Deny, Deceive, Delay: Documenting and Responding to Climate Disinformation at COP26 & Beyond

This data-driven examination of climate disinformation at COP26 makes an analytically important distinction that most climate communication research misses: the primary contemporary threat is not outright climate denial — which has become increasingly marginal — but 'delayism', the range of narratives that acknowledge climate change while arguing for slower action, different priorities, or the inadequacy of proposed solutions. These delay narratives are harder to counter than denial because they engage with genuine policy complexity and are more easily laundered through legitimate media.

The state-actor dimension is the report's contribution to the FIMI literature specifically. Arcostanzo, King, and Janulewicz document how state-linked actors have exploited the climate debate as a democratic destabilisation vector — using climate-adjacent culture war narratives to amplify social division and institutional distrust irrespective of their views on climate policy itself. This framing connects climate disinformation to the broader FIMI landscape in a way that most climate communication research does not. For practitioners tracking adversarial exploitation of civic debates, this is an important methodological precedent.