Skeptical ScienceMay 20, 2025

We're constantly seeking to make our #ClimateMythDebunking tools easier to pick up and use.

Youtube comments (where heated ''debate'' over #ChangeChange is often found) present a special challenge. Often it's helpful to cite a source on the web, but links to other places are swiftly removed by Youtube (you're never supposed to leave).

Baerbel Winkler has created Youtube videos consisting of chapters each covering a particular myth as treated in our collaborations with Gigafact. A short url will take a viewer directly to the item in play.

Learn about how to use these in our post.

https://skepticalscience.com/fact-brief-videos.html?utm-source=mastodon&utm-campaign=socialnetworks&utm-term=sks

Making fact briefs available as videos on Youtube

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending harmfully misleading claims, produced primarily for use by thinly-resourced newswrooms but also directly available to the general public. We announced this (renewed) collaboration in April 2024 in a blog post and have published more than 30 new fact briefs since then. Each fact brief comes with a unique and short URL which is ideal to use when linking to it. A screenshot of each fact brief is also available as a 'share graphic' and you can access all of them via a link like this one: https://skepticalscience.com/pics/FactBrief-1970s-ShareGraphic.jpg. You only need to use the relevant 'code' which you can identify in the list of all published fact briefs:

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Skeptical ScienceApr 27, 2025

Having wended her way by train to Vienna, Austria for the 2025 #EGU 2025 General Assembly, our volunteer Baerbel Winkler will be presenting a synopsis of our possibly unparalleled except by the UN translation effort, our lessons learned and challenges still to be met.

Much of our #ClimateMythDebunking and other content is available in 29 languages. It's a massive effort, remarkable as the product of all-volunteer energy.

Details at the link-- including how to help.

https://skepticalscience.com/egu25-presentation-about-translations.html?utm-source=mastodon&utm-campaign=socialnetworks&utm-term=sks

EGU2025 - Presentation about our translation activities

As mentioned in the recently published prolog to EGU2025 article, I submitted an abstract to talk about some of our translation activities and the challenges we have been facing with those. This blog post is a 'companion article' to that presentation in session EOS4.3 Geoethics and Global Anthropogenic Change: Geoscience for Policy, Action and Education in Addressing the Climate and Ecological Crises and will go into somewhat greater details than is possible in the 8 minutes available during the oral session which will be happening on May 2. Please note that what follows is by no means meant as a crtiicism of the many volunteer translator teams, of whom we are very appreciative for the work they did over the years, creating the many translations available on our website!

Skeptical Science
Skeptical ScienceApr 21, 2025

Here's our latest roundup of news related to #GlobalWarming and #ClimateChange. This edition of our weekly feature includes 28 articles, conveniently collated into categories, efficient to access.

If you'd like to have a tap on the shoulder when we publish these and our other regular and special features supporting #ClimateMythDebunking and helping us to squarely face our #ClimateAccident, you can easily join our mailing list. We --never-- "share" addresses.

https://skepticalscience.com/2025-SkS-Weekly-News-Roundup_16.html?utm-source=mastodon&utm-campaign=socialnetworks&utm-term=sks

2025 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #16

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 13, 2025 thru Sat, April 19, 2025. This week's roundup is again published by category and sorted by number of articles included in each. The formatting is a bit different compared to previous weeks, though. We are still interested in feedback to hone the categorization, so if you spot any clear misses and/or have suggestions for additional categories, please let us know in the comments. Thanks!

Skeptical Science
Skeptical ScienceApr 12, 2025

Our online course Denial101x delivered in collaboration with Australia's University of Queensland recently concluded, after 9 years of tutelage.

We're sad to see it ended (circumstances beyond our control) but:

* Students enrolled: 50k+
* Student learning goals achieved: >88%
* Countries reached: 156

We've woven much of the course material into our extensive inventory of #ClimateMythDebunking resources.

More reflections on this fruitful experience at the link.

https://skepticalscience.com/mooc-denial101x-run-its-course.html?utm-source=mastodon&utm-campaign=socialnetworks&utm-term=sks

Our MOOC Denial101x has run its course

Many of you will know that in collaboration with the University of Queensland we created and ran the massive open online course (MOOC) 'Denial101x - Making sense of climate science denial' on the edX platform. Within nine years - between April 2015 and February 2024 - we offered 15 runs of our MOOC, most of them long-running versions in self-paced mode but also a few delivered as shorter paced versions with new lectures starting on a weekly schedule.

Skeptical Science
Skeptical ScienceMar 6, 2025

The fundamental mechanisms of our accidentally heating our planet are not very complicated in terms of material effects.

We've made it harder for energy to escape the planet, without a commensurate decrease in energy input.

So we warm up. It's that simple.

But when it comes to obfuscation and distraction, #GlobalWarming is a fertile ground. All sorts of complexities can be introduced, to confuse.

Here's the latest collaborative #ClimateMythDebunking from #Gigafact and Skeptical Science.

Skeptical ScienceDec 29, 2024

What's an "AIV?" Autonomous Information Vehicle, that's what.

It's our term for animated graphics we created to easily share in various locations, wherever the seemingly universal and immortal animated GIF scheme works.

AIVs present climate myth debunkings in step-by-step fashion. They can quickly stand in for laborious and endless typing when "somebody on the internet is wrong."

Here's an example. The rest are at the link, ready to release!

#ClimateMythDebunking

https://skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?c=15?utm-source=mastodon&utm-campaign=socialnetworks&utm-term=sks

Climate Graphics by Skeptical Science

Examines the science and arguments of global warming skepticism. Common objections like 'global warming is caused by the sun', 'temperature has changed naturally in the past' or 'other planets are warming too' are examined to see what the science really says.

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Skeptical ScienceDec 23, 2024

About 50 years ago and with fresh information (particularly the marine record of oxygen isotopes) we located our position on the chronology of successive continental-scale glaciations, "ice ages." Papers were published about this, making a splash in the popular press-- and later becoming fodder for people with a monetary stake in creating confusion.

The next ice age is a changing story, but not for the reasons touted by climate bunkaneers.

#ClimateMythDebunking

https://skepticalscience.com/fact-brief-iceage.html?utm-source=mastodon&utm-campaign=socialnetworks&utm-term=sks

Fact brief - Are we heading into an 'ice age'?

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.

Skeptical Science
Skeptical ScienceJun 24, 2024

Our #ClimateMythDebunking access statistics are a proxy for popularity of particular items of #ClimateBunk.

Per these stats the "MWP" or "Medieval Warming Period" has done a steady fair-to-middling trade in #ClimateConfusion, for many years.

Here's a new 160-word treatment, created in collaboration with #GigaFact and designed for quick-and-easy use by understaffed newsrooms.

This one's quite simple, a bit easier to fit into few words-- yet the myth still has legs.

https://skepticalscience.com/fact-brief-mwp.html

Fact Brief - Was the Medieval Warm Period a global event?

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by John Mason in collaboration with members from the Gigafact team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.

Skeptical Science
Show threadDoug BostromJun 1, 2024

@davidho

Something to pass along.

#ClimateMythDebunking

https://skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm

Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?

<p>Volcanoes emit around 0.3 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. This is about 1% of human CO2 emissions which is around 29 billion tonnes per year.</p>

Skeptical Science
Doug BostromJun 1, 2024

Happy (not sure that's _quite_ the right sentiment) to see @SkepticalScience's recent revamp of our #ClimateMythDebunking for the Medieval Warm Period cited in this Guardian fact check.

Along with two others.

We do volcanoes as well, but no complaints. :-)

Those of us too close to this topic think of these #ClimateMyths as old and harmless, but here's Reform UK breathing new life into 'em. Ignore at our peril.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/31/factcheck-no-richard-tice-volcanoes-are-not-to-blame-for-climate-change

Reality check: the Reform UK party’s claims on the climate crisis examined

Richard Tice made some eye-opening statements on the climate, and the manifesto is packed with even more falsehoods

The Guardian