I’m probably a bit late to this, but I thought I would briefly promote the University of Queensland MOOC on Making sense of climate science denial. It’s essentially being run by the Skeptical Science team, and aims to address how to identify climate science denial, the techniques used, aims to improve basic understanding of climate science, and how to debunk climate science misinformation.

What I thought I would post is a short video featuring a number of experts discussing skepticism vs denial. What they point out – correctly in my view – is that many self-professed skeptics are no such thing. I certainly find this frustrating, because skepticism is a fundamental part of the scientific process, and is not simply distrusting something, or being dubious of some scientific result. Skepticism takes work and effort, and seeing a word – that has a genuinely positive meaning – being coopted by those who are not genuinely skeptical, is irritating and annoying.