Not Cool Ep 1: John Cook on misinformation and overcoming climate silence
On the premier of Not Cool, Ariel is joined by John Cook: psychologist, climate change communication researcher, and founder of SkepticalScience.com. Much of John’s work focuses on misinformation related to climate change, how it’s propagated, and how to counter it. He offers a historical analysis of climate denial and the motivations behind it, and he debunks some of its most persistent myths. John also discusses his own research on perceived social consensu
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Show Notes
On the premier of Not Cool, Ariel is joined by John Cook: psychologist, climate change communication researcher, and founder of SkepticalScience.com. Much of John’s work focuses on misinformation related to climate change, how it’s propagated, and how to counter it. He offers a historical analysis of climate denial and the motivations behind it, and he debunks some of its most persistent myths. John also discusses his own research on perceived social consensus, the phenomenon he’s termed “climate silence,” and more.
Topics discussed include:
- History of the study of climate change
- Climate denial: history and motivations
- Persistent climate myths
- How to overcome misinformation
- How to talk to climate deniers
- Perceived social consensus and climate silence
References discussed include:
- Leading Voices in the Denier Choir: Conservative Columnists’ Dismissal of Global Warming and Denigration of Climate Science, Elsasser & Dunlap (2012)
- Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, Cook et al. (2013)
- Science by social media: Attitudes towards climate change are mediated by perceived social consensus, Lewandowsky et al. (2019)
- Global Warming’s Six Americas
Solving climate change doesn't require convincing that 8% of the population who are dismissives. It's incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to change most of their minds. Instead what we need to do is be reaching out to the 90-plus percent of the country who are open to evidence and who are at least not going to deny the science when they encounter it.
~John Cook