About Skeptical Science

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Our Mission

Our mission is simple: debunk misinformation that is harming our species’ ability to deal with climate change caused by excessive anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. We do this by presenting peer-reviewed science and explaining the techniques of climate science denial, discourses of climate delay, and climate solutions denial.

About Skeptical Science

We accomplish our mission through the publication of information and resources for educators, communicators, scientists, and the general public. A key feature of these resources is an encyclopedic list of evidence-based refutations of climate misinformation. Skeptical Science is considered an authoritative resource by the climate scientist community for rebutting climate misinformation, and is often listed by media sources alongside authoritative sources such as NASA and the IPCC.

Skeptical Science are proactive with public engagement activities, making their climate communication more accessible and engaging to the public. This includes development of smartphone apps, providing interactive access to climate science and critical thinking content. Team members regularly conduct presentations and workshops for various groups including scientific groups, students, and environmental NGOs. The team developed a Massive Open Online Course in collaboration with the University of Queensland and continues to provide support for this course, offering pupil interaction, moderation, and ongoing content curation.

The Skeptical Science community consists of a global team of volunteers. Volunteers write blog posts, maintain rebuttals, create graphics, or author useful software tools. Furthermore, they contribute by moderating the comments sections, editing and proofreading posts, sharing information with visitors, responding to emails, and providing technical support. Volunteers from all over the world have translated selected content into more than 20 different languages. By far most of this work is done in the volunteer contributor's spare time with some project-related tasks done via paid contract on an as needed basis. Everybody helps as much as time allows and where their interests take them.

All original material published by Skeptical Science undergoes an internal peer-review process, via shared drafts of blog posts and rebuttals for others to comment on or for collaboration in the writing. Readers can suggest changes to published rebuttals through a Google-form which are then discussed internally and acted upon as requried. Please check our editorial policy page for more details.

Governance

Skeptical Science is a non-profit science education organization registered as a 501(c)(3) in the U.S., with the goal of raising public understanding of climate change. Please visit this page to learn more about our Board of Directors and our Supported Projects.

Funding

Operational expenses to maintain the website and the funds to support our projects are currently (May 2023) still covered by a combination of internal funding provided by team members - namely Doug Bostrom and Bärbel Winkler - as well as some regular small-scale reader contributions.

About John Cook, who launched the Skeptical Science website in 2007
Skeptical Science was originally created and maintained by John Cook, now a Senior Research Fellow with the Melbourne Centre for Behaviour Change at the University of Melbourne. John co-authored the college textbooks Climate Change: Examining the Facts with Weber State University professor Daniel Bedford. He was also a coauthor of the textbook Climate Change Science: A Modern Synthesis and the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand. He wrote and drew the book Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change.

In 2013, he lead-authored anaward-winning paper analyzing the scientific consensus on climate change that has been highlighted by President Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron. In 2015, he developed a Massive Open Online Course on climate science denial with the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland (see a full list of his scholarly publications). He has no affiliations with any political organisations or groups.