Watched movie Einstein & Eddington today. Eddington (David Tennant) empirically confirms theory of general relativity by Einstein (Andy Serkis). At end, Eddington gives speech about time being relative. Wife comments to me "he's right, for you the movie was 5 minutes long, for me it was 5 hours."
It was a big team effort to get the "SkS Experiment" set up, run it and then turn it into published research!
@johnfocook.bsky.social, @baerbelw.bsky.social, @collinmaessen.bsky.social, Timo Lubitz, Doug Bostrom & @dananuccitelli.bsky.social
Here is the link again: gc.copernicus.org/articles/9/1...
We're now crowd-funding the journal fee for our research paper (€1,215) in the same way we crowd-funded our 97% consensus paper back in 2013. More details on how to donate at skepticalscience.com/published-re...
We're looking to address these issues in a major update of the Skeptical Science website later this year. One major innovation is incorporating fallacy explanations in our rebuttals, building that into the database format. A much needed revamp given the website design hasn't been updated since 2007!
The truth sandwich format for debunking: fact, myth, fallacy, fact
For example, the facts could have been explained clearer & simpler (following the old mantra: fight sticky myths with stickier facts). Also, few of the rebuttals explained the logical fallacies committed by the myth - a debunking approach recommended by the Debunking Handbook sks.to/db2020
However, we were disturbed to see belief in climate facts go down for some participants as well, not something we wanted to see. We looked at the worst performing rebuttals and identified some places where they could have been written better.
Change in accuracy among participants at varying pre-rebuttal values (positive value means increase in accuracy).
The strongest result from our data was that the website had its biggest effect in improving climate perceptions among climate dismissives (strongly disagreed with climate facts/strongly agreed with climate myths). Belief in climate myths overall went down.
Accuracy of climate perceptions of SkS visitors when they first arrive at the site.
6261 people filled out both the pre-rebuttal and post-rebuttal form from Nov 2021 to Jul 2025. The first thing that jumped out at us was that nearly half of visitors strongly agreed with the fact or strongly disagreed with the myth. We think most SkS visitors come to arm themselves with info.
Popup of survey measuring participants' belief in a climate fact.
The first challenge was collecting live data. Readers who came directly to a Skeptical Science rebuttal via google were asked how much they agreed with either a climate fact or myth. Then if they read all the way down to the end of the rebuttal, they received the same survey.
We just published a paper in Geoscience Communication where we measure the impact of reading climate myth rebuttals at bsky.app/profile/skep... - technically challenging research with some nuanced, complex results gc.copernicus.org/articles/9/1...
Uber-Tolkien nerd @colbertlateshow.bsky.social (which I've always admired him for) disses us for taking Lord of the Rings too seriously. Fair comment but we regret nothing! youtu.be/MMueOnpeAVA?...
Had a chaotic & fun conversation with Joy Radio about our paper on building climate models of fantasy worlds. I accidentally insulted John Saffron for only reading The Hobbit but otherwise, think it went ok :-| joy.org.au/saturdaymaga...
Spreadsheet of climate data for every step of the characters' journey.
Taking a similar approach, I created a spreadsheet of the characters' journey. I also added climate data along the way - temperature, precipitation, biome, season (arcing into winter as the story gets dire, trending to spring at the end). Then used that to add immersive details to the story.
In fact, I was inspired by Tolkien's writing approach. He created detailed tables for each character in Lord of the Rings, detailed where they were on each day of the story, describing environmental details like moon phases and wind direction.
Why go to all this trouble? First, because it's fun & I'm an uber-nerd. But more importantly, verisimilitude & immersion are crucial to compelling stories (particularly fantasy). Tolkien himself was meticulous in crafting a detailed, intricate world which has captivated millions of readers.
Top figure: simulated biomes of Terrios. Bottom figure: fantasy map of Terrios.
I was especially drawn to the simulation of biomes - which parts of the world are forest, grasslands, desert, etc. The biome maps became my guide in designing a map for the fantasy world (called Terrios).
Months passed, then Alex came back with the results of the climate model simulation - temperature, precipitation, wind strength & direction, humidity, sea ice, the weather patterns of the entire world all year around. Next level world-building!
Digital elevation map of the fantasy world Terrios
Bristol climate scientist Alex Farnsworth took it on. He had a small request - provide a digital elevation map of the entire planet providing the elevation of every point of land (including ocean ocean). Easy! So I gave them this (well, I had to write R code to convert the PNG into a CSV)
Since then Dan Lunt also collaborated with his Bristol colleagues to climate model the worlds of Westeros (Game of Thrones), Arrakis (Dune), and the world of the Wheel of Time. So when I began work on a climate fiction set in a fantasy world, I reached out to them asking if they'd model my world.
This began years ago when I interviewed Dan Lunt from the University of Bristol about his climate model of Middle-earth (from Lord of the Rings). I released the interview as a trilogy of videos because, of course a trilogy! youtu.be/jJNkd5g6oxI?...
Just published an article about our paper in @fafnirjournal.bsky.social describing how climate models were used to simulate fantasy worlds like Middle-earth & Westeros as well as for a new world I've developed for a cli-fi fantasy story theconversation.com/do-middle-ea...
Had a great, in-depth conversation with @tgspodcast.bsky.social about climate misinformation (with an interesting digression at the end into my latest climate communication obsession: climate fiction).
www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/212-...
Recently published in Fafnir - the Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy: "Climate Models as a Retroactive and Exploratory World-building Tool" fafnir.journal.fi/article/view...
Thanks to
@johnfocook.bsky.social @climatedann.bsky.social and Alex and Michael Farnsworth.
We weren’t calling it truth sandwich when we released the Debunking Handbook in 2011, we referred to the fact-myth-fallacy structure (Lakoff is catchier than us cogsci nerds)
Want to test how good you are at recognising authors? Fill out this (anonymous) survey, checking authors you recognise but also avoiding checking fake authors (purpose is to measure which authors are too well known or not known at all) q.surveys.unimelb.edu.au/jfe/form/SV_...
I talked to @johnfocook.bsky.social about dealing with climate misinformation, and he recommended learning about the common techniques that bad actors use to distort facts:
Fake experts
Logical fallacies
Impossible expectations
Cherry-picking
Conspiracy theories
or FLICC, for short (4/11)
Joe Rogan has one of the world's most popular podcasts. Unfortunately, like nearly all of the most popular online shows, his tends to spread climate misinformation. For @climateconnections.bsky.social I scrutinize his recent episode with octogenarian climate contrarians Lindzen & Happer 🧵 (1/11)
Happy to share a new paper (accepted at J Environ Psych), led by the amazing @emilyspearing.bsky.social
Black Summer Arson: Examining the Impact of Climate Misinformation and Corrections on Reasoning
osf.io/preprints/ps...
@johnfocook.bsky.social @lewan.bsky.social @profsanderlinden.bsky.social
Proud to have contributed to the blockbuster new volume Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment, documenting the many, many ways that corporations & orgs try to block climate action. Comprehensive, global in scope, authors from all over the world & the ebook version is FREE cssn.org/news-researc...
Fun random statistic - our 2013 paper finding 97% scientific consensus on human-caused global warming just went past 1.5 million downloads (which is not a bad number for an academic paper) iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
