Challenge a liar often enough, and he’ll get tangled in his own lies. This is what just happened to @robertocgatti on Twitter:

The time series posted by @BartWvanAssen show nothing else than the replacement of forest by palm oil plantations! Sorry, I will no longer discuss complex scientific issues to disprove ridiculous allegations with 280 Twitter’s characters! This an habit of people from the industry

The time series posted by @BartWvanAssen show nothing else than the replacement of forest by palm oil plantations! Sorry, I will no longer discuss complex scientific issues to disprove ridiculous allegations with 280 Twitter's characters! This an habit of people from the industry

— Roberto Cazzolla Gatti (@robertocgatti) August 12, 2020

The thing is, Google Earth’s ‘pretty earth’ and its ‘historical images’ aren’t ‘complex scientific issues! Talk to anyone with basic training in remote sensing and Google Earth (Pro) and (s)he’ll explain to you in 5 minutes why they have no scientific confidence in these ‘historical images’ and why they may show much, much older information.

As for the particular time series shown, it’s 1984 historical image shows that the area clearly is not “almost intact tropical forests”. Gatti allowed us a glance inside his mind, and it exposed the prejudice within.