I have been refuting the online lies of the climate science deniers since the late 1990s. During all that time, I think I have met just three deniers who had even simple knowledge of the basic science. Everybody else follows the same pattern:
1. Restate bullet points they read on a denier blog.
2. When refuted, repeat the bullet point with more emphasis.
3. When again refuted, resort to vituperation.
3a. Or, instead of responding with text, post some gif containing obscene content that might slip past the moderators.
I'm not as stubborn as they are, but I feel a responsibility to show lurkers just how wrong they are. I go through maybe three or four cycles with the deniers before walking away.
The apropos phrase for these people is "Never in doubt, and never correct." Most know next to nothing. The very few who can assemble nouns and verbs into cogent sentences are mostly just slinging around fragments of factoids they picked up without understanding. Just the other day I had one fellow talking about temperature rise during the Eemian. Sounds impressive, right? But when challenged, he resorted to vague gobbledygook about rock strata. He even denied that CO2 absorbs and re-radiates any significant amount of IR.
Here's the killer argument that always demolishes them:
"If solar power output were to increase by 1%, by what percentage would average global surface temperatures rise?"
I chose this because it is phrased in a manner that the answer can be found with a simple Internet search. It always stumps them. Any third- or fourth- year physics undergraduate can figure out the answer off the top of their head.
I have been refuting the online lies of the climate science deniers since the late 1990s. During all that time, I think I have met just three deniers who had even simple knowledge of the basic science. Everybody else follows the same pattern:
1. Restate bullet points they read on a denier blog.
2. When refuted, repeat the bullet point with more emphasis.
3. When again refuted, resort to vituperation.
3a. Or, instead of responding with text, post some gif containing obscene content that might slip past the moderators.
I'm not as stubborn as they are, but I feel a responsibility to show lurkers just how wrong they are. I go through maybe three or four cycles with the deniers before walking away.
The apropos phrase for these people is "Never in doubt, and never correct." Most know next to nothing. The very few who can assemble nouns and verbs into cogent sentences are mostly just slinging around fragments of factoids they picked up without understanding. Just the other day I had one fellow talking about temperature rise during the Eemian. Sounds impressive, right? But when challenged, he resorted to vague gobbledygook about rock strata. He even denied that CO2 absorbs and re-radiates any significant amount of IR.
Here's the killer argument that always demolishes them:
"If solar power output were to increase by 1%, by what percentage would average global surface temperatures rise?"
I chose this because it is phrased in a manner that the answer can be found with a simple Internet search. It always stumps them. Any third- or fourth- year physics undergraduate can figure out the answer off the top of their head.