The Sceptics

Question 1

is scepticism political?

Answer 1

no

there are right and left wing sceptics

Question 2

why are there sceptics?

Answer 2

• faith in unregulated market forces
• faith in big energy companies
• faith that go d created world in perfect form
• humans are big enough to damage the world
• hatred of hippies
• don’t want envtlism, conservation to get in way of business profit

Question 3

what’s the dunning-kruger effect?

Answer 3

example of cognitive bias in which people reach wrong conclusions and choices. their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realise it
rate their own ability above others

Question 4

tabacco / climate sceptics

Answer 4

like tobacco companies did with links to illness, climate sceptics say doubt is a way of competition and to put the public off a product

Question 5

good scepticism

Answer 5

e. g. you’d think tree ring size would go up with increase in warmer temps, but it has gone down
- based on facts

Question 6

cherry picking

Answer 6

some climate scientists cherrypick info to show what they want to get across
e.g. hide the medieval warm period and little ice age
or don’t give a global construction, but just UK

Question 7

why people might not trust/use the hockey stick

Answer 7

think its unreliable due to tree rings
however, there are so many hockey stick graphs based on sediment from salt marshes, oxygen isotope, ocean sediment cores etc that all show the same hockey stick trend