🎧 Combating Climate Denial & Misinformation: with Skeptical Science founder John Cook

As the climate crisis continues to worsen, and we begin to see climate change in the news more and more, it’s not unlikely it will be an increasing topic of discussions with colleagues and peers. However, despite the overwhelming information available, there is also a lot of mis-information out there, and climate change remains a touchy subject for some.

We recently sat down with John Cook, founder of Skeptical Science. Skeptical Science is considered an authoritative resource by the climate scientist community for rebutting climate misinformation, and is often listed by media sources alongside authoritative sources such as NASA and the IPCC.

John studied physics in his undergraduate years, before leaving science to do graphic design cartooning, and website programming, but he started getting into arguments with family members about climate change, which dragged him back into science. He started researching and reading climate papers, eventually building a database of all the most common myths about climate change and what the preview science data about each one. After realising this was a resource others would find useful, he started Sceptical science in 2007. Becoming a prominent figure in public communication about climate change, this gradually brought John back into academia, completing a PhD about cognitive psychology and climate denial.

Skepticism is a GOOD thing…

Skeptical Science is based on the notion that science, by it’s very nature, is skeptical. But skepticism and denial are not the same. On this, John shared that,

“Scepticism is actually a good thing. And by Scepticism, I mean, basically just taking an evidence-based approach to understanding the world before coming to a conclusion. Look at all the evidence first and then go where the evidence points to denial is the polar pit of that. It starts with a conclusion and then it cherry picks the evidence that supports that conclusion and denies any evidence that contradicts that conclusion. So skepticism in the genuine scientific skepticism meaning of the work and denial polar opposites of each other.”

Climate Denial Trends

Since beginning skeptical science, John has noticed trends in both the reasons people deny the science behind climate change, and also the trends of which arguments are most common.

“Firstly, why do people deny climate change? Over the course of my PhD, which was around 2013, I would have said the biggest driver of climate denial was political ideology, people’s political beliefs. And there is research to support that. One study called it ‘solutions aversion.’ People were people dislike the proposed solutions to climate change, like regulating the fossil fuel industry and so not liking the solution meant they denied it as a problem in the first place. And so I think that political ideology is definitely a big factor.”

In 2017, John moved to the US and saw first-hand the power of tribalism during the Trump administration. “Everyone believes things. But even deeper than that, we belong to tribal groups or social groups. And I realised that while political ideology is one of the strongest predictors of climate police, political affiliation is even stronger, and they seem like the same thing.”

But they’re quite different— it’s about what someone’s political beliefs are, versus what political tribe they belong to. John thinks that one big trend in climate change denialism is that while climate change has become more tribal, and more polarised over time, it’s now so polarised now that political affiliation is the biggest predictor of people’s climate position.

John has also identified a clear trend that has seen a transition away from science arguments to policy and solutions-based arguments.

In other words, climate deniers are arguing less and less that global warming isn’t happening or humans aren’t causing it, and they’re arguing more and more that the solutions won’t work. The point of any of those arguments is the same… it’s always “therefore we shouldn’t act on climate change.” They might say, ‘global warming isn’t happening, therefore we shouldn’t act,” or “humans aren’t causing it, therefore we shouldn’t act,” or “solutions won’t work, therefore, we shouldn’t act.” It’s always the same conclusion, they are now just using different arguments to support their conclusion. And because science now has become more and more untenable as the evidence accumulates, the transitioning is like a strategic transition from science denialism to solutions denialism.

How can we de-politicise climate change discussions?

“I mean, it’s an interesting question is it because how can the behaviour of carbon dioxide molecule be political right? Carbon and two atoms of oxygen are not they don’t vote left at a vote right. It should have nothing to do with politics. And yet it has everything to do with it because of the social implications. So there are a couple of different ways to answer that question. One is what communication researchers called nonpersuasive communication. In other words, it’s basically lead with the facts. Do the talking for you so you can communicate the facts of climate change without having to discuss what are the social or policy implications.”

One solution that John thinks can help us combat the misinformation and denial of climate change has come from some of his psychological research. He has been running experiments testing how to ensure there’s less vulnerable to being misled by misinformation, and what he found is it is an approach called logic based inoculation has been incredibly successful. This approach basically means you can inoculate people against misinformation by explaining to them the logical fallacies and the rhetorical techniques used to mislead them. If you expose ‘the magician’s tricks,’ and explain the techniques used to mislead people, that neutralises that messages, because across the political spectrum, whether people are at the left end of the spectrum or at the right end of the spectrum nobody likes being misled, so if you can explain these tactics you can potentially depolarise the messages.

How can we move forward in climate change discussions

Interestingly, the proportion of the population who deny climate change is only a very small percentage— a study by the CSIRO found that only 7% of Australians deny climate change, yet the when you ask the average person how much of the Australian public do you think deny climate change, the average response is 21% which is 3 times bigger.

What John has identified as a bigger challenge is not climate denial, but the “psychological distance” that people perceive between them and climate change. They see it as something that will happened far into the future, or to people in other parts of the world, and thus they don’t feel compelled enough to take action. John believes that localising the issue, by providing people with stories of climate change that are happening in their local community through community news, and tapping using highly trusted authoritative figures in local communities like news weather forecasters to spread messages about climate change in people’s local area, will help close this psychological distance.

John created Cranky Uncle, a great resource for young changemakers that uses cartoons, humour, and critical thinking to expose the misleading techniques of science denial and build public resilience against misinformation. To explain why and how some people reject scientific evidence, he created the character Cranky Uncle, the family member we all have who thinks he knows better than the world’s scientists, in the book Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change, and the Cranky Uncle game.