The environment has many challenges, but it is not made any easier by the somewhat elastic terms that are used, resulting in the at time justified claims of ‘greenwash’, and bad science that used manipulated or incomplete data to deny the reality of the threats to our climate.

The latest organisation to try and set the record straight is the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, a part of the LSE, and in particular it is attempting to correct false claims about polar sea ice.

It believes that the Global Warming Policy Foundation is spreading misinformation about the impacts of rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In a pamphlet called Polar Sea Ice and the Climate Catastrophe Narrative, a small number of points in a noisy dataset have been used to imply that Artic ice is not declining as fast as the full data would indicate.

Scientific debate is a vital part of our understanding of the world, and some differences are to be expected, but such misuse of science can only obscure and confuse – or is that the point?

Share Story: