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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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Talks and Presentations

List of talks

25 November 2019: SAP Community Call

Pre-recording of Bärbel Winkler's presentation for the SAP Community Call "Taking on fake news about climate change" on Nov. 25, 2019. More information about the presentation is available in a blog post on SAP Community. The presentation is available as a PDF-file for download here.

25 June 2019: Elders Climate Action

John Cook was invited to give the June National call for Elders Climate Action. The talk was live-illustrated by Nancy Margulies (illustrations below).

24 April 2019: Texas A&M University

John Cook gave an invited seminar "Responding to climate misinformation in a post-truth world" at Texas A&M University. The visit was sponsored by the Glasscock Center for Humanities Research and the Department of Atmospheric Sciences.

20 October 2018: CSICon Las Vegas

John Cook gave an invited talk "Taking on Fake News About Climate Change" at CSICon 2018 in Las Vegas.

9 April 2018: Pre-recording of EGU-Presention (BaerbelW)

While at EGU in Vienna, Baerbel Winkler was one of four panelists who gave a presentation in the short course "Debunking myths and fake news: how can geoscientists fight misinformation and false claims". The video below is the result of recording the presentation with audio in preparation for the session. You can download the presentation as PDF-file from here.

9 February 2018: University of California Irvine

The University of California Irvine invited John Cook to speak to their students on climate communication and responding to misinformation.

29 November, 2017: NOVA, Virginia

16 April 2017: George Mason University

Each year, George Mason University host a series of "lightning talks", where researchers have just 3 minutes to present their research results. John Cook presented his research into inoculation theory (and for the record, took exactly 2:54 minutes while still fitting in a plug for Denial101x).

19 March 2017: Weber State University

John Cook ran a 3.5 hour workshop "Responding to misinformation in the age of fake news" (45Mb Powerpoint) and presented a talk "Countering alternative facts and post-truthism" (37Mb powerpoint) at the Intermountain Sustainability Summit, hosted by Weber State University in Ogden, Utah.

8 March 2017: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

John Cook presented a talk Science communication & myth debunking at Skeptical Science, at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Unfortunately the talk wasn't recorded but the powerpoint is available for download (46Mb).

28 February 2017: Old Dominion University

John Cook presented a talk Science communication & responding to misinformation in the post-truth era, at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, hosted by the Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography .

12 December 2016: AGU Fall Meeting

John Cook presented a talk A Brief of History of Consensus (PPT 6.8Mb), outlining the misinformation campaign against consensus, the studies quantifying the level of scientific agreement and how to neutralise misinformation.

At the same session, Dana Nuccitelli presented a talk Global Temperature Projections by Mainstream Climate Scientists and Models.

28 October 2016: Conference on climate denial

The world's first research conference on climate denial was held at Linköping University, in the city of Norrköping, Sweden. I recorded a video talk for this conference (here are the Powerpoint slides for this talk).

27 June 2016: Royal Society of Tasmania Winter Series lecture

At the University of Tasmania, John Cook presented the 2016 Royal Society of Tasmania Winter Series lecture on 'The psychology of climate science denial', chaired by Her Excellency Kate Warner, Governor of Tasmania.

9 June 2016: AdelaideX seminar on designing & running a controversial MOOC

At the University of Adelaide, Carrie Finn and John Cook presented a seminar 'Conversations and Controversy: Managing and Engaging Online Communities in Denial101x'.

15 Apr 2016: iDEA workshop on debunking myths

At the 2016 annual conference for the Doctors for the Environment Australia, I presented a one hour workshop at the Royal Brisbane Hospital on the psychology of debunking myths. For the first half of the workshop, I explained the psychological research into debunking misinformation, concluding with the Fact-Myth-Fallacy structure of an effective debunking. Then the workshop split up into small groups to develop their own Fact-Fallacy debunking of a myth of their choice. Lastly, each group reported back with what they came up with, which resulted in some fascinating discussion in what was the key "factual alternative" to dislodge specific myths, and what fallacy did the myth employ. The below video features my initial talk on the psychology of debunking, and here are the PPT slides (with the videos removed to reduce file size).

9 Feb 2016: IPCC talk on misinformation

Plenary presentation on Tackling Misinformation and Misconceptions at the IPCC Expert Meeting on Communication in Oslo, Norway (starts around 6:00 mark).

19 September 2014: Bristol talk on Dogma vs Consensus

Dogma vs Consensus: Letting the Evidence Speak on Climate Change (8.5Mb Powerpoint).

A public talk hosted by the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol. YouTube of the talk available courtesy of the Cabot Institute.

28 May 2014: Webinar on debunking science denial

A webinar run by Joshua Rosenau at the National Center for Science Education, featuring John Cook and Shauna Theel from Media Matters for America.

7 March 2014: Climate Science Crash Course

A presentation by Dana Nuccitelli, environmental scientist and blogger at Skeptical Science and the Guardian. This talk was part of the Sacramento Faith and Climate Forum on March 7th, 2014.

12 October 2013: Psychology for a Safe Climate

The Importance of Consensus Information in Reducing the Biasing Influence of Worldview on Climate Change Attitudes (2.6Mb Powerpoint)

A talk presented via skype for the "Psychology for a Safe Climate" conference held in Melbourne, Australia.

30 September 2013: Global Change Institute lecture

Public talk at Global Change Institute on  Closing the consensus gap a key to increasing support for climate action. I go into why there is a scientific consensus on human-caused global warming, explain the research in our consensus paper published in Environmental Research Letters and answer 5 criticisms of our paper.

The talk featured a number of new powerpoint slides which anyone is welcome to reuse - here is the full Powerpoint file (5.5Mb). More details in this blog post about the talk.

14 July 2013: AYCC Powershift 2013

Responding to Climate Myths (12Mb Powerpoint)

A 90 minute presentation at the AYCC Powershift summit in Melbourne, covering the psychology of misinformation, examples of sticky messages and debunkings of a number of climate myths:

  • The golden rule of debunking: fight sticky ideas with stickier ideas
  • The 6 traits of sticky ideas: SUCCES (Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Story)
  • The 5 characteristics of consensus denial: FLICC (Fake Experts, Logical Fallacies, Impossible Expectations, Cherry Picking, Conspiracy Theories)

8 July 2013: Mathematics of Planet Earth conference

The Challenges of Communicating the Reality of Climate Change (PDF slides)

A plenary talk on the difficulties of communicating an abstract concept like climate change in a manner that is relevant and compelling to laypeople.

June 2013: Climate Action Summit

A plenary talk on physical science of climate change (okay, and a gratuitious mention of our consensus paper, it was only a month old!). This talk was reported by a journalist, resulting in media coverage in newspapers across the world.

13 June 2012: The Importance of Consensus Information

Talk presented at the AGU Chapman Conference on Climate Communication in Colorado.

3 Aug 2012: Climate Change and the Weightier Matters

Talk on a Christian view on climate change presented on 3 Aug 2012 at Emmanuel College, University of Queensland. I cover climate science, a quick Bible study, then I debunk some of the misinformation from the Cornwall Alliance.

5 Dec 2011: Effectively rebutting climate misinformation

Talk presented at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco, USA.

30 Nov 2011: Debunking Climate Myths in the Age of New Media

Talk presented on 30 Nov 2011 at the University of Victoria, Canada hosted by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions. In the first few moments, you can see me on the iPad, tweeting the URL of the live feed of the talk. Unfortunately, the immediate surge in traffic crashed the University server :-( More details on the PICS site...

25 Nov 2011: Global Warming - The Full Picture

A talk hosted TweedCAN, a group in the Tweed Shire just south of the Queensland/New South Wales border. TweedCAN have posted a video of the talk on their website and also embedded the Powerpoint slideshow, which I also include below. You can also download the Powerpoint.


The Consensus Project Website

THE ESCALATOR

(free to republish)


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