Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
For those not familiar with Dancing With the Stars, it’s a television dance contest that pairs professional dancers with celebrities. Bill Nye was a celebrity dancer for 2013’s Season 17. Nye was eliminated in the third round after he and his partner scored the lowest points in the first three rounds. (Also see the HuffingtonPost article here about Nye’s injury in the second round.) Nye is probably most famous for his acting role in the kids’ science program Bill Nye the Science Guy that ran from 1993 to 1998. See Bill Nye’s other acting credits on the IMDb webpage here.
With his celebrity status, Bill Nye has become an outspoken activist intent on curbing greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to limit much-speculated-about global warming and its hypothetical climate-change impacts. In his recent HuffingtonPost blog post Why I Choose to Challenge Climate Change Deniers, his celebrityness takes on Marc Morano and meteorologist Joe Bastardi and attempts to make hypothetical human-induced global warming and climate change focal points for the upcoming U.S. elections.
The Dancing With the Stars celebrity’s recent blog post begins (my boldface):
As you may know, I am very concerned about global warming and global climate change. The science of global warming is long settled, and one may wonder why the United States, nominally the most technologically advanced country in the world, is not the world leader in addressing the threats enumerated by the U.S. military, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and others. I hope people will take the facts we face into account as they head to the polls this year.
And his post concludes:
Contrary to Mr. Bastardi’s statement, carbon dioxide certainly does affect the Earth’s climate in a big way. I hope you will consider both Mr. Morano’s and Mr. Bastardi’s tendency to change the subject along with their misjudgment, or apparent misjudgment, of atmospheric and planetary science as you head to the polls this year.
Global politics created the much-ballyhooed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (a political entity, not a scientific one) and now Bill Nye is attempting to influence the U.S. presidential election with the output of that political entity. For those new to the politics behind the hypothesis of human-induced global warming and climate change, see the Introduction to my free ebook On Global Warming and the Illusion of Control – Part 1 (25MB .pdf). The Introduction begins:
Politicians and activist scientists have endeavored to destroy our perception of one of Nature’s most humbling, wonder-inspiring rewards: the gift of weather in all its forms…benign and violent. The grandeur of weather is being used by politicians and activist scientists to bludgeon voters and to frighten the gullible.
A closing question: Does anyone care about the political opinions of an actor who appeared on Dancing With the Stars?
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Love this site and its brilliant writers and commenters.
Blog rebuttals are ineffective. Those persuaded by celebrity seldom read rebuttals; and when they do read the rebuttals they do not understand.
BTW, I’ve read that Nye has a degree in Mechanical Engineer, but I’ve seen no mention of his ever qualifying for Professional Engineer registration.
He probably figured he could fool people into thinking he could dance, the same way he fooled people into thinking he was a smart guy. What a pea-brain.
I for one will not be dancing with the Nyed Piper.
Here is my latest at the DB…
http://dailybail.com/home/kids-climate-crusade-keeps-rolllin-through-the-courts.html
thanks for that and sorry, I’m always late recently
Odd.
What’s the common dismissal of statistician’s, meteorologists’, computer programmers’, scientists’, etcs’ conclusions regarding “CAGW”?
“But they’re not CLIMATE scientist!”
Yet they promote Bill Nye’s opinions?
Is Billyboy even a scientist? Nye.
But he played one on TV!
(He should have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night. He’d then have a better chance of getting it right.8-)
Bill Nye and MSM opinion based fact making
Im not a big fan of BNTSG. Main reason: he has no skills in science (which is OK) but he continues to act as a spokesman for science (which is fraudulent).
Evidence #1: At time 4:14 in his “Buoyancy” video his video states that aluminum foil in the shape of a boat (and floating) displaces the same amount of water as the same foil in the shape of a ball (and sunk). This undermines the teaching of his whole video (which is often quite good) that the floating foil displaces its weight in water, and the sunk foil displaces its volume in water.
Evidence #2: Bill Nye was complicit in the fraudulent Greenhouse Gas in a Bottle / Climate 101 video so clearly debunked by a real scientist, Anthony Watts. Moreover when the fraud was exposed, Bill Nye said it didn’t matter.
So when CNN calls Bill for his opinion on anything scientific, he should decline, saying “I’m not a scientist.” The fact that he accepts these calls makes him a fake.
Is Marc Morano a scientist?
“Is Marc Morano a scientist?”
Relevance?
What is a “scientist”? Someone paid to do science?
(Also, what is a prostitute?)
Look at the comment thread above, it’s self explanatory.
I still don’t get it. Marc Morano is accused of what exactly?
What is a scientist? Someone who has built a career doing science, normally within the context of the scientific community. “Doing science” means seeking insight through methods that conform to the scientific method.
Nye is an entertainer and a political lobbyist.
I had never heard of Marc Morano so I Googled him. It appears that he is a journalist.
FWIW I have a PhD in theoretical physics and work in aerospace.
Yep, blew up that 50 yard target, now lets go to 150 yards.
The video of Bill Nye’s interview on live national television is not available at the link below. However, the comments about Bill Nye say it all.
http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2015/01/bill-nye-drops-ball-on-deflategate.html
“Whether you believe Belicheck or not, one statement in the above video is patently, totally, completely, unabashedly, embarrassingly false. It’s Nye’s claim that, ” . . . to really change the pressure in the ball, you need one of these – the inflation needle.”
“In one flip comment, Nye undermines the cool conversation we’ve all been having while totally discounting a whole lot of physics.”
“It’s possible that none of these factors explain away DeflateGate, but to unimaginatively dismiss them the way Nye did utterly undermines his cred as a science educator. ”
I admit, meteorologists like Joe B, Anthony Watts(and Mike Maguire) might have a bit of an advantage when it comes to understanding the ideal gas law vs guys like Bill Nye, who’s science knowledge/education specializes in other areas.
However, since he has drawn attention to himself(uses his celebrity status) as an expert in the field of atmospheric science, his clear lack of understanding the basics of the ideal gas law show him to be a fraud.
There is no other way to see him after his explanation in the interview. No doubt that after he flopped badly on this issue, he has educated himself a bit on the ideal gas law. However, he had made up his mind up years before this regarding CAGW………. well before he actually understood some basic knowledge of the physical laws and processes of the atmosphere, yet presented himself as an authority via his “Bill Nye the Science Guy” television persona.
Based on his unwavering position and recent statements, he clearly still has a long way to go before he understands atmospheric science.
He’s a great showman and has provided some excellent educational science/learning programs for kids. He also stands by his political beliefs but on this topic, he stinks.
He also stands by his political beliefs.
Is that a virtue? So did Pol Pot.
I have nothing against professional showmanship but do you remember Spencer Tracy’s advice of “know your lines and don’t bump into the furniture”?
Did our Science Guy carefully prepare and learn the lines below or did he just blather on? And which possibility is worse?
“He also stands by his political beliefs. Is that a virtue?”
I guess not when you are dead wrong……….and your political belief system sabotages your minds ability to see outside of the definition you’ve imposed on it.
Bill Nye, the Former anti-GMO Guy:
http://uk.businessinsider.com/bill-nyes-anti-gmo-experience-2015-11
It’s the story of Obama as part of a conspiracy that changed his mind? Really?!!!
Sigh…I will again state my intuitive equation, which Bill seems to have no knowledge of in spite of me having said and published it publicly many times. The Sun, Oceans ( with 1000x the heat capacity of the air and who’s current state is a product of centuries of back and forth as per Grays wonderful paper
http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/gray2012.pdf )
Stochastic events and the very design of a system with most land in the Nhem, most water southern, that wobbles on its axis and rotates around a star that over many years shows variance, far outweighs the increase of 1 molecule of co2 out of every 10k of air over ONE HUNDRED YEARS when it comes to the climate control knobs. This has been addressed countless times by me, and its my equation and for the record forms the basis for theidea that the increase in co2 is not the climate control knob. Its not the product of genius, which I am not, just common sense weighting of the major drivers involved, and the knowledge that weather and climate is simply natures attempt to attain a balance she can never have. There is no definable perfect temp or definable perfect level of co2 in a system inherent to seek control out of chaos, but create chaos out of control Peace.
…plus 1,000 stars !
Feynman played the bongos. Do you really think he knew physics? The argument that someone has attempted to entertain and is therefore to be ignored is an absurd argument and beneath the level I expect from this blog.
Maybe he lost because the wrong person was leading . Just like global warming it’s a dance and theatre .
Any pretence of science is long gone .
Failed climate models , broken hockey stick , climate gate , massive failed doomsday prophesies ,
$Billions in failed renewable company blowouts . Funded green activists , hedge fund billionaires
preaching green while trading oil . ETC .
As peer-reviews go DWTS is the right Nye-venue, and extravagantly generous.
OK, seriously… after a long long really long
week… I had to LOL at the number is related posts…. thanks to the moderator…. hopeless to follow up ….
I wasn’t sure if this was the place or elsewhere, but our local paper carries both Friedman and Krugman. Today’s Friedman is typical of both of them- he repeats as fact everything that has been shown to be false. For those who are not “fortunate” enough to get these two experts, here is the Friedman column that was printed today: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/18/opinion/donald-save-your-golf-greens-and-the-planet.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fthomas-l-friedman&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0.
Of course, what can you expect from a couple of economists?
It is fortunate that we also get George Will from time to time, and he knows something.
Ian
To be fair Nye has a mechanical engineering degree from Cornell University. However he has let his political views direct his work as an actor which is now blurring into US politics. Pretty unusual for actors to take their voice and a influence into politics…sarc.
Mechanical Engineering is a precise applied science. Climatology is a loose empirically-based pseudo-science, based on complex computer models. Having an engineering degree can be a positive handicap to a field where there will always be limits to understanding. You can either end up lapping up everything the experts say, or just rejecting the whole lot as rubbish.
If you have had the joy of raising school age children during any period of the “climate inquisition” you know that Bill Nye is a manipulative creep. My children attended some of the best public schools in California, but when it came to certain issues, global-warming was one, the only purpose was ideological purity with zero discussion. After all, how can you allow questions when the basis of what is being taught doesn’t make any sense?
What my kids brought home from school was that, “if they didn’t believe” then that meant that “they didn’t care”. Their whole media-constructed cartoon reality of furry animals and green things was turned against them. Bill Nye was the head of the snake, as the Grand Climate Inquisitor, demanding that kids “believe” or be cast out of humanity for the crime of “not caring”. Few children can stand up to that kind of bullying and peer pressure from adults without a supportive family in their corner. Fortunately, there were many.
All in all, some good life lessons were learned about the limits of authority, be it a teacher or a politician or a “science guy”. How do you explain to your 5 year-old that, “No, we’re not all friends”? LOL!
In every racket there are those who find a little niche . Bill Nye ,David Suzuki all started off in something else and landed acting jobs that allowed them to create a brand . The bow tie costume etc but even Suzuki
likes to use that old standby ,,, well scientists say…. so that he doesn’t take ownership of any evidence himself . . Global warming is a good thing and no scientific organization says cooling is better. As we all know climate changes with or without humans .
He has a former mechanical engineer, hardly an authority on climate science.