Climate misinformation campaigns run by fossil fuel firms and right-wing populist groups have become more sophisticated and capable of influencing policy-making through “backdoor channels”, according to the authors of a major new report.

Based on a review of over 300 scientific papers, the study from the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) found that the dissemination of false and misleading information has shifted from denying the existence of climate change to sowing doubt over its causes and solutions.

“Strategic scepticism has been taking over from basic climate denialism,” said Professor Klaus Bruhn Jensen, chair of the IPIE’s scientific panel on information integrity about climate science.

“Much of the information is more muddied. It’s not a clear denial of climate change but it’s in a sense more sophisticated,” he added. “It’s suggesting to people, ‘Well, is this really the fault of particular emitters? Will the solutions being proposed both by scholars and policy-makers really work?’.”

The aim is to erode trust, delay responses to climate change and obstruct political and economic interventions, such as the transition away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy, the report said.

To that end, misinformation is increasingly targeting political leaders, civil servants and other public officials who hold the power to turn climate science into real-world action.

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While the general public is more likely to come across distorted information on traditional news outlets or social media, policy-makers are primarily targeted through channels that go “under the radar”, the report’s authors said.

Those include corporate sustainability reports painting a misleading picture of polluting industries, greenwashing public-relations (PR) campaigns, partisan policy briefs drafted by lobby groups or think-tanks and personal relationships between business and political leaders.

“It’s kind of a backdoor channel to gaining influence in both policy circles and through public debate,” said Jensen.

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As an example, the report cited a study based on 725 corporate sustainability reports that found substantial divergence between what companies say and what they do, including exaggerated claims about their positive impact on the environment.

It also highlighted the use of legal filings by fossil-fuel and other polluting companies involved in court cases addressing climate issues to spread narratives downplaying their role in the climate crisis and delaying action.

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Ece Elbeyi, one of the report’s authors, underlined how purveyors of misinformation increasingly operate through an interconnected system that delivers key messages to policy-makers.

“Think-