Quantifying the Impact of Skeptical Science Rebuttals in Reducing Climate Misperceptions

Abstract. Misinformation about climate change causes societal damage in a number of ways and consequently, resources are required to support interventions that counter their influence. Aiming to meet this need, Skeptical Science is a highly-visited website featuring 250 rebuttals of misinformation about climate change. The rebuttals are written at multiple levels – basic, intermediate, and advanced – in order to reach as wide an audience as possible. This study collects survey data from visitors to the website, measuring their belief in climate facts and myths before and after reading a rebuttal. Our data found that a plurality of visitors were already highly convinced regarding climate facts, indicating many visitors come to the site not to answer unresolved questions but to gather resources and answers. We found that the rebuttals were effective in reducing belief in climate myths but that some rebuttals show a concerning reduction in belief in climate facts. The greatest improvement occurred with visitors who began with the most inaccurate climate perceptions. This indicates that the website is useful for two main audiences – those who are convinced about climate change but looking for material to support their own climate communication efforts, and those who disagree with climate facts but are open to new information. We examine potential ways that Skeptical Science rebuttals could be updated to improve their performance in raising climate literacy and critical thinking skills.