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45: Climate Denialism and Cranky Uncles (Interview with John Cook of Skeptical Science)
370 Plays5 years ago
Climate change is an issue that has become frighteningly more relevant in recent years, and because of special interests, the field has become muddied with climate change deniers who use dishonest tactics to try to get their message across. The website SkepticalScience.com is one line of defense against these messengers, and it was created and maintained by a research assistant professor at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, and both authored and co-authored two books about climate science with an emphasis on climate change. He also lead-authored a 2013 award-winning paper on the scientific consensus on climate change, and in 2015, he developed an open online course on climate change denial with the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland. This person is John Cook.
This episode is distributed under a CC BY-SA license. For more information, visit CreativeCommons.org.
[Featuring: Sofía Baca, Gabriel Hesch; John Cook]
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Transcript
Introduction and Listener Encouragement
00:00:00
Speaker
If you should feel uncomfortable during this episode, I challenge you to not only ask yourself why, but to keep asking, and follow their rabbit hole as deep as you can.
Climate Change Denial and Misinformation
00:00:09
Speaker
Climate change is an issue that has become frighteningly more relevant in recent years, and because of special interests, the field has become muddied with climate change deniers who use dishonest tactics to get their message across. The website SkepticalScience.com is one line of defense against these messengers,
00:00:25
Speaker
and was created and maintained by a research assistant professor at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. He both authored and co-authored two books about climate science with an emphasis on climate change. He also lead authored a 2013 award-winning paper on the scientific consensus on climate change. And in 2015, he developed an open online course on climate change denial with the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland.
Guest Introduction: John Cook
00:00:49
Speaker
This person is John Cook, episode 45 of Breaking Math.
00:00:54
Speaker
climate denialism and cranky uncles. I'm Sophia. And I'm Gabriel. And you're listening to Breaking Math. And with us we have on John Cook. John Cook, welcome.
00:01:08
Speaker
G'day, thanks for having me on. Pleasure to have you. I'm really, really excited. If you guys don't mind, I want to share a quick story about how I was introduced to John Cook. I follow a lot of scientists on Facebook and on Twitter. One of the scientists I follow on Facebook is Dr. Katherine Hayhoe, one of the lead authors of the 2018 U.S. Climate Assessment.
Developing Educational Tools Against Misinformation
00:01:28
Speaker
And she put a post on Facebook this last week about a new app that is being developed. And it's sort of a climate change education app which Dr. John Cook is creating. Can you tell us a little bit about this app? Yeah, sure. So for the last decade now, I've been researching how to counter misinformation about climate change. And over the course of a PhD, the answer that came out of
00:01:56
Speaker
five years of PhD research was inoculation is the answer. We build resilience against misinformation by helping people understand the different techniques used to mislead. So ever since I finished my PhD, I've been researching, well, how do you put that into practice? And over a number of years, I've come to the conclusion that gamification is a really powerful and accessible way of
00:02:24
Speaker
explaining the techniques of misinformation to people. And so that's what we're trying to put into practice now. And of course, you've already put this somewhat into practice with your website. Do you want to talk real quick about what your website is about and what the experience of using a website is like? So I started my website Skeptical Science in 2007. And at that time I knew nothing about social science or science communication. My background was physics.
00:02:52
Speaker
So I was coming at it as someone with a physical science background. So I very naively thought that explaining the facts should be sufficient to counter science misinformation and denial. And it turns out the human brain is a lot more complicated than I realized. So skeptical science, I probably should explain what that is, is a website that debunks misinformation about climate change.
00:03:17
Speaker
And the approach I take with that website is pretty simple. I just look at all the most common myths about climate change and I debunk them with peer-reviewed scientific research.
00:03:27
Speaker
The problem is that just supplying the facts isn't sufficient. It's not enough to properly counter misinformation. In that vein, how are people being dishonest about climate change? And what tactics are they using that you're needing to counter these with these facts? Yeah, so there are a whole family of different techniques that are used to distort the facts about climate change. And in fact,
00:03:56
Speaker
distort any type of science information.
Understanding Denial Tactics: FLICC
00:04:00
Speaker
But I found that a really easy way to remember them is the acronym FLIC, F-L-I-C-C, which stands for fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations, cherry picking, and conspiracy theories. Every movement that denies a scientific consensus uses these five techniques.
00:04:22
Speaker
And people have been talking a lot about scientific consensus, I've noticed. What is a scientific consensus? Because I know some people are confused about that. So what is a scientific consensus with regards to climate change? Yeah, because what I am familiar with is the concept that it's a bunch of papers that support one another.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yeah, and actually what I want to add on this real quick is I think a lot of the confusion, at least among my own peers, is a general consensus is different than a scientific consensus. There's some nuances there and there's reasons why a scientific consensus should be absolutely considered more than a popular consensus.
00:05:05
Speaker
Yeah, so there's been a number of studies that have looked at this question and tried to quantify what is the scientific consensus on climate change? Or to be more precise, what is the scientific consensus on whether humans are causing global warming or not? And the very first study that did this was Naomi Ereskes in 2004. She looked at 900 odd papers about climate change and couldn't find a single paper that
00:05:34
Speaker
disagreed with human-caused global warming. But possibly the more well-known study came in 2009, and that was by Peter Doran, who's a glaciologist. He's a climate scientist. He surveyed the Earth science community, and he found that amongst the scientists who were doing climate research, 97 percent agreed that humans were causing global warming.
00:06:04
Speaker
And in 2013, I published a paper with some of my colleagues at Skeptical Science, where we looked at about 12,000 climate papers. And amongst the papers that stayed a position on human-caused global warming, again, we found 97% consensus. So when people talk about consensus, it can mean different things. It can mean consensus amongst
00:06:34
Speaker
climate scientists who are doing climate research. It can also mean a consensus amongst peer-reviewed papers about climate change. But whichever way you look at it, the answer is always very similar. There's overwhelming scientific agreement amongst the relevant experts, experts in climate science that humans are causing global warming.
Crowdfunding and App Development
00:06:55
Speaker
And so this app, we had a few questions about the app. So how is the app being funded?
00:07:02
Speaker
So what we're doing at the moment is running a crowdfunding campaign. I've actually designed the game already. I've created a prototype of it, which we've been testing in classrooms, in colleges, just on Friday. In fact, we tested it in a high school class in Seattle for the first time.
00:07:25
Speaker
Excitingly, we found that even amongst high school students, the same as what we found with college students, this simple prototype improves the students' critical thinking skills. It improves their ability to detect misinformation. But it's just a simple prototype. It's not a properly running game. And so now we're running a crowdfunding campaign to raise the money to actually develop a native iPhone app. And if we're successful at raising the funds to design an iPhone app,
00:07:54
Speaker
Our next goal is to raise the funds to also create an Android version. Very cool. I think both Sophie and I are currently Android users. We are formerly iPhone users. When will it be available for the iPhone? When will the app be done?
00:08:08
Speaker
Our goal is to release the iPhone version in June next year. And I think the Android would count. I forget the exact day. I think we said maybe it was roughly three months afterwards. I'm hoping that we can be working on both at the same time. So, yeah, middle of the next year. I mean, I would love to get out even sooner and start testing it in classrooms again. But, yeah, in 2020.
00:08:32
Speaker
So the app, you said it helps people think critically. It makes them more able to see things for what they are by inoculating them with this sort of information. But is this app intended at all for people who are skeptics themselves? And if so, do you have a plan for leading them to using the app or convincing them to use it in a sentence not preaching to the choir?
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question. And I guess I have a couple of answers. Well, to be precise, three answers, because there's really three different parts of the public that are relevant to that question. Roughly 10 percent of the US public are dismissive about climate science. So they're kind of the cranky uncles. Fifty eight percent of the US are either concerned or alarmed about climate change. So they're on board with the science. And then
00:09:25
Speaker
The leftovers, which is, well, let me do the math, is that 32% of the rest of the public are more in that kind of undecided or even disengaged kind of group. Now, there's a lot of research telling us that it's extremely difficult to change the minds of those cranky uncles, those dismissives, because presenting evidence to them, presenting arguments, presenting data is largely ineffective or even can be counterproductive.
00:09:54
Speaker
So Cranky Uples aren't really the target audience of this kind of game. Rather, there's two types of audiences. One is the 58% who are concerned or alarmed. And in this case, the game is not about preaching to the choir. It's more about teaching the choir to sing. Our survey data that we've collected at George Mason finds that amongst those 58% who are concerned about climate change, most of them don't talk about climate change to their friends and family.
00:10:25
Speaker
And research published by Janet Swim, I think she's at Penn State, finds that the main reason why they don't talk about climate change, even though they're concerned, even though they're on board with the science, is because they're worried about pushback. They think that the cranky uncles are going to come back at them and they're going to be made to look stupid if they don't have the right answers. So understanding the arguments that you might encounter from the cranky uncle
00:10:53
Speaker
is empowering. It gives people confidence to talk about difficult issues. And that's what a lot of research into this area in terms of arming people with arguments.
00:11:05
Speaker
inoculating them with the possible type of cranky uncle arguments they might encounter, that does empower people and give them confidence to talk about it. So that's one of the goals of the game. The second is trying to engage those people who are disengaged.
Engagement Through Humor and Critical Thinking
00:11:21
Speaker
Our hope is that using cartoons and humour and gameplay and even social elements in games, entice and engage those people who aren't currently engaged with the issue of climate change.
00:11:34
Speaker
Very cool. Now I think what you just said actually directly relates to my next question when you talked about humor and the game factor.
00:11:44
Speaker
This episode is all about climate change and how it's related to critical reasoning. To that end, our partner Brilliant.org has a course about scientific thinking which is about how to explain the world in scientific terms. I love how the course starts by explaining the nature of simple mechanical systems and takes you all the way through more advanced topics like heat and light. To support your education in math and physics, go to www.brilliant.org slash breakingmath
00:12:09
Speaker
sign up for free. The first 200 breaking math listeners can save 20% off the annual subscription, which we have been using. My next question is, what are the differences in your goals between the app and the website that you currently run? That's a good question.
00:12:28
Speaker
I think that they have similar goals in that they're about increasing the public's climate literacy and reducing misconceptions about climate change, but they take completely different approaches. And they probably try to achieve those goals through different routes. Skeptical science is about providing scientific information and being a resource. Essentially, when I created it, my goal was to create an encyclopedic resource.
00:12:57
Speaker
So that if someone wants to know the answer to a particular question, is global warming happening? Is what role does the sun have in causing climate change? If they Google it, skeptical science would come up in the top results and they could go there and get access to the peer reviewed science. It's more about creating a resource for people who want information.
00:13:17
Speaker
The Cranky Uncle game is more, firstly, there's a much greater emphasis on critical thinking. It's more about explaining fallacies, denial techniques, and the ways that facts can be distorted. We do have to communicate some kind of information.
00:13:39
Speaker
But it's mostly about the critical thinking. So that's probably the biggest difference. But also it uses humor and cartoons as a way of engaging people and just making it more entertaining as well.
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah, I noticed even the title of the game, which we have, we've been saying a lot of times, but we haven't actually explicitly said that it's the title of the game, Cranky Uncle. Do you want to talk about how you came to the, uh, like, why is it called Cranky Uncle? Um, I can't actually remember the moment when I came up with that, but one thing I've observed is that, and in so many conversations that I've had with people about climate change,
00:14:17
Speaker
is it seems to be almost this universal human condition that we all have an uncle or a father or a father in law. I have all three of those who have very strongly held views about issues like climate change and don't accept the scientific consensus. And there's a lot of research that backs that up too. There's research showing that the demographic that is most likely to deny climate science
00:14:45
Speaker
are people who are older, male, white and politically conservative. And so that's essentially the cranky uncle stereotype. And so I think that there's a bit of research behind it. There's a bit of personal experience and anecdotal experience from talking to people behind it.
00:15:08
Speaker
And just on a purely comedy level, the term cranky ankle has lots of hard consonants in it, which makes it more fun to say. That's cool. Very cool.
Challenges and Misconceptions in Climate Action
00:15:22
Speaker
What is a myth about climate science that is repeated often or perhaps even repeated during someone trying to support climate science? Is there anything that has infected the discourse like that?
00:15:35
Speaker
Could you clarify what you mean by repeated in trying to support climate science? I think my question is slightly like, do you know if any of those myths are, if you know of any myths that are used by people who are aware of a human's effect on climate change accidentally in their support?
00:15:59
Speaker
Oh, I see what you mean. So are there like most of the myths that we debunk from climate deniers, but are there any myths that are believed by people who accept the scientific consensus? Is that your question? Yes. Yeah, that was much more succinct. Yeah. So we do debunk some of those myths, but not as many because we find that climate denial is much more destructive than
00:16:22
Speaker
and much more wrong than people who exaggerate the problem. But there are some who do exaggerate the problem, although the problem is pretty bad anyway, without exaggeration. One example of a myth that we debunk is the claim that more than half of CO2 emissions comes from the animal agriculture industry. So there's a documentary called Cow Conspiracy.
00:16:49
Speaker
And it's a documentary that basically argues that we should be eating less meat, or I guess they would argue we should be eating no meat. And eating less meat is a good thing in terms of environment and health. But unfortunately, one of the talking points, one of the main talking points coming out of that documentary is that 51% of CO2 emissions come from animal agriculture out of the meat industry.
00:17:19
Speaker
And it turned out that's just a completely false number. The actual number, according to the United Nations and other consensus reports, is about 14 to 18 percent. And it's just a shame that this false number is being promoted so much, because 14 to 18 percent is not a small number. If we reduced meat eating, that would have a significant impact on reducing climate change.
00:17:46
Speaker
And so their basic conclusion from Caspiracy is correct. We need to eat less meat. But unfortunately, they use a false number to promote that argument, and it kind of diminishes their impact as a consequence.
00:18:01
Speaker
I could see the potential for, because I know that there are, and I'm not in favor or opposition to vegetarianism, for instance, but I do know that there's a lot of false information when it comes to eating food. So I noticed that this myth is related to another, I guess you, I got to call them source of,
00:18:29
Speaker
I don't know chaos, but you talk about that a little bit too. I think you authored a paper or something about it, how there's a relationship between conspiracy theories and climate deniers. Climate deniers. Okay, so when I did my PhD, my supervisor was Stefan Lewandowski, and he published a paper
00:18:56
Speaker
a survey, basically, where he surveyed people, asking them questions about climate change, asking them questions about different conspiracy theories, non-climate conspiracy theories. And what he found was the people who were more likely to deny climate change were also more likely to believe conspiracy theories. So the conclusion, and I think it's a kind of obvious conclusion, is that denying the consensus on climate change is
00:19:26
Speaker
associated with conspiratorial thinking. Climate deniers are more likely to be conspiracy theorists. The response to his paper was from climate deniers, where they started to come up with all these conspiracy theories to explain his scientific result. They're saying that he faked the data, he colluded with the people who filled out the survey,
00:19:49
Speaker
Then the conspiracy theory started to get bigger and bigger. They brought me into it, and I was involved somehow. The Australian government was involved. The trajectory of this spiraling, ever-increasing conspiracy theory was kind of surreal, and we couldn't believe it was happening. And so we wrote a paper about it. We called it Recursive Fury.
00:20:14
Speaker
conspiracy theories in response to research about conspiracy theory, which, ironically, was an anecdotal proof of the original finding.
00:20:25
Speaker
Wow. Hey, so I do have a few questions that I'd like to get to real quick. One of the questions that I have, well, this is a multi tier part. I wanted to ask you how our listeners can get involved in supporting the app, but I also specifically wanted to have you talk about the cartoon option for listeners who support at a certain tier. I think that is one of the coolest things that you did and it made me very excited to support it. Yeah. So the whole point of the crowdfunding campaign is obviously
00:20:55
Speaker
We are trying to raise funds to develop a game that improves critical thinking. We think we'll have a big impact on helping society, helping democracy even. I think if people are more resilient against misinformation, democracy is stronger because of that. So I think there are a lot of good reasons to support this game. And if people do want to support it, they can go to the address sks.to
00:21:27
Speaker
sks.to slash cranky. Yeah, it's a very short URL that redirects to the crowdfunding page. And so like, I think that a lot of the people who can probably almost everyone who donates to it is motivated by wanting to help make a stronger society.
00:21:48
Speaker
But with crowdfunding, it doesn't hurt if you provide extra incentives. And we decided to include an incentive that's unique to this particular game, which is the opportunity to be immortalized as a cartoon in the game. So we offered to anyone who donates over $250 that I will basically draw them as a cartoon and use them in a cartoon example in the game.
00:22:17
Speaker
Throughout the game, there's all these quiz questions because in order to get better at critical thinking, you need to practice, practice over and over. One of the ways to motivate people to practice is I provide all these cartoon examples of logical fallacies and you have to look at the cartoon and then identify which is the fallacy in the form of the quiz question.
00:22:39
Speaker
And so I had to draw all these cartoons over and over, like dozens and dozens of cartoons. So we thought, how about we offer people to get drawn into these cartoons as quiz questions and that will A, help us fund the development of the game, but B, it also rewards everyone who helps support the game because then they get to be immortalized in the game.
00:23:03
Speaker
Now, are there some of those spots left? Is it still possible for people as of this recording on what is it? Sunday, December 7th? Oh, yeah, but this will come out Tuesday, December 10th. Okay. So as of this recording, which is what is it? Is it the 7th or the 8th today? Oh, the 8th. Oh, the 8th. So right now, how many slots are left for the cartoon option? I think there are about 70 slots left. Okay. Okay.
00:23:27
Speaker
So quite quite a few. There's plenty of opportunity. Awesome. And I've been getting in contact with, including yourself, people who have donated to the game and asking for photos so that I can draw them and getting some really interesting responses. One person sent me photos of their dog, the dog in the game, kind of threw a curveball at me because then I thought, well,
00:23:54
Speaker
I'm going to have to come up with a dog themed fallacy rather than, uh, I think that the dog is thinking this thought. Cats have tails. I have a tail. Therefore I must be a cat as an example of a logical fallacy. Okay. Okay. Got it. Very cool. Very cool. It's fun to be part of something like this, both as a science educator. I'm a former science teacher and as a podcaster, um, who, uh, who enjoys doing what we do.
00:24:23
Speaker
Well, awesome. Well, John Cook, thank you so much for being on Breaking Math. We're very, very excited to see your app come out. And it's awesome what people are finally stepping up to do about climate change. Yes. It's exciting. It's very, very exciting. So we are very happy to support this, to be part of it, and to help promote your project and help our listeners find out how they can support it. So thank you so much.
00:24:52
Speaker
My pleasure thanks for having me.