One of the most outspoken deniers of the relationship between fossil fuel burning and climate change in America has refused a $20,000 bet that the planet will continue to warm.
Bill Nye “The Science Guy” offered the two bets to Marc Morano, a Fox News regular from the conservative think tank, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT). Nye not only bet Morano that 2016 would be one of the hottest years on record, but that the current decade would also be one of the hottest of all time.
Morano turned down both bets, saying that it would be “silly” to take the bets when it was clear that the official records would continue to show the effects of global warming. Nye made the bets during an unscreened interview requested by Morano, who is currently promoting his new film, Climate Hustle.
The film sets out to disprove global warming by having a number of global warming deniers regurgitate the usual debunked claims. According to Variety, it has also been endorsed by Sarah Palin.
Despite that fact that 14 of the 16 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, and 2015 was the hottest year on record, deniers continue to claim man-made climate change is a hoax perpetuated by greedy climate scientists.
According to Palin:
“Climate change is to this century what Eugenics was to the last century.”
Morano’s film will be distributed by Fathom Events and shown in 400 theaters across the US on May 2. Nye agreed to take part because he hoped it would encourage journalists to ask more politicians and decision makers decisive questions about their views on climate change. He criticized Morano’s opinions and on-camera performance and confronted him about publishing the email addresses of scientists who do not deny climate change, in order for them to be harassed. Nye even showed Morano a chart of land and satellite-based temperature readings which support global warming, and questioned the example he was setting for his own children.
Morano had this to say:
“I did turn down Nye’s temperature bets. I told him that according to the official surface temperature records of course 2016, with strong El Nino, would be one of the ‘hottest’ or near ‘hottest’ on ‘record.’ I explained to Nye the official surface data always seems to be claiming ‘hottest’ year. So a bet on the obvious was silly. The same goes for ‘hottest’ decade bet.”
Even while Marc Morano promotes stories on “global cooling” on his CFACT ClimateDepot website, he will not bet against the “obvious” heating of our planet.
Watch Nye and Morano in the video below:
[DeSmogBlog] Image via screen grab
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