Our warm congratulations to John Cook, the creator of the widely respected SkepticalScience website, co-author of Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand, and a regular on The Climate Show with Gareth and Glenn. He has won the NSW Government Eureka Prize for Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge. Here’s the statement put out by the University of Queensland (UQ):
UQ alumnus Mr John Cook, the creator of SkepticalScience.com and a new appointment to UQ’s Global Change Institute (GCI), won the NSW Government Eureka Prize for Advancement of Climate Change Knowledge.
The prize is awarded to an Australian individual, group or organisation for work that motivates action to reduce the impacts of climate change.
Mr Cook is Research Fellow in Climate Change Communication at the GCI and won the Eureka Prize for his work in communicating science to an online audience.
In his new position at UQ, Mr Cook will focus on the effective communication of the science around climate change and, working with the GCI team, enhance the delivery and use of evidence-based information by business, government and the wider community.
A longer statement from the Australian Museum can be found here. I particularly liked this piece from a local newspaper which had interviewed John when he was shortlisted for the award:
The co-author of the book Climate Change Denial: Heads in the Sand said his interest in climate change was also motivated by “social justice”.
“Once I started looking into the science about what climate change means I found the impacts of climate change has the greatest effect on the poorest developing countries, while they’re the countries that contribute to it the least,” Mr Cook said.
“That’s what made me so interested and passionate about the subject, the social justice element to it.”
Joe Romm at Climate Progress has described the award as richly deserved. We couldn’t agree more.
Great news – and very well deserved!
What Bryan and bill says plus 1.
Great work and desperately needed.
John Cook’s site is the one I refer others to most often. I congratulate him on a richly-deserved award. And what he says about social justice goes for me, too.