Earlier today I pointed out how Bill Nye “The Science Guy” couldn’t even explain the most basic tenet of meteorology, the Coriolis Effect, among other things.
It seems the Washington Post agrees. Jason Samenow writes:
To educate viewers on the science of the recent mega-blizzard that socked New England, MSNBC’s Craig Melvin brought onto his program noted “science guy” Bill Nye . What followed was the one of the most flawed discussions of meteorology I’ve ever seen on a national network.
…
“Nye has created some wonderful science educational programs for children, but a weather expert he is not.”
Read more at the Washington Post.
Bill Nye’s meteorolgical prowess seems pretty indstinguishable from his climate prowess.
Wasn’t Bill Nye also the science “expert” behind Gore’s video attempt at greenhouse effect in bottle that so totally flawed they had make it into a science fraud with post production video trickery?
Whoever, designed that experiment did not even understand the basics about radiation.
REPLY: Yep, read all about it here http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/gore-and-bill-nye-fail-at-doing-a-simple-co2-experiment/
-Anthony
This is what is known as “bullscience”.
Bill is an embarrassment to the Engineering profession. As president of the Planetary Society he is also an embarrassment to them and the reason I refuse to renew my membership until he is gone…or muzzled.
O.T.
Forget for a moment this “scientist”
Watch an amazing time compressed clip of ice-field calving. Awesome!
http://www.youtube.com/embed/hC3VTgIPoGU?rel=0
Can’t believe that Samenow (and the Post) is willing to admit this.
Nye must be falling out of favor. After hearing some of his uninformed foolishness, I don’t see how.
Not an expert on climate? Then how can he say the sky is falling?
I think this complete lack of any knowledge or understanding of meteorology goes a long way towards explaining Bill Nye’s support of AGW. Keep in mind he is a mechanical engineer and I will be the first to note that your primary training doesn’t automatically limit you to only knowing about that topic.
He clearly has skill in the mech engineering area and in presentation etc. given that he did training films for Boeing along with developing technology still used today with them. But my impression is that he isn’t a generalist. That he must research any topic he doesn’t know about such as … meteorology. And if he turns to the wrong sources he can easily find himself in the weeds. This appears to be what has happened with for example man made global warming. He has just accepted what he was told and not bothered to do any indepth research himself.
It is worse of course because he is supposed to be a trusted expert and people assume he knows about any topic he presents on.
Nye is no Don Hurbert .
Bill Nye has saved me a lot of money. Last year he and his politically correct science was the guest speaker at graduation for my undergrad alma mater. He was the straw that broke the camels back. I was frustrated that PC science and admissions had become the norm for a school that in its first 50 years had become one of the premier undergraduate schools for engineering and science majors. When they get back to science, I’ll go back to supporting them.
Nor a climate expert…
“Is the asteroid, 2012 DA14, coming our way an effect of global warming?”
Well, ye.. n… mayb… it’s compli.. well, what we are doing is putting billions and billions of tons of CO2 into our atmosphere and eventually, that makes such a difference in the weight of the earth, that gravity pulls harder on passing meteors and after all this one was a near miss only 15 minutes away , so we could be in trouble due to global warming.
Speaking of Bill Nye isn’t he the bloke the asteroid people call on for advice?
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/it_also_causes_everything_else/
As a droid myself I was having trouble keeping up with it all until I spotted the obvious connenction that our weather is really like an ‘athlete on steroids’-
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Hostility-over-climate-change-cools-off-4TDWE?OpenDocument&src=mp
which is all very topical Down Under at present-
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_sports_blackest_day_is_more_spin_than_substance/
Yes it’s a tangled web the lil devils will weave but not that hard to untangle once you’ve been a parent with kiddies.
I would like to see a debate on CAGW between the engineers Rutan and Nye.
I was amused (amazed?) but the discussion of “Sou’wester”. I have 2 Sou’westers. One is oilskin, the other, rubber. Usually included in your seabag, as part of your “foulies”. Not sure where it originated, but go into any ship’s chandelry in New England and you’ll see plenty of them. Grunden’s is the preferred brand among the folks living on the coast of Maine, or at least the ones I know.
Here’s a page showing several of their Sou’westers:
http://www.reddenmarine.com/clothing/clothing-personal-items/hat.html
According to some of the online dictionairies, the term can also apply to a storm which produces south west winds. Pretty rare in New England, might have more of them down in Chile or Peru?…we thrive on Nor’Easters up here, as was evidenced this past weekend.
Jim
I recall this funny quote about engineers… think it was from a project manager.
“There comes a time in every project that we must shoot the engineer and move on with progress.”
No doubt due to the apparently universal tendency of engineers to let the perfect become the enemy of the good. It’s a hard habit to break, until your compensation is tied to the profitability of the project. Letting go becomes a lot easier after that.
Sou’westers in British waters always bring a lot of rain with them, hence I think the name.
In May,1961, Newton Minnow, head of the FCC, declared commercial television a “vast wasteland”.
I see not much has changed.
… and sou’westers are our prevailing wind. We get a lot of rain.
WA, OR, & B.C. get winds from the southwest, and on occasion these bring much rain or snow in the mountains. By definition, they may be called SW winds. If they are of any significance the locals call them a Pineapple Express
I rarely watch TV any more,in fact I don’t watch it just as much.
When my darling children were in school,I would say,school night,
no tv.I did not get to watch tv when I was in school.Dad,when were in
school there wasn’t any TV they would say. I know, I know I would
answer, we watched the Radio.];[)
Alfred
Goode ‘nuff wrote;
“There comes a time in every project that we must shoot the engineer and move on with progress.”
Actually I’ve always heard it as ““There comes a time in every project that we must shoot the engineer(s) and SHIP THE PRODUCT.”
If left to their own devices most engineers will just keep improving/perfecting their creation even if the market doesn’t need the improvements. No design is ever perfect and can always use a few enhancements.
Cheers, Kevin (engineer, never actually been shot, shot AT a few times….)
Wait until one of Bill’s new clockwise hurricanes meshes with one of he regular anticlockwise ones as it makes landfall in New England! It will be well nye a disaster. Or the first one may knock down buildings and the second one stand them up again. I always wonder why the global warming alarmists who are scientists don’t criticize the garbage from Nye, Gore and some other clowns that are giving the team a bad name.
Bill Nye is only one of the million monkeys working on this draft of Hamlet.
Anthony, your source article and a little research shows that You have got this mixed up a bit.
The fault in this case was not really Bill Nye. Now I do not like him for his nonsense but in this case, he is not the real villain. It is CNN’s Bimbo-twit, Deborah Feyerick, whose bathroom light of a mind, figured that since global warming was responsible for the snowstorm, it must also be responsible for the asteroid’s close approach. He was in a no win position. He couldn’t say “look you stupid bimbo, how the hell could GW here on earth be responsible for an asteroid passing by, are you really that stupid!!” Of course not. He just made a non sequitor to get out of the situation as anyone might have done, and this (her stupidity) has been mocked all over the media already.
So, give Bill a break, on that one question. The truth will out!:]
RE: DavidG says:
February 11, 2013 at 7:52 pm
Do you recall, a couple years ago, when the military man answering a medicated congressman’s questions was asked if an island would tip over? Although the question was absurd, he answered in a polite and respectful and (most importantly,) truthful manner.
I see no reason Bill could not have done the same, when asked an absurd question. However he comes up with an absurd answer.
Part of Bill’s problem seems born of a need to quench the media’s thirst for sensationalism. A asteroid is passing, and he brings up a lot of “might” and “maybe” and “perhaps” and “in the future,” to create a headline of a destroyed city.
If you make a living slinging the bull eventually you wind up speckled by the splash-back.
Nye said “(…) we are (…) putting billions (…) of tons of CO2 into our atmosphere and eventually, that makes such a difference in the weight of the earth, (…)”
WTF? Where does he think coal and oil come from?
Bill Nye, the Science Guy is actually Bill Nye, the Science Lie and Pluperfect Peter Principle Prince Perpetually Propounding Pitiable Pontifications Punctiliously Preposterous…or something like that….
Bill Nye “the climate scientology guy” – remind me, doesn’t he have a diploma as a stationary engineer? Come on Bill, hop to it, clean up in aisle 5….
WHERE does this tie-in with the WashPost/Jason Samenow piece?
Are you conflating things again?
Here’s how the WashPost piece starts:
Where does CNN and Deborah Feyerick enter into this? Did you notice what network was involved here (MSNBC?)
(Please, as a side note, it may be good to consider and refrain from the combination of intellect-limiting adult-beverage ‘drink’ consumption and posting.)
.
If I were a prestigious blogger and minor celebrity I would use my reputation to reach out to Bill Nye and try get him on my side, where he would be a valuable ally. Making an enemy of him can’t be the right tactic.
Oh good heavens. Just because a person eats doesn’t mean I would invite that person to the table. Bill Nye uses the phrase “science says…” in his presentations. That doesn’t mean I want him to present a topic at my next science club gathering. That said, he actually makes a pretty good ally right now! I say, leave him on the other side. He seems to be making points for us right where he is at.
As for sows and nors, don’t know much about them. I do know that when the colder northern systems pick up moisture over the ocean and dump snow on us, followed by the more southern warmer pineapple express, we get new rivers (and new fishin holes) where none existed before. I was caught in a mudslide in the 70’s that took out the gondola behind us as a result of one of those one-two punches the Pacific is want to deliver to us. It did it again and filled the Columbia to the point Portland, Oregon had to hike up her skirts to keep from gettin wet right up to her hooha!
_Jim:
I’m a little confused with your criticism here.
The two “complete screwup’s” (one on a very bad, incorrect, and even more misleading answer to a very stupid question from CNN by Bill Nye, and the earlier on a very bad, incorrect, and misleading answer from Bill Nye about winds and circulating storms on MSNBC by Bill Nye) are linked by the guy answering the two questions.
I also particularly fault the national news misleaders within the massive central ABBCNNBCBS networks for ALL of their failures and extreme prejudices – in all of culture, science, and politics and economics, but these specific failures ARE immediately and totally and properly credited to Bill Nye…. The not-so-science guy.
DavidG says:
February 11, 2013 at 7:52 pm
Anthony, your source article and a little research shows that You have got this mixed up a bit.
The fault in this case was not really Bill Nye. Now I do not like him for his nonsense but in this case, he is not the real villain. It is CNN’s Bimbo-twit, Deborah Feyerick, whose bathroom light of a mind, figured that since global warming was responsible for the snowstorm, it must also be responsible for the asteroid’s close approach. He was in a no win position. He couldn’t say “look you stupid bimbo, how the hell could GW here on earth be responsible for an asteroid passing by, are you really that stupid!!” Of course not….
————————————————–
Sure he could have. I don’t mean the ‘stupid bimbo’ part, but absolutely he could have said ‘No. Not this time. Global warming does this and that and the other, it’s probably going to be responsible for death and taxes in the final analysis, but nope, can’t blame asteroids on AGW.’
It would work wonders for warmist credibility if they’d occasionally draw a line someplace on the stupid scale and not cross it. It messes up the whole ‘suspension of disbelief’ thing people need to swallow a good fictional story.