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Latest Posts
- Katharine Hayhoe on Climate and our Choices
- Naïve empiricism and what theory suggests about errors in observed global warming
- Historical documents reveal Arctic sea ice is disappearing at record speed
- 2016 SkS Weekly Digest #34
- 2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #34
- Climate-related disasters raise conflict risk, study says
- State of the Climate 2015: global warming and El Niño sent records tumbling
- Piecing together the Arctic’s sea ice history back to 1850
- TV Meteorologists Warm to Climate Science
- Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize
- 2016 SkS Weekly Digest #33
- 2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #33
- Six charts show UK progress towards low-carbon energy
- Climate inertia
- Climate scientists make a bold prediction about sea level rise
- As nuclear power plants close, states need to bet big on energy storage
- Rejection of experts spreads from Brexit to climate change with 'Clexit'
- 2016 SkS Weekly Digest #32
- 2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #32
- One Nation's Malcolm Roberts is in denial about the facts of climate change
- Natural forces overpowering Antarctic Peninsula warming
- New research shows penguins will suffer in a warming world
- Online course on climate science denial starts Aug 9
- A climate scientist and economist made big bucks betting on global warming
- 2016 SkS Weekly Digest #31
- 2016 SkS Weekly News Roundup #31
- Sizzling Midwest Previews a Hotter Future Climate
- Analysis: How UK leaving the EU would increase climate targets for others
- Climate models are accurately predicting ocean and global warming
- More CO2 won’t help northern forests or stave off climate change
About Skeptical Science
Skeptical Science is a non-profit science education organisation, run by a global team of volunteers.
The goal of Skeptical Science is to explain what peer reviewed science has to say about global warming. When you peruse the many arguments of global warming skeptics, a pattern emerges. Skeptic arguments tend to focus on narrow pieces of the puzzle while neglecting the broader picture. For example, focus on Climategate emails neglects the full weight of scientific evidence for man-made global warming. Concentrating on a few growing glaciers ignores the world wide trend of accelerating glacier shrinkage. Claims of global cooling fail to realise the planet as a whole is still accumulating heat. This website presents the broader picture by explaining the peer reviewed scientific literature.
Often, the reason for disbelieving in man-made global warming seem to be political rather than scientific. Eg - "it's all a liberal plot to spread socialism and destroy capitalism". As one person put it, "the cheerleaders for doing something about global warming seem to be largely the cheerleaders for many causes of which I disapprove". However, what is causing global warming is a purely scientific question. Skeptical Science removes the politics from the debate by concentrating solely on the science.
About John Cook
Skeptical Science was created and maintained by John Cook, the Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland. He originally obtained a Bachelor of Science at the University of Queensland, achieving First Class Honours with a major in physics.
He co-authored the 2011 book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand with Haydn Washington, and the 2013 college textbook Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis with Tom Farmer. He also lead-authored the paper Quantifying the Consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, which was tweeted by President Obama and was awarded the best paper published in Environmental Research Letters in 2013. In 2014, he won an award for Best Australian Science Writing, published by the University of New South Wales.
He is currently completing a PhD in cognitive psychology, researching how people think about climate change. He is also developing a MOOC (Massive Online Open Course), Making Sense of Climate Science Denial, to be released in April 2015.
There is no funding to maintain Skeptical Science other than Paypal donations - it's run at personal expense. John Cook has no affiliations with any organisations or political groups. Skeptical Science is strictly a labour of love. The design was created by John's talented web designer wife.
THE ESCALATOR
(free to republish)
The Scientific Guide to
Global Warming Skepticism
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