Oh, Just NASA Lurking on Facebook to Shut Down Climate Change Deniers

When you’re a Facebook page called NASA Climate Change (or when you run one, because NASA’s Facebook pages are probably not sentient—probably), a climate change denier claiming to be supported by NASA while leaving a Facebook message for Bill Nye might as well be your bat signal. Exactly that situation arose just days ago, and NASA Climate Change descended to exact justice on its unwitting prey.

Nye posted an article about a meeting he had with Marc Morano, producer of climate change denial movie Climate Hustle, which makes the odd charge that there’s some kind of left wing conspiracy involving climate change in an attempt to push a “green,” renewable, sustainable energy “agenda.” (Yup! You caught us! We want our civilization’s energy sources to be sustainable long-term. We’re so ashamed.) Anyway, Nye offered Morano a few bets on the future of the Earth’s temperature (as you can see in the video of their chat above). He captioned his post, “Climate denier (extreme doubter) won’t take the bets ’cause he knows what’s up re: global temperatures.” From Morano’s point of view, taking the bets would be silly because of the conspiracy that would ensure the official numbers showed warming whether or not there was any.

But of course, Facebook commenters could just sit back and allow Morano to corner the market on their usual absurdity, and one user (who shall remain anonymous here) replied, “Riiiiight, 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. And the fact that the so-called rises of the sea levels have not materialized, and that any real scientist doesn’t back up man-made climate change at all, since it’s a cycle that has existed even before we did. Yep, solid science, leftards.” For those not 100% familiar with angry-conspiracy-theorist-relative-on-Facebook dialect (lucky you), it appears that adding “tards” to the end of something signifies just how reasonable, even-handed, and worthwhile your opinion is.

Anyway, NASA wasn’t having this nonsense of being dragged in to back up someone’s climate change denial, and they shut it down quickly, simply responding, “Do not misrepresent NASA. Fossil fuels are not cooling the planet.” When claiming that someone supports your viewpoint in a public forum where they might find out, it’s generally best to make sure that they actually do to avoid this kind of burn. 1,000 bonus points for NASA. … Now cue everyone complaining that this is what “our tax dollars” are being used for.

(via RawStory, image via Mat Hampson on Flickr)

—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—

Follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google+.