurate. This option typically matches “false” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checking websites.
NOTE: This content was curated by The Observer as part of a fact-checking partnership with Facebook.
Source: Observadora
