Climate Activists Exploit Jasper Wildfire Anniversary - ICJ did no Due Diligence says Friends of Science Society

Climate activists falsely conflate climate change and wildfire as they exploit the anniversary of the Jasper wildfire, says Friends of Science Society. The International Court of Justice did improper due diligence on climate change evidence and used "phantom experts"; unanimous advisory opinion flawed from the get-go.

CALGARY, AB, July 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- As the anniversary of the 2024 disastrous wildfire in Jasper National Park arrived, climate activists falsely conflated climate change and wildfire to sway public opinion says Friends of Science Society in a new video, "Climate Fanatics Exploit Jasper Wildfire Anniversary."

As long-time climate policy analyst Roger Pielke, Jr. wrote in his 2023 Substack "What the media won't tell you about…wildfires," "The IPCC has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human-caused climate change."

As reported in the Western Standard of July 07, 2025, in a January 2025 Climate Change Risk Assessment report for the Municipality of Jasper, Parks Canada (the federal agency that manages the park) downplayed residents' concerns about wildfire: 'Parks Canada expressed that the actual risk of fire is less than the public perception.'  

Retired forester Ken Hodges, in subsequent hearings into the disaster, had scathing comments. Hodges had independently advocated for years for aggressive action to address the risk of such a mega-fire due to hectares of standing deadwood in the iconic park.

In a July 21, 2025 op-ed in Canada's National Observer, Chris Hatch claims that journalists are failing to tag climate change as the 'why' of wildfires.  In the article, he references climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe and a new paper that encourages people to link extreme weather events to climate change as a means of garnering more public support for "climate action." In spite of this, as Friends of Science Society reported in a press release of July 17, 2025, polls in Canada and the US show that public interest in climate change has waned.  Only 14% of Canadians listed climate change as a priority.

As reported in the Western Standard on July 20, 2025, Canada's Privy Council operates a "nudge" unit and spent $720 million over two years to use psychological tactics to try and shape Canadian behaviours and attitudes; climate action is one of the topics.

On July 23, 2025, AP reported that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had issued a unanimous advisory statement on the issue of climate obligations. As BBC reported on July 23, 2025, the issue was originally brought to the UN General Assembly by youth climate activists from small Pacific islands, led by Vanuatu.  AP claims that the ruling, wherein "UN's top court says failing to protect planet from climate change could violate international law," theoretically puts the United States at risk of international law suits as it has withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and other climate obligations.

Friends of Science Society points out that the ICJ did little due diligence on the scope of climate change and accepted the viewpoint of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the sole authority.  The ~2,000 scientists and scholars of CLINTEL – the climate intelligence network based in The Netherlands – have issued the World Climate Declaration detailing why there is no climate emergency.

In the IPCC's AR6 Working Group I Physical Sciences report of 2021, the words 'climate emergency' and 'climate crisis' are only mentioned once, each, in relation to media coverage.  Likewise, the much vaunted 2 °Celsius (or subsequent 1.5 °Celsius) global warming boundaries were simply made up, according to scientist Steve Koonin and Mark Mills, in "The Paris Accords as Climate Insurance – Unaffordable and Unnecessary."

Friends of Science Society says it is deeply concerning that the ICJ engaged in a non-transparent process with the IPCC, exposed by legal scholars Michael A. Becker and Cecily Rose, as discussed in this Dec. 03, 2024, commentary, "The Return of Not-Quite "Phantom Experts"? The ICJ Meets with IPCC Scientists"

Canada is spending some $476 billion on climate action between 2020-2030. According to a Fraser Institute report by Ross McKitrick, the reduction in global warming is estimated to be an immeasurable 0.007 °Celsius (seven thousandths of a degree C) by 2100.

About
Friends of Science Society is an independent group of earth, atmospheric and solar scientists, engineers, and citizens that is celebrating its 23rd year of offering climate science insights. After a thorough review of a broad spectrum of literature on climate change, Friends of Science Society has concluded that the sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide (CO2).

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SOURCE Friends of Science Society