NASA took on climate change deniers in the comments of a popular Bill Nye Facebook post.
(Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
Facebook comment sections can often foster misinformation in posts about climate change but this time, NASA decided they weren't going to sit on the sidelines.
The federal agency took time this week to reiterate the science in the comments of a story that Bill Nye ("The Science Guy") posted about himself asking a climate change denier to make a $20,000 bet that2016 would be one of the ten hottest years on record.
One of the Facebook commenters erroneously claimed that NASA had said fossil fuels were cooling the planet's temperature."Do not misrepresent NASA," replied the agency's official Climate Change Facebook group. "Fossil fuels are not cooling the planet.
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NASA responded to climate change deniers on Facebook, reiterating the science.
(Facebook)
"NASA loves to fudge the numbers anyway," another commenter countered, but the space department was quick to respond.
"NASA does not 'fudge' numbers," NASA hit back. "All data requires statistical adjustments to remove bias. temperatures are adjusted to coordinate time of day, remove the urban heat island effect, account for station moves etc. This is all very clearly documented. These adjustments are performed to make the data more accurate."
When another posted a skeptical reply, the government agency gave a feisty repartee.
"Other planets in the solar system are not warming. There is a small acount of evidence of seasonal changes in parts of the solar system, but there is no evidence of global warming anyway--except on Earth," NASA replied.
A spokesman from NASA told weather.com that the space department's social media comments didn't represent a change in communication policy.
"NASA routinely communicates to the public about the results of NASA-related research on climate change and other Earth science results," Stephen Cole, the agency's public affairs officer,explained. "NASA is confident of the quality of the annual global temperature data released in coordination with NOAA. The agency stands by previous scientifically based conclusions regarding global temperatures. Scientists at NASA and NOAA publicly have described the techniques used in this analysis and freely provide their programs for scrutiny by the scientific community and interested public."
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