 How do you respond to people who don't accept the science of climate change? 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. One of the reasons why it's very difficult to change the mind of people who are committed already to rejecting the science, one of the reasons that's very difficult is because you're challenging their worldviews if you are trying to change their belief about climate change. In my experience it's really hard to convert real believers on anything that you will just type yourself as an unreliable source if you contradict the things they really cherish. People reject the science in the first place because it is incompatible with their deeply held worldviews. Most people who reject climate science do so because they fear not for the planet but for the interference with the economy, with the free market. Some people are not interested in either evidence or reason. It's just ideology. So there's an ideological or personal psychological barrier there. There's also a lot of people that have already made up their mind as almost part of their identity that they're not going to accept it and those people you kind of can't do anything with. 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. There are some people who I think the more you give them facts, the less, the more they will hold on to the beliefs that they already had. So in those cases I'm not really sure what benefit there is in having a conversation because it's not actually a conversation. Now if you then as a researcher or communicator present them with more evidence that climate science is real, then chances are that the recipients of the message are digging themselves deeper into their existing position and actually believe even more strongly that that is not the case. And we have the experimental data to show that in a lot of different circumstances. It doesn't just have to be climate science. It's whenever people's worldviews are at stake, then presenting them with corrective information can have a so-called backfire effect of making them believe the mistaken information even more strongly. And if you have a belief that is really central to your identity, so if you have a really strong belief, then you will defend it. You're defending your identity, who you are. And if someone comes along and challenges it, what happens is that you're not going to be convinced by what they say because they're challenging your worldview. You're actually more likely to become even more extreme in your belief. So that is another reason why engagement with people who deny climate science is inadvisable because you're just strengthening and reaffirming their belief if you're not careful with your message. And also you need to accept the fact that there's people out there who will not change your mind whatever evidence you give them, but also consider the fact that that's just a very small minority. Most people, you know, you can talk to them and they might change their mind if you present your case. In order to do the one thing that matters, which is to mitigate climate change, in order to do that, you don't have to change the minds or opinions of 5% of the population. It's absolutely unnecessary. Politically unnecessary. It is a waste of resources to try and communicate or convince people who reject scientific evidence because the reason they reject the scientific evidence is not because they've evaluated the evidence rationally. It is because they're motivated to reject it by other variables. Max Planck came out and said, look, you know, you can't convince your opponents of an idea that it's true. Unfortunately, you just need to teach the next generation as they come through the system how this physics works and they'll grow up understanding and that's cool. In any survey or any election campaign, you know, there's a huge group in the middle that is not committed and that can be swayed in the these are the independent voters, the uncommitted voters that you hear so much about in the run up to an election. There's kind of like a climate change swing voter, right, that there's sort of people in the middle that depending on the conditions, and those conditions might be a change in temperature, but there might be other current events as well, right, whatever else is going on in the news, they may say, oh, you know what, I am concerned, I am worried about climate change now, whereas the next year they may not be. And, you know, if we call them climate change swing voters, but as far as I understand, there are other papers that have done analyses like this and have found that, you know, people are sort of in the independent part of the political spectrum, so neither left nor right, those are the ones whose opinions were most likely to change with temperature. So focus your attempts to, you know, convey your message on the majority of people who are willing to engage in conversation. When I try to deal with the public in general, I'm really trying to reach, I suppose, what you might call the large uninformed masses, maybe that's a derogatory term, but, you know, many people are just not very well informed about climate change. The small percentage of the deniers, I'm not going to convince them. It is important to talk to the other 90% of people who are not denying that the climate is changing. And it is important for them to know, first of all, that they're in the vast majority themselves. They also have to know that there's a vast consensus among scientists, because it turns out that telling people about the consensus makes them more aware of the science and makes them more accepting of the science.