Friday’s half-page advertisement in the Geelong Advertiser titled “The science of fossil fuel CO₂ for plant nutrition” contains claims that are demonstrably false and misleading. The climate crisis is serious. The public deserves better than paid misinformation dressed up as science.
The advertisement states that global atmospheric CO₂ levels have “declined to a near record low of near 422 ppm”. This is incorrect. Atmospheric CO₂ is rising rapidly and is now at its highest level in at least three million years.
The advertisement relies on a deep-time geological graph to imply that modern CO₂ levels are unusually low and beneficial. This framing is misleading. Geological averages over hundreds of millions of years are not an appropriate benchmark for assessing the risks of today’s rapid, human-driven climate change.
Paid advertising should not exempt material from basic standards of factual accuracy, particularly when it concerns public safety, environmental risk and climate science.
Newspapers make editorial decisions every day about what Geelong Advertiser will and will not publish. Choosing to run demonstrably false claims as paid advertising raises serious questions about responsibility, trust and journalistic standards.
Climate change is not an abstract debate. It affects food security, health, infrastructure and lives. The public deserves accurate information – not paid misinformation presented as science.
Emerging legal responsibility
In July 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered an advisory opinion clarifying states’ obligations in relation to climate change. While the opinion does not create criminal liability, it affirms that governments have a duty to prevent foreseeable harm arising from greenhouse gas emissions and to protect the rights of present and future generations.
This legal direction matters for public communication. As climate impacts intensify and scientific consensus strengthens, the space for knowingly disseminating false or misleading information about climate risks is narrowing. What may once have been treated as opinion or debate is increasingly understood in terms of risk, harm and responsibility.
Media organisations already exercise discretion over advertising in areas such as health, finance and public safety. Climate change now clearly belongs in that category. Publishing demonstrably false claims about atmospheric CO₂ and climate risk – even as paid advertising – raises legitimate questions about duty of care, particularly in light of evolving international legal standards.
Accountability does not require censorship. It requires accuracy, context and a refusal to present misinformation as science.
Mik Aidt
Director, Centre for Climate Safety
Co-host, The Sustainable Hour, 94.7 The Pulse
When paid ads mislead
Unpacking a fossil fuel CO₂ claim in the Geelong Advertiser
A half-page advertisement published on 12 December 2025 in The Geelong Advertiser claims that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels are “near record lows” and that reducing fossil fuel use threatens plant life. The ad presents itself as scientific, complete with graphs and references.
It is not.
This article explains what the advertisement gets wrong, why its central graph is misleading, and why newspapers should be more cautious about publishing such material, even when it appears as paid advertising.
. . .
Claim 1:
“Global CO₂ levels have declined to a near record low”
This claim is false. Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations are currently around 421–423 parts per million (ppm) and rising by roughly 2.5–3 ppm per year. This is the highest concentration in at least three million years, and likely much longer. There has been no recent decline in atmospheric CO₂. The opposite is true.
This fact is not disputed in mainstream climate science and is confirmed by direct measurements from monitoring stations around the world, including Mauna Loa.
. . .
Claim 2:
“Current CO₂ levels are near a minimum for plant nutrition”
This framing is misleading. While plants require CO₂ for photosynthesis, there is no single global ‘minimum’ CO₂ level for plant life, and plant health depends on many interacting factors including temperature, water availability, soil nutrients and ecosystem stability.
Higher CO₂ levels can sometimes stimulate plant growth in controlled laboratory conditions. In the real world, however:
- CO₂ fertilisation effects plateau quickly
- Higher CO₂ often reduces nutrient density in crops
- Heat stress, drought, floods, fires and pests increasingly dominate outcomes
Rising CO₂ does not compensate for climate disruption. Agricultural science does not support the idea that increasing fossil fuel emissions benefits food security.
. . .
The graph problem:
Deep time used to mislead
The advertisement’s most powerful visual is a graph showing CO₂ levels over the past 600 million years, attributed to Robert Berner (2001). This type of reconstruction is legitimate in geological research – but its use here is misleading for several reasons.
- Wrong comparison
Earth 300 million years ago was a fundamentally different planet. There was a different solar output, different continents, different oceans, different life forms, no humans, no agriculture, no civilisation.
Using those conditions to justify modern emissions is scientifically meaningless.
- Rate of change is ignored
The graph shows long-term averages over millions of years. What it hides is the speed of today’s change.
Current CO₂ is rising at a rate that is geologically abrupt. Ecosystems and societies evolved under relatively stable conditions. Rapid change is the risk – and the graph conceals it entirely. - Selective storytelling
The ad highlights high CO₂ periods but ignores the fact that those periods were also associated with mass extinctions, radically different climates, and again, no human survivability.
So… the graph in itself is not wrong but the conclusion drawn from it is.
While the Climate Study Group is keen on showing us Berner’s finding about the varying levels of CO2 over the last 600 million years, if you read Berner’s 2001-paper, you’ll notice Berner himself was actually more interested in learning about the varying oxygen-levels in the atmosphere.
Humans evolved in and require 21% oxygen plus-minus a few percent in the atmosphere. Atmospheric O₂ has been around today’s level (20–22%) for roughly the last 50 million years, with some small fluctuations. Modern humans are around 300,000 years old. For all of that time, atmospheric O₂ has been essentially the same as today. Luckily for us!
However, Berner’s O₂-graphs illustrates that O₂-levels have also not been stable through the last 550 million years. They have been fluctuating between 15% and 35%.
At 15% oxygen in the atmosphere (400-500 million years ago), humans would die without pressurised oxygen. At 30% oxygen (300 million years ago), forests would explode into flame from a lightning strike. Humans could survive in neither the high-O₂ nor low-O₂ eras of deep time.
The fossil-fuel-funded advertisement in the Geelong Advertiser cherry-picked CO₂ graphs to imply modern levels are “near a minimum.” However if they had printed the oxygen graph next to the CO₂ graph, readers would instantly see the flaw: Deep-time values are not a “normal baseline”. Modern life depends on modern atmospheric composition. Humans, crops, and ecosystems would not function in past atmospheres. Comparing modern conditions to deep time is scientifically absurd.
Using deep-time CO₂ to argue climate safety is like using dinosaur physiology to design a retirement home.
For the Climate Study Group and others to understand this, the American government agency NOAA has created this short video explainer:
The point being: What makes modern climate change so dangerous for all life on our planet is not just that CO₂ is rising, but how fast it is rising.
The NOAA historical CO₂ graph combines Antarctic ice-core CO₂ records with modern atmospheric measurements. Ice-core records show CO₂ cycling between about 180 and 300 parts per million over the past 800,000 years, over thousands of years per cycle. In contrast, since the industrial revolution, CO₂ has surged from 280 ppm to over 420 ppm in just a few centuries, a rate of change unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years.
This rapid pace outstrips the ability of many ecosystems to adapt, leading to cascading impacts on biodiversity, ocean chemistry and climate stability.
. . .
Who is behind the misleading advertisement?
The advertisement in the Geelong Advertiser is attributed to the Climate Study Group, which is not a recognised scientific institution. Over nearly a decade, the group has bought full- and half-page advertisements in News Corp papers such as The Australian, the Herald Sun and The Mercury, repeatedly attacking climate science and promoting fossil fuels.
Investigations by DeSmog and others show that the group consists of seven conservative men with backgrounds in mining, finance, agribusiness and the free-market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. But no climate scientists.
The named authors in the advertisement include William Happer and Richard Lindzen, both long-standing climate contrarians whose views are rejected by the overwhelming majority of active climate scientists. Their arguments frequently appear in opinion pieces, think-tank reports and paid advertising campaigns, rather than in contemporary peer-reviewed climate research.
The group is not incorporated and publishes no financial accounts, so who pays for the ads is unknown, except for Geelong Advertiser’s advertisement department, of course.
At least one of the study group’s ads has been formally found by Ad Standards to be “misleading and deceptive” and ordered to be discontinued.
In other words: The aim of this group was never to start a balanced scientific debate. The group’s fringe position, presented with the visual language of science, aims to support the narrative that burning fossil fuels – and buying products that need fossil fuels – is not a problem. So just continue business as usual.
“It’s a climate hoax”, so “drill baby drill”, as the American president Trump puts it.
. . .
Should newspapers be accountable for paid misinformation?
Yes. Advertising departments do not operate in a vacuum. Newspapers already refuse ads that are misleading, defamatory or harmful in other domains. Climate misinformation is not harmless opinion. It directly relates to public safety, environmental risk, economic resilience and intergenerational harm.
As climate impacts intensify and legal frameworks evolve – including the International Court of Justice’s July 2025 advisory opinion recognising states’ duties to prevent climate harm – the tolerance for knowingly publishing false climate claims will narrow.
Running demonstrably false claims as paid advertising may one day be seen not just as irresponsible, but as negligent.
This advertisement does not represent “the science of CO₂”. It represents a familiar tactic: selective facts, misleading visuals and confident language used to undermine public understanding.
. . .
A question of standards – and responsibility
Given the demonstrably false claims contained in this advertisement, we invite the editor of The Geelong Advertiser to explain how it met the paper’s standards for accuracy and public responsibility.
Or maybe one of the newspaper’s journalists would like to explain what holds the paper back from publishing an investigative article about the true identity and motives of the ‘Climate Study Group’, now that the accounting department has all their contact details?
This is not a question of political viewpoint. It is a question of factual correctness and foreseeable harm. Publishing misleading claims about atmospheric CO₂ and climate risk – even as paid advertising – deserves explanation, just as it would in areas such as health or finance.
If climate misinformation is not subject to the same scrutiny as other forms of potentially harmful advertising, readers have a legitimate interest in understanding why. Transparency about editorial and advertising standards is essential to maintaining public trust, particularly on issues as consequential as climate risk.
In case Geelong Advertiser’s staff and editor haven’t noticed, climate risk is in the news every single day, even though the word ‘climate’ seldom is mentioned. Here’s a recent Australian example:
Internationally, floods have unleashed a wave of chaos across Morocco and Bolivia this week. Heavy rains have also been lashing parts of the United States and the United Kingdom.
At least 37 people have been killed in flash floods triggered by torrential rains in Morocco’s Atlantic coastal province of Safi, Moroccan authorities said. One hour of heavy rain was enough to flood homes and shops in the old town of Safi, sweeping away cars and cutting off many roads in surrounding areas, local authorities reported.
It doesn’t stop.
Publishing paid climate misinformation benefits both the fossil fuel industry and the newspaper, but it comes at a high human cost.
I encourage you to join me in calling on the Geelong Advertiser’s editor to stop this misconduct. You can send an email directly to journo@geelongadvertiser.com.au – and consider putting the Australian Press Council on carboncopy.
Maybe it’s time to form another so-called ‘Climate Study Group’ which raises funds for putting half-page advertisements in the Geelong Advertiser with climate safety relevant data and graphs? If you’d like to be part of such a group, contact Mik.