The initial image is a size comparison between the statue of liberty and a wind turbine. The wind turbine is over ninety feet (about 28 meters) taller.
A commenter pretended to misinterpret the image as one of a wind turbine attacking the statue of liberty. The next commenter answered with an image of Don Quixote, a literary character who once thought a windmill was a monster and announced his plans to fight it. They are joking that if a wind turbine attacked the statue of liberty, Don Quixote would be willing to fight the wind turbine.
Incidentally, that scene led to the English idiom “tilting at windmills,” meaning a person who has not only disproportionate reactions of anger, but disproportionate reactions of anger to nonexistent challenges.
So all those people who are fighting to preserve coal jobs and the fossil fuel economy are….
actually…
tilting at windmills.
I feel like this is one of the very few times where explaining the joke leads to another one that everyone can now understand and laugh at
- The North Pole is 36 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than usual this winter. At first, scientists thought their equipment was broken because this is so unusual. Source: http://wapo.st/2mXi69A
- Sixteen of the seventeen warmest years on record have occurred since 2001. Source: http://go.nasa.gov/2iRikw1
- Miami’s streets now flood on bright, sunny days due to sea level rise caused by melting glaciers. Source: http://nyti.ms/2mfOXlC
- According to the U.N., approximately 150 species go extinct every day. The leading causes are human development and climate change. Studies show that extinction rates are up to 100 times higher than they would be without human influence. Source: http://bit.ly/2cuy57c
- The United States is the only developed nation with a conservative party that still denies climate change is a human caused issue. Source: http://bit.ly/2dNoJmo
- NASA confirmed that 2016 was the hottest year on record, ever. The same goes for the last three years. Source: http://wapo.st/2mXjE3p
- The U.S. military, including Trump-appointed Defense Secretary James Mattis, has stated that climate change poses a significant threat to our national security. Source: http://n.pr/2mXA2OY
- According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (a non-partisan government organization), flooding is estimated to be from 300 percent to 900 percent more frequent within U.S. coastal communities than it was just 50 years ago, due to melting glaciers. This flooding costs tax payers billions of dollars, takes lives each year, and is expected to become even more frequent as climate change continues. Source: http://bit.ly/1uhNNXh
- Here is a link to a graph created using NASA data which clearly shows that greenhouse gases are the cause of global temperature rise: http://bloom.bg/2hxsT7D
I often encounter climate change deniers in the work that I do, so I share these facts in the hopes that they will help you convince your skeptical friends that climate change is real. One of the best ways we can act on climate change is by bringing it up in conversations with friends and in school, to help people wrap their minds around this complex and continually growing issue.
