The good news: Many members of the general public have a pretty decent grasp of climate science, according to an online survey conducted by researchers in Germany. The bad news: they’re not as confident in that knowledge as they should be.

Why that matters: discussions of climate change in the media and elsewhere are often a mixed-up stew of accurate science, uncertainty, and outright disinformation. In such an environment, it’s easy for tentative truth to be swamped by false certainty.