20 of the internet’s best responses to climate change deniers

Brace yourself for perhaps the most shocking thing you’ll read in the next five minutes: Donald Trump tweeted something super-duper stupid about climate change last week, and that unleashed a torrent of tweets from people who wanted to light him up for it.

In a dumb tweet for the ages, Trump mixes up weather and climate — like virtually every climate change denier does — and smugly asserts that cold weather debunks the entirety of climate science research.

In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2019

But here’s the thing, and I’m about to shock you twice in one piece, and for that I’m dearly sorry, but…Trump isn’t the only climate denier on the planet. He’s not even the only climate denier on social media. In fact, the social media titans like Twitter and Facebook have as many climate deniers as they do Nazi sympathizers on their platforms. This fact is, undeniably, depressing.

Thankfully for all of us, scientifically literate people often wade into the morass of moronic hot takes on the “hoax” of climate change. Here are twenty of social media’s best responses to the lunacy of climate denialism.

We simply couldn’t start this tweet round-up without mentioning Dan’s super-viral response to Trump’s idiocy we cited above. All Dan did was to answer Trump’s question with scientific facts, and that tweet blew up far and wide.

People are finding out very quickly that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a black belt in Social Media-Fu. When the Trump administration’s chief propaganda officer tried to smear her intelligence with Bible talk, AOC flung the Good Book right back in response.

Right-wing pundit Jim Hoft apparently thinks that plants get their energy from the sun’s warmth, not its light. Thankfully, Twitter was there to set him straight.

In the Trumpian Era, it’s been really fascinating to see people like the folks who run Dictionary.com get into the business of subtle shade tossing. Here, they use actual definitions of actual words to, once again, point out that weather and climate aren’t the same GD thing.

Using a denier’s own screenshot against them: savage AF.

Great clapback, but unless this book comes in picture or pop-up format, there’s no way Trump would remotely understand it.

It’s not just climate change deniers that need to keep their facts straight. Even outlets like CNN, which don’t play the game of climate denialism, have to be put in check for their messaging from time to time.

“I teach this stuff to 12 year olds.” Epic.

Kaitlin Bennett got Internet famous for carrying her high-powered rifle onto Kent State’s campus to take her graduation photos with. Because nothing says “genius” like taking a rifle to the scene of the one most famous mass shootings in American history, no one could be surprised that Kait doesn’t get how weather and climate work, but thankfully this Twitter commenter was there to point out the ironic truth in her stupid tweet.

Sure it’s petty. Sure it’s childish. Sure it’s immature. But all those things describe our science denying president, and he still gets to keep his job, so we’re going to allow this beat down.

Every pedantic, long-winded, scientifically illiterate screed deserves a point-by-point dissection and debunking like this.

Another approach with Bennett — remind her she’s not qualified to speak on the subject.

A lot of smart people try to teach a lot of dumb people stuff on TV, so it was an idiotic point to be made anyway, but glad this commenter was there anyway.

15 year old climate activist Greta Thunberg is becoming quite popular for her willingness to speak truth to power at such a young age. Amazing that people four times as old as Greta, with nowhere near as much to lose, deny the truth she’s handing out for free.

This is what happens when you talk shit to someone and don’t check their Twitter bio first.

I would vote for this recent high school grad for any office they run for. I would change the laws about natural born citizenship being a requirement for the presidency if they wanted to run and weren’t from here.

Trollololololololol! Someone call the burn unit. We have an orange man in desperate need of some kind of salve.

When they posted their one sentence, sarcastic comment, they probably weren’t expecting the intellectual drubbing they received.

And, finally, it’s an older meme, but it stays sadly relevant as long as climate deniers pretend that they’re not seeing the stuff their eyes are telling they see.

h/t Bored Panda

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Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook and Instagram, but not Twitter because he has a potty mouth.