Top 10 Favorite Climate Change Mic Drops
Originally published on The Climate Reality Project.
Someone hand these heroes a medal for standing up for scientific facts.
Ah, social media. Where anyone, and everyone, with an opinion can (and does) publicize their thoughts to the world. And when it comes to climate change and global warming, things can get… well, heated.
Despite the fact that over 97 percent of climate scientists agree climate change is real and caused by humans, some individuals continue to publicly doubt and deny the facts on social media.
Fortunately, there are heroes sticking up for scientific fact, and in the process, have mastered the art of the rebuttal. Here are 10 of our favorite “climate change mic-drops” – when the response was so perfect that nothing further was necessary.
1. Bill Nye
Want a quick way to close down a climate denier? Put some money on the line. Bill Nye offered up $20,000 of his own money to climate change deniers Joe Bastardi and Marc Morano in a mic-dropping climate change bet. The first wager, worth $10,000, contends that 2016 will be among the top-10 hottest years ever recorded. The Science Guy also bet Joe and Marc another $10,000 that the decade 2010 to 2020 will prove to be the hottest decade ever recorded.
You can probably bet what happened next: nothing. Neither Bastardi or Morano took him up on the bet.
2. NASA
After news broke of this high-rolling bet, climate change deniers swarmed on Bill Nye’s Facebook page. Fortunately, scientists at NASA Climate Change stepped in with their own mic drop to set the record straight.
3. Brian Cox
Physicist Brian Cox spent more than a reasonable amount of time explaining the reality of climate change to avowed Australian climate denier Senator Malcolm Roberts during British TV program Q&A. But pointing to a graph showing the clearly upward trend in warming wouldn’t convince Roberts. So he decided it was time to drop the mic. On national television.
“NASA? The people who landed men on the moon. The accusation that NASA, the Australians, the Met Office in UK, everybody has collaborated to manipulate global temperature data is quite … [so] they’ve all manipulated it in the same way and accidentally got to the same answer, is that what you’re saying?#8221;
4. John Oliver (with help from Bill Nye)
John Oliver perfectly demonstrated what a “fair and balanced” climate change debate would look like… if the number of debaters were statistically representative of how many scientists believe climate change is real versus how many don’t. The results are obvious: when you take away the false constraints of a TV news program, climate science isn’t up for debate.