Bill Nye the Pseudo-Psychology Guy was amazing to behold last night.
Scott Adams has a good take on it:
Tucker then asked Nye a simple question about climate science. He asked how much of the warming is caused by human activity. Nye’s entire ego depended on knowing whether human activity is contributing to climate change in a big way, a medium way, or a small way. Tucker wanted some details. How much difference do humans make? After all, Nye had said this was settled science. Tucker just wanted to know what that settled science said.
Nye didn’t know. And by not knowing that simple answer about the percentage of human contribution to warming – the only issue that really mattered to the topic – he proved in public that his opinions on science are not based on facts or knowledge. Nye tried and tried to dodge the question, but Tucker was relentless. That was the trigger. Nye could plainly see, thanks to Tucker’s simple question, that his belief in science was just a belief, because he didn’t actually know the science. When your self-image and ego get annihilated on live television, you can’t simply admit you have been ridiculous all along. Your brain can’t let you do that to yourself. So instead, it concocts weird hallucinations to force-glue your observations into some sort of semi-coherent movie in which you are not totally and thoroughly wrong. That semi-coherent movie will look like a form of insanity to observers.
Look for Nye to go totally mental in the last minute of the clip, changing the topic to political leaks for no apparent reason. That’s your tell. His brain just sort of broke right in front of you.
If I’d been debating him, when he started ranting about being able to grow grapes in England, I’d have asked, “Bill, have you ever heard of Hadrian’s wall? Because the Romans were growing grapes that far north 2000 years ago. Do you know why Greenland was called that, and why North America was called “Vinland” by the Vikings? Are you blaming their SUVs?”
[Wednesday-afternoon update]
Nine reasons you shouldn’t listen to Bill Nye about science. Or anything else. And only nine?
Minor nitpick;
Greenland was not called Vinland by the Vikings (Norse).
“Vinland” was the area around the mouth of the St. Lawrence (no one is quite sure of its specific southern boundaries). It was named “Vinland” due to the wild grapes found there – which don’t grow so far north in this era. The reason is that when the Vikings founded their Greenland colonies, the climate was warmer than today. Their colonies (Which relied on agriculture) on Greenland lasted almost 500 years, and perished during the little ice age.
You’re right, I was confusing the two.
Speaking of the Viking settlements in Greenland, what we thought we knew was wrong.
Until I read that Smithsonian article I thought it was pretty well accepted that the Vikings on Greenland wouldn’t hunt wild game (unlike the current natives), in part because the church wouldn’t let them, and when their farms began to collapse they all died out.
That turns out to be completely wrong. They were eating seals from the time they got there, and over time their diet went from 40% seal to 80% seal. But the reason they were in Greenland was to hunt walrus, since the Norse had a nearly complete monopoly on walrus ivory. But then the Europeans moved away from walrus ivory at about the same time that the Portuguese started selling massive amounts of elephant ivory from sub-Saharan Africa, and all the Greenland profits disappeared, so the Vikings packed up and went home.
They were victims of globalization, not religion and climate change.
And on that note, it is quite likely that since the Vikings were in Greenland to make big profits from walrus ivory, they poked around Vinland looking for a way to turn an even larger profit.
Unfortunately, there’s just not much in Newfoundland that would qualify as a high-end transportable trade good. The Massachusetts colony had the same problem until beaver hats hit big in Europe.
And this gets back to the topic of space development. “Exploring” the moon or Mars would be like the Viking exploration of Vinland, abandoned in a year or two, whereas Greenland, which never achieved self-sufficiency, was occupied for centuries because it was profitable.
“Unfortunately, there’s just not much in Newfoundland that would qualify as a high-end transportable trade good. The Massachusetts colony had the same problem until beaver hats hit big in Europe.”
Leave it to beaver.
There was an interesting write-up on this recently (from Instapundit: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/). It seems like it wasn’t so much the little ice age that doomed the Greenland colonies as the market collapse of walrus ivory.
Yep.
And there’s a lesson there in space development. When Greenland was profitable families would sail the North Atlantic in open boats to get there, even though they were still dependent on supplies from Europe. Since Greenland couldn’t become entirely self-sufficient (other than for those who would be content with subsistence hunter-gathering), the settlement only lasted as long as the profits did.
Similarly, a settlement based on He3 mining on the moon would be abandoned when we moved away from He3 unless that settlement had become self-sufficient enough for people to just stay and find other work, without dependence on resupply from Earth (which costs money that they won’t have if they’re not selling products back to Earth).
An Earth-dependent Mars colony has to find a profitable market or it will collapse when Musk’s resupply money runs out.
Whatever scientific training he had was in the long ago past, and he has been applying himself to children’s science projects after only a brief stint in the real world of engineering. He is no better qualified to opine than any other run-of-the-mill celebrity. Sad to see him meltdown like this. But, he brought it on himself.
To what extent is human activity causing climate change?
The AGW alarmist answer is 100%.
Not sure why Nye didn’t say that explicitly. Claiming that we would really be in an ice age right now with no humans is a good scary tactic to use. But it also undercuts his argument that we should adopt his preferred policies.
He also brings up pine beetles but IIRC, the environmentalist position is that they are just cyclical and nothing should be done about them but trust in nature to eat them.
This comment is very interesting.
” This is my area of expertise. It’s true that warmer weather will help the beetles, but not that much. The big reason for the beetle epidemic is that the trees are old. Young, vigorous trees push invading beetles out with sap flow but old, decadent trees have a much slower metabolism and can’t do that. We’ve been way to[o] effective in fighting forest fires for the last 100 plus years, and the forests are much older than they used to be.”
Good find. That explains why I have only seen large trees felled by pine beetles. Assuming the comment you quote is correct, pine beetles serve a similar function as forest fires.
yeah, in addition, the beetle epidemic in Colorado looks so awful because our northern forests are essentially a monoculture of trees, all the same age. These Colorado forests were felled for charcoal kilns during the great mining boom in the 19th century.
That historical fact doesn’t stop the enviro groups from using the pine beetle infestation as a *prime* examle of global warming, now every eight-year-old who visits Rocky Mountain National Park will go home with a horror story to tell of Pandora-like eco-devastation.
Yeah, that was really eye-popping. Like we’d want to repeat 1750.
Which just highlights the most basic flaw in the whole charade. If we could influence CO2 and planetary warmth, any rational person would want more of both. The whole brouhaha is just psychotic from top to bottom.
Bill Nye is the Joe Biden of science.
I don’t get it. Our own “Jim” could have done a much better job presenting the talking points defending human-caused Climate Change.
For example, “How much of the warming is to attributed to humans?” Answer: “Tucker, I cannot give a precise percentage but I can say with confidence, most of it. We have temperature records showing about a 1.5 deg-F warming over the 20th century, and we have tree-ring and ice-core isotopic temperature proxy records going back hundreds if not thousands of years that show the temperature, in comparison, to be dead flat. This temperature reconstruction is what is popularly known as the Hockey Stick.”
OK, Rand, don’t get agitated with me, but the Hockey Stick is Warmist orthodoxy. Bill Nye appears to take the ‘evidence’ for Global Warming to be so overwhelming that not only is he not able to recite the Warmist talking points, he no longer knows of the existence of those talking points.
What kind of tent preacher cannot even remember to basics of theology? He can’t even bring up the Hockey Stick? Pathetic.
“I don’t get it. Our own “Jim” could have done a much better job presenting the talking points defending human-caused Climate Change.”
Perhaps Nye lives in in the Lefty Bubble where no one challenges any statement that comes out of his pie hole. So he’s not used to having to actually defend or explain anything.
I was surprised at his comments. No one believes that the temperature would be like 1750 without global warming, not the IPCC, not anyone. There was not enough CO2 till recently to do much.
Nye is claiming that this is what all scientists know? It isn’t even close to being true.
Didn’t Nye say something about the economic impact on the European ski resorts? And didn’t Carlson kind of drop the ball on not calling him out on that one? Last I heard, the skiing is great unless I am missing something?
Don’t you know the orthodoxy Paul? More snow is proof of global warming!
After reading entire too much from the wrong side of both the Left and the Right … it’s obvious that we don’t grow grapes in Vinland any more because the forces of globalization have suppressed local grape production.
From the 9 Reasons’ link:
9. The founder of the Weather Channel is rightfully angry that Nye has any sort of credibility on the issue of science. “I have always been amazed that anyone would pay attention to Bill Nye, a pretend scientist in a bow tie,” John Coleman told Climate Depot.
Coleman added, “As a man who has studied the science of meteorology for over 60 years and received the AMS (American Meteorological Society’s) ‘Meteorologist of the Year’ award, I am totally offended that Nye gets the press and media attention he does.”
People should listen to Coleman on science instead of Nye.
I have nothing but respect for John Coleman.