ClimateTruth.org, formerly known as Forecast the Facts, is a campaign that began to pressure television weather forecasters to accept man-made global warming and promote it as a cause of weather events that later expanded to pressuring news organizations to block comment from climate change skeptics. It also pressures businesses to cut ties with groups skeptical of climate change or radical environmentalist legislative and regulatory efforts.

Background

ClimateTruth.org began in 2012 as Forecast the Facts, a campaign to push meteorologists to accept that climate change poses a threat and to warn the public about it. Forecast the Facts was established as a project of the left-wing Citizen Engagement Laboratory, an incubator for left-of-center advocacy projects and groups. ¹

The organization emerged largely in response to a 2011 report from the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication that found that just 19 percent of TV weather forecasters believed that man-made climate change posed a danger to the earth. Meteorologists, according to the report, were more skeptical about man-made climate change than the public as a whole. ²

In July 2015, Forecast for the Facts changed its name to ClimateTruth.org. ³

Corporate Pressure

The organization also pressures public officials, public institutions, nonprofits and companies to cut ties with polluters or with groups that block action on climate change.  ⁴

The organization takes credit for preventing Koch Industries from buying the Tribune Company, pushing Big Tech companies to cut ties with the American Legislative Exchange Council, and pushing the website FiveThirtyEight to fire a writer for questioning environmentalist orthodoxy. ⁵

Pressuring News Outlets

ClimateTruth has encouraged news outlets to adopt the standard of the Los Angeles Times, which announced in 2013 it would stop publishing letters to the editor that questioned climate change. ⁶ Forecast the Facts then launched a petition to pressure the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal to also stop publishing such letters to the editor. ⁷

After New Mexico physicist Mark B. Boslough circulated a public letter in 2014 to the news media imploring journalists to stop using the word “skeptic,” Forecast the Facts picked up the language to use for petitions to send to news organizations. ⁸

In 2015, Forecast the Facts teamed with Media Matters for America to try to force the Associated Press to stop using the term “skeptics” and instead use “deniers” if a person questioned man-made global warming. ⁹

On the broadcast news side, the organization launched a campaign asking news directors to stop giving any airtime to pundits, government officials, or anyone else that questions the science about man-made global warming. The online petition went to NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN and Fox News. It produced a film about the pundits titled Merchants of Doubt. ¹⁰

In response to an effort by the group to keep him out of news content, William O’Keefe, CEO of the George C. Marshall Institute and president of Solutions Consulting, Inc., wrote this organization used smear tactics, noting “denier” is usually associated with people that deny the Holocaust. He added, “It is telling that Stein wants her views and those of climate alarmists to be conveyed by the media, but not those of people who challenge them. What does that say about her organization’s views of the Constitution and the importance of free speech to a free society? Movements to suppress free speech believe that the end justifies the means. That is unsettling.” ¹¹

Political Activity

The organization teamed with Friends of the Earth Action joined in 2012 to launch a website called ClimateSilence.org to urge more political candidates to talk about climate change. It came at a time when environmental advocates complained that neither Democratic President Barack Obama nor his Republican opponent Mitt Romney were talking about climate change. ¹²

In 2015, Forecast the Future established a website called ScottAway.com that claimed then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) and then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) “both run state governments that ban employees from talking about climate change.” The left-of-center fact-checking website PolitiFact rated the claim as “false.” ¹³

1. “Forecast the Facts.” PolitiFact. Accessed November 23, 2019. https://www.politifact.com/personalities/forecast-facts/
2. Bagley, Katherine. “Why Don’t TV Meteorologists Believe in Climate Change.” Inside Climate News. May 7, 2012. Accessed November 23, 2019. https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120507/television-meteorologists-climate-change-skeptics-weather-global-warming-john-coleman-james-span-joseph-daleo
3. Press Release. “Forecast the Facts Now ClimateTruth.org.” Causes.org. July 21, 2015. Accessed November 23, 2019. https://www.causes.com/posts/958452-forecast-the-facts-in-now-climatetruth-org
4. Press Release. “Forecast the Facts Now ClimateTruth.org.” Causes.org. July 21, 2015. Accessed November 23, 2019. https://www.causes.com/posts/958452-forecast-the-facts-in-now-climatetruth-org
5. Hattem, Julian. “Left Embraces Boycott Politics.” The Hill. October 2, 2014. Accessed November 23, 2019. https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/219529-pressure-campaigns-pull-corporations-to-the-left
6. Schulman, Jeremy. “How 9 Major Major Papers Deal With Climate Denying Letters.” Mother Jones. October 21, 2013. Accessed November 23, 2019. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/10/newspapers-climate-denial-letters-times/
7. Online Petition. “Newspapers: Don’t Publish Climate Denial.” Accessed November 23, 2019. https://act.forecastthefacts.org/sign/tell_newspapers_stop_publishing_climate_denial
8. Gillis, Justin. “Verbal Warming: Labels in the Climate Debate.” The New York Times. February 12, 2015. Accessed November 23, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/science/earth/in-climate-change-whats-in-a-name.html
9. Bedard, Paul. “Liberals Pressure AP to Call Climate Change Skeptics ‘Deniers,’ Bar Word in Stylebook.” The Washington Examiner. May 13, 2015. Accessed November 23, 2019. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/liberals-pressure-ap-to-call-climate-change-skeptics-deniers-bar-word-in-stylebook
10. Petition. “No More Merchants of Doubt.” Accessed November 23, 2019. https://act.forecastthefacts.org/sign/no_more_mod/
11. O’Keefe, William. “Forecasts the Facts: Merchants of Smear.” The Hill. April 1, 2015. Accessed November 23, 2019. https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/energy-environment/237502-forecast-the-facts-merchants-of-smear
12. Restuccia, Andrew. “Climate Change Still a No-Show.” Politico. October 23, 2012. Accessed November 23, 2019. https://www.politico.com/story/2012/10/climate-change-still-a-no-show-at-debates-082748
13. Hauer, Sarah. “Group Says Scott Walker Bans Employees From Talking About Climate.” PolitiFact. June 16, 2015. Accessed November 23, 2019. https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2015/jun/16/forecast-facts/group-says-scott-walker-bans-employees-talking-abo/