When climate change doubters misrepresented NASA findings in response to a Facebook post by Bill Nye, the space agency launched a series of corrections to set the facts straight.
Nye, “The Science Guy,” had posted a thread about prominent climate change critic Marc Morano turning down Nye’s $20,000 bet that 2010-2020 would be the hottest decade on record.
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The comments quickly turned into a debate with facts and figures being tossed around — some of them carelessly.
“Riiiiight,” commenter Fer Morales wrote, “Despite NASA confirming that fossil fuels are actually cooling the planet’s temperature, and that there’s more ice than in the last century in the polar caps. . .”
But NASA has never said anything of the sort, and the space agency, which generally avoids such social media back-and-forths, blasted-off with a series of charts, graphs, and other data, and chastised those who misquoted the agency’s findings.
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“Do not misrepresent NASA,” the space agency responded using its NASA Climate Change moniker. “Fossil fuels are not cooling the planet.”
Debate quickly shifted with doubters saying the world is warming, but there’s no proof humans are causing it—and accusing NASA of inaccurate data.
Then, they argued it could be caused by changes in the sun.
They may have missed the fact that NASA has been just about everywhere in the solar system.
“Other planets in the solar system are not warming,” NASA posted. “There is a small amount of evidence of seasonal changes in parts of the solar system, but there is no evidence of global warming anywhere—except on Earth.”
Maybe we need an adult version of “Bill Nye, The Science Guy” to educate more Americans about the dangers posed by climate change to populations around the world.
(READ more of the exchanges on Facebook)