I was speaking to a non-US non-climate beat reporter yesterday about undeniable issues of scientific integrity in climate science and he asked a question about the climate science community that got my attention [emphasis, links added]:
“And no one cares? Aren’t scientists supposed to care about such things?”
Lapses of scientific integrity in climate science have become normalized.
I no longer expect the community to care about obvious and egregious problems in climate science, even when documented in the peer-reviewed literature.
The community’s willful blindness has had a long time to develop muscle memory — more than 15 years ago I documented how the IPCC falsified a graph on disasters and climate change, inserted it into the IPCC assessment, and then lied about it when called out.
No one cared then either.
A few weeks Sveriges Radio (Swedish public radio) released an English-language version of its outstanding investigation into multiple exaggerations and falsehoods about climate change that have been promoted by the United Nations. Props to Swedish journalist Ola Sandstig and Sveriges Radio for conducting the investigation — they obviously care.
False claims and bad science are endemic to discussions of climate, but they should not come from the UN, which is the parent organization of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose job it is to call things straight on climate science.
The climate science community should care that the UN has been systematically misrepresenting climate science, because it could affect how the IPCC is viewed, fairly or unfairly.
The Swedish investigation documented four false claims promoted by the UN. Let’s take a look at each.
1. Samoan Sea Level Rise Misinformation
In what can only be described as propaganda, UN Secretary-General António Guterres visited Samoa last year and filmed a video in front of an abandoned house, which he claimed was abandoned due to sea level rise and increasing storms:
“Those who lived in these houses had to move their homes further inland because of sea level rise and the multiplication of storms. Sea level rise is accelerating. It is now the double of what it was in the 90s. If we are not able to stop what is happening with climate change, the problem that we see in Samoa will not stay in Samoa.”
Ola Sandstig, the Swedish journalist, tracked down those who had abandoned the house in 2009 and found that they had left the home following the 2009 earthquake and tsunami, and not sea level rise or storms.
Earthquakes and tsunamis have nothing to do with climate change.
There has been no increase in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones in the Western South Pacific (or, the entire planet, for that matter). In fact, in 2009 when the house was abandoned following the tsunami, the region was in a bit of a tropical cyclone lull.
Relative sea level rise has accelerated in Samoa. But that also has nothing to do with climate change, but rather increased subsidence following the 2009 earthquake.
The reasons for the accelerated relative sea level rise are well understood, such as documented by Han et al. 2019:
The islands entered a new era of exacerbated (3–6 times faster) relative sea level rise due to continuous land subsidence after the 2009 earthquakes.
UN Secretary-General Guterres’ Samoan photo op and press release can only be described as an intentional effort to mislead.
2. A UN Correction — 1.7 million children die each year from climate change
Thanks to the Swedish Radio investigation, Swedish UNICEF corrected a false claim that it had previously been promoting — that 1.7 million children die each year due to climate change.
1.7 million children under the age of five die each year from climate change. Swedish UNICEF has had this figure on their website since 2019-09-27. It was removed after the Swedish version of the program in the fall of 2024. The article now states: ‘In a previous version of the article, it was stated that 1.7 million children die from climate change. This is incorrect, the figure refers to environmental factors such as air pollution and dirty water.’
Mistakes happen what matters is what happens after they are identified. Swedish UNICEF shows how easy it is to correct false claims.
3. A mythical number — Women and children are 14x more than men to die due to a climate disaster
The 14x number has been around for decades and is found across UN organizations. Swedish Radio explains:
Women and children are 14 times more likely than men to die in a disaster / Women are 14 times more likely than men to die in a disaster. These figures appear on the following UN agencies/websites: UN main page, UN Women, UNDP, UNDRR, UNESCO, UN, FAO, IUCN.
The claim is false, and others have pointed this out as well. In 2014, Henrik Urdal of the Peace Research Institute Oslo asked of the false claim, “Is it Acceptable to Lie for a Good Cause?”.
He explained where the false number came from (ironically, the University of Colorado Boulder):
The claim that women and children are up to 14 times more likely than men to die in a disaster is a classic example of a ‘mythical number’. It took fewer than five minutes to find and cross-check the source. Save the Children was citing a report published by Plan International in 2013.
Both Save the Children and Plan refer to what at first glance seems to be to an article published in a research periodical, Natural Hazards Observer, in 1997. The article turns out, however, to be a two-page opinion piece authored by a pastor associated with Church World Service, a US ecumenical organization. Pastor Kristina Peterson does not provide any sources to back up her claim.
Swedish Radio tracked down Pastor Peterson in Lousiana, who expressed surprise that her undocumented claim from 1997 was making the rounds as scientific fact in 2024.
Ola Sandstig contacted the UN for comment and received no response.
4. Too good not to be true — The number of weather disasters has fivefolded since the 1970s.
“The number of weather, climate, and water-related disasters has increased by a factor of five over the past 50 years.” UN Secretary General António Guterres 2022
The claim that disasters have increased by a factor of five over the past half-century comes from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which misrepresented the EM-DAT dataset, something longtime THB readers will be familiar with.
The WMO report promoting the false claim was titled, ironically enough, United in Science.
The increase in disasters in the EM-Dat dataset from the 1970s results entirely from improved reporting of disasters from the 1970s to the 2000s. Since 2000 there has been no increase in reported disasters, as you’ll see below.
The Honest Broker is written by climate expert Roger Pielke Jr and is reader-supported. If you value what you have read here, please consider subscribing and supporting the work that goes into it.
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