How to Fight Fake News About Climate Change

About This Event

There’s overwhelming scientific evidence that global warming is happening and humans are the cause. However, there’s also a mountain of misinformation designed to confuse the public about climate change. How do we respond to the firehose of falsehoods? One way to effectively neutralize the influence of misinformation is inoculation. This takes the idea of vaccination and applies it to knowledge—we can build immunity to misinformation by exposing people to a weakened form of misinformation. In other words, expose the misleading techniques used in misinformation. Not only does this approach neutralize the influence of science denial, it can turn misinformation into an educational opportunity and improve critical thinking. Dr. John Cook will outline his psychological and critical thinking research into countering misinformation and demonstrate with visual examples.

About Dr. John Cook
John Cook is a research assistant professor at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. His research focus is understanding and countering misinformation about climate change, with an emphasis on using critical thinking to build resilience. He founded Skeptical Science and authored the book Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change, combining climate science, critical thinking, and cartoons to explain and counter climate misinformation. He also co-authored the college textbooks Climate Change: Examining the Facts and Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis and the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand.