Making Sense of Climate Science Denial
In public discussions, climate change is a highly controversial topic. However, in the scientific community, there is little controversy with 97% of climate scientists concluding humans are causing global warming.
- Why the gap between the public and scientists?
- What are the psychological and social drivers of the rejection of the scientific consensus?
- How has climate denial influenced public perceptions and attitudes towards climate change?
This course examines the science of climate science denial.
We will look at the most common climate myths from "global warming stopped in 1998" to "global warming is caused by the sun" to "climate impacts are nothing to worry about."
We'll find out what lessons are to be learnt from past climate change as well as better understand how climate models predict future climate impacts. You'll learn both the science of climate change and the techniques used to distort the science.
With every myth we debunk, you'll learn the critical thinking needed to identify the fallacies associated with the myth. Finally, armed with all this knowledge, you'll learn the psychology of misinformation. This will equip you to effectively respond to climate misinformation and debunk myths.
This isn't just a climate MOOC; it's a MOOC about how people think about climate change.
- How to recognise the social and psychological drivers of climate science denial
- How to better understand climate change: the evidence that it is happening, that humans are causing it and the potential impacts
- How to identify the techniques and fallacies that climate myths employ to distort climate science
- How to effectively debunk climate misinformation












Course contributor Andy Skuce unfortunately passed away on September 14, 2017 after a years long battle against cancer which he wrote about in his final blog post published a couple of weeks earlier. Andy was an independent geoscience consultant based in British Columbia, Canada. He earned an MSc in Applied Geophysics from the University of Leeds, a BSc in Geology from the University of Sheffield and was registered as a Professional Geoscientist in British Columbia. Andy has worked for the British Geological Survey and in a variety of technical and managerial roles for oil companies in Canada, Austria and Ecuador. He has published several peer-reviewed papers on a variety of Earth Science subjects, including the tectonics of volcanic continental margins, structural geology and the scientific consensus on climate change. For Denial101, Andy examined the evidence for the relative influence of human emissions and volcanoes on the rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the modern atmosphere.
The Denial101x and Skeptical Science teams are thankful for all the contributions Andy made to our efforts over the years and we bid him a heartfelt farewell here.
Read more about Andy's research and interests here and here.
