edX is offering a course titled:
Denial101x Making Sense of Climate Science Denial
This is not a joke. It's a serious course. I've signed up for it.
So now edX is using a pejorative, inaccurate rhetorical term as a legitimate basis for academic study.
So far, from what I've seen the course sets up a series of straw men to attack. It should be interesting to see how the course progresses.
Look at the description of the course, which starts off on a false premise. The 97% study is a false representation of the results of the survey it purports to rely on. Note how the description conflates "the scientific community" with "97% of climate scientists," and doesn't acknowledge that the 97% is not a count of climate scientists but of selected articles surveyed in a meta study.
About this course
In public discussions, climate change is a highly controversial topic. However, in the scientific community, there is little controversy with 97% of climate scientists concluding humans are causing global warming.
- Why the gap between the public and scientists?
- What are the psychological and social drivers of the rejection of the scientific consensus?
- How has climate denial influenced public perceptions and attitudes towards climate change?
This course examines the science of climate science denial.
We will look at the most common climate myths from “global warming stopped in 1998” to “global warming is caused by the sun” to “climate impacts are nothing to worry about.”
We’ll find out what lessons are to be learnt from past climate change as well as better understand how climate models predict future climate impacts. You’ll learn both the science of climate change and the techniques used to distort the science.
With every myth we debunk, you’ll learn the critical thinking needed to identify the fallacies associated with the myth. Finally, armed with all this knowledge, you’ll learn the psychology of misinformation. This will equip you to effectively respond to climate misinformation and debunk myths.
This isn’t just a climate MOOC; it’s a MOOC about how people think about climate change.
What you'll learn
- How to recognise the social and psychological drivers of climate science denial
- How to better understand climate change: the evidence that it is happening, that humans are causing it and the potential impacts
- How to identify the techniques and fallacies that climate myths employ to distort climate science
- How to effectively debunk climate misinformation
Meet the instructors
John Cook
Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change InstituteUniversity of Queensland
Daniel Bedford
Professor of Physical Geography and Climate ScienceWeber State University, Utah
Gavin Cawley
Senior Lecturer in Computing SciencesUniversity of East Anglia
Kevin Cowtan
Research Fellow, Department of ChemistryUniversity of York, England
Sarah A. Green
Professor of ChemistryMichigan Technological University
Peter Jacobs
Graduate Student, Department of Environmental Science and PolicyGeorge Mason University
Scott Mandia
Professor of Earth and Space Sciences and Assistant Chair of the Physical Sciences DepartmentSuffolk County Community College, New York
Dana Nuccitelli
Environmental ScientistSkeptical Science
Mark Richardson
ResearcherCalTech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Keah Schuenemann
Meteorology ProfessorMetropolitan State University of Denver
Andy Skuce
Independent Geoscience Consultant Skeptical Science
Robert Way
PhD Candidate in the Department of GeographyUniversity of Ottawa, Canada
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg
Director of the Global Change Institute (GCI) and Professor of Marine ScienceUniversity of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia
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