Watchdog group slaps John Kerry with complaint for wildly exaggerated claims

Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) today filed a complaint regarding the misinformation campaign being waged by Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. The complaint was filed with the Department of State and the White House office of Science and Technology Policy regarding Kerry.

Kerry, according to the complaint, misrepresented scientific evidence in a recent speech on climate issues in agriculture in a summit hosted by the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate. Kerry attended in his capacity as Special Presidential Envoy. Jaws dropped when Kerry launched into a lecture claiming that 15 million people are killed every year due to climate issues – specifically, greenhouse gas emissions. There is no such scientific data to support that outlandish climate alarmism. Kerry offered no evidence, either.

PPT pointed to Kerry’s misinformation in a recent speech.

On May 10, 2023, Mr. Kerry addressed a summit hosted by the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate in his role as Special Envoy. During his remarks, Mr. Kerry stressed the urgency of reaching net-zero emissions in the agricultural sector. To support this policy position, Mr. Kerry made this dramatic claim:

“Fifteen million people are dying every single year around this planet as a consequence of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, in the air which travels around and drops in the form of pollution and is warming the ocean at record rates, changing the chemistry of the ocean itself.”

And, PPT pointed out that the Biden administration prides itself on the importance of scientific integrity.

The Biden Administration has repeatedly emphasized the importance of upholding the strictest standards of scientific integrity. On January 27, 2021, the President issued the Memorandum on Restoring Trust in Government Through Scientific Integrity and Evidence-Based Policymaking, which notes that: “[s]cientific findings should never be distorted or influenced by political considerations.”

In addition to the Memorandum, the State Department, where Mr. Kerry’s Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate is housed, maintains its own scientific integrity policies. Under its policies, scientific integrity is compromised by “[a]ltering, or misrepresenting scientific or technological findings in public communications.”

Maybe John Kerry didn’t get the memo from his boss. He didn’t cite any evidence to justify his absurd claim. Did he just make it up for poliical expediency? That is specifically prohibited in the administration’s memorandum and the State Department’s policy. Such whoppers are a threat to public trust and good governance.

PPT’s director released a statement on the filing of the complaint.

“There are few more perilous breaches of scientific integrity than for public officials to convey inaccurate data to the public knowingly or recklessly, especially when it is done to justify politically motivated decisions or agendas.” Michael Chamberlain, Director of Protect the Public’s Trust, said. “Simply put, hysteria, hyperbole, and misrepresentation of data have no place in our government’s official pronouncements. The American public’s trust in its government has plunged to depths never before seen and is unlikely ever to recover if we have powerful officials throwing out numbers unsupported by evidence.”

It’s no wonder that the public has lost trust in government across the board. Federal agencies are corrupted by bureaucrats with political agendas, pursued at all costs. Kerry is using hyperbole to scare his audiences into accepting his activist rhetoric. It’s not real.

Kerry went on to tack on an additional 10 million people to his scare tactics. According to Kerry, who is a lawyer, not a scientist, in addition to the 15 million people who die due to the lack of quality air every year, an additional 10 million people die every year around the world due to extreme heat.

Published data on the subject does not show anywhere near the numbers that Kerry is talking about.

According to data from Lancet Countdown and Climate Vulnerable Forum presented during the United Nations climate summit in November, climate change is expected to cause 3.4 million deaths by the year 2100. The excess deaths are expected to be caused by increased wildfire frequency, heatwaves and higher incidence of mosquito-borne tropical disease.

And a 2021 study from Harvard University published in the journal Environmental Research calculated that fossil fuel emissions are responsible for more than 8 million annual deaths.

Another analysis, the Global Burden of Disease Study from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, determined 4.2 million people died per year as a result of outdoor airborne particulate matter pollution.

Kerry is the worst kind of federal bureaucrat. He arrogantly considers himself an expert on a topic he’s studied as a hobby for years and wants to use the power of the government to promote his ideas. He’s a phony who travels by private jet as he scares audiences about the climate. His residences are not small. His carbon footprint is large, as is his ego. What a hypocrite.