 Skepticism is the underlying principle of science. We as scientists are skeptical about things. We try to knock theories on the head and try to show what's wrong with them. That is what science is about and the whole process of peer review that you have to subject your work to skeptical review by other experts. I mean, that skepticism is built into the scientific process. There was a poll conducted recently here in the United States by some religious organizations and they used the term skeptics to describe people who essentially are denying or dismissing climate science. And we felt like that was very unfortunate because true skepticism is really the lifeblood of science and yet it has been kind of hijacked in a certain way by people who say, well, we don't believe in climate science because we're skeptical of some of these claims that are made. If you just ignore all of the evidence that refutes your explanation, you're not doing science. That's, to me, the sine qua nona being a pseudo-scientist. They have no real interest in better understanding what's going on in our world and that's the fundamental distinction to me. On the one hand, people who really do love understanding and on the other hand, people who really couldn't care less about understanding. One of the interesting things in this whole area is that the people who deny climate science call themselves skeptics. And that's quite interesting because their actions aren't skeptical at all because they will accept with great gullibility pretty much any false information about climate science that's out there even if it is mutually incoherent. Climate denial is increasingly understood by the psychology community and there are some fairly accessible books ranging from things like Naomi Oreski's book on motions of doubt which gives you a really good insight on some of the problems but there's also books in psychology. Climate change denial in the United States is almost entirely motivated by politics. A lot of scientists have thought that it was a problem of science illiteracy, that it was a problem of public understanding, that if we just explained the science better that then we would solve this problem. And that doesn't work because the problem is not being driven by lack of access to information although that may play a role in some cases. The problem is being driven by people not wanting to believe the science because they don't like its implications. When it comes to the drivers of belief or acceptance of scientific findings, in particular climate change, then what we find is that one of the most important factors is a person's worldview or you can call it a political ideology, their belief in things such as the free market. It's frustrating because there shouldn't be a serious role for politics in climate science in my opinion. The science is science. Science denial often will cherry pick a scientist or a sentence from something that a scientist wrote and say, here's a scientist who says that climate change is not happening. Here's a scientist and sure there are other scientists out there who say it is happening but there are two equal and opposite experts so there's a debate. Let's just have the debate. Make it seem as if there are just these two equal sides. The use of scientists with credentials is absolutely critical to this strategy because if a tobacco industry executive said, well, you know, I'm not convinced that smoking is really harmful, that wouldn't pass the laugh test. But if a distinguished scientist says it, then it seems like there's a scientific debate. And so a journalist who might not feel compelled to quote a tobacco industry executive will feel compelled to quote a distinguished scientist. You attack the science, you make it seem as if the science, evolution, climate change, vaccines, whatever it might be is not credible, not widely accepted that scientists are all turning against it and any day now the whole thing is going to collapse. Perhaps it's only being propped up by some conspiracy of scientists who are working behind the scenes to exclude contrary voices. It's very difficult if they won't take notice, if they won't believe the figures. What can you say? It seems to be an extraordinary offensive thing to do to say to a scientist, your figures are wrong. One crucial question that society is confronting is how to deal with the expressions of denial that are so common on the internet and on blogs. And the answer to that I think is that it is absolutely essential to be driven by data, by research, by empirical findings and to look at what the data in cognitive science and psychology, what they tell us about the problem. When you rebut something, you also have to explain to people why it is that they shouldn't believe this misinformation and what is true instead. And there's even great posters which show you the psychological trick that someone trying to deny climate change is using and why it's falsifiable. It's worth knowing about those things so you can see the techniques being used against you. True skeptics reject things that are false but they're also endorsing things that are true. And that is the most important distinction between skepticism and the rejection of science. In some way I think skeptical science has done a great job of reclaiming that word for science. And that's really important.