For years, when people ask me how to fight back against this or that climate denial myth, I’ve directed them to my videos, but also to John Cook’s Skeptical Science website – hands down the most useful, easiest to use, and authoritative debunking site on the web.
I’ve learned an awful lot about climate by studying the lies, misinformation, and disinformation of the climate denial industry. In finding the right answers, and tracking down the best sources of information, you find your way through the thicket and end up with a serviceable knowledge of the millenium’s most important issue.
Now there’s a MOOC – Massive Online Open Course – designed by the Skeptical Science team, with the precise aim of arming thousands, or millions, of students, with the best information needed to shoot down climate denial in media, online, from politicians, or at the dinner table.
Dana Nuccitelli in the Guardian:
The course coordinator is John Cook, University of Queensland Global Change Institute climate communication fellow, and founder of the climate science myth debunking website Skeptical Science. Cook’s research has primarily focused on the psychology of climate science denial. As he explains,
97% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming; however, less than half of Australians are aware of humanity’s role in climate change, while half of the US Senate has voted that humans aren’t causing global warming. This free course explains why there is such a huge gap between the scientific community and the public. Our course looks at what’s driving climate science denial and the most common myths about climate change.
The course includes climate science and myth debunking lectures by the international team of volunteer scientific contributors to Skeptical Science, including myself, and interviews with many of the world’s leading climate science and psychology experts. Making Sense of Climate Science Denial is a seven-week program featuring interviews with 75 scientific experts, including Sir David Attenborough, Katharine Hayhoe, Richard Alley, Michael Mann, and Naomi Oreskes.
The course incorporates lessons in both climate science and psychology to explain the most common climate myths and to detail how to respond to them. Research has shown that myth debunking is most effective when people understand why the myth originated in the first place. For example, cherry picking (focusing on a small bit of convenient data and ignoring the rest) is one of the most common fallacies behind climate science myths.
The lectures in the University of Queensland MOOC not only explain the science, but also the fallacies underpinning each myth. This is a unique and important feature to this course, because understanding their origins effectively acts to inoculate people against myths.
I do a similar job on a much smaller scale(1000 hits a month) on my web site http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/ which deals in climate change and its effects in New Zealand. Trying to spread the information and compete with the budgets of The Daily caller or Breitbart is tough but we have to do what we can or they will control everything. Posting factual comments on their websites is not popular and I always get a reply within half an hour and as I am in New Zealand and am posting in the middle of their night it shows that they have a team of staff operating day and night.
If there is anything that can save us its the internet and as John Cook, Michael Mann and Peter Simpson has found it is possible to reach round the world with a minimum of cost.
You’re doing a great job – I always read your blog
Thanks for that. Sometimes I think that it is Bob Bingham alone against the forces of evil but I know that is not true and that most people are very concerned about the future.
I just signed up for the course.