Bill Nye's Scientism

Bill-Nye-mugging-camera

by WILLIE SOON AND ISTVÁN MARKÓ (via Breitbart)

There is a saying in the world of science that if scientific facts do not support your arguments then stop shouting. It is thus a waste of time to appeal to “scientism” or to rely on popular spokespersons like Al Gore or Bill Nye to make it look otherwise.

It will do more harm to your own self-esteem than the pretension of winning an argument by appealing to authority or popularity. Increasingly, we are seeing more and more outrageous and aggressive anti-scientific claims that anyone who is not willing to embrace the dangerous global warming bandwagon and to condemn its culprit, CO2, is actually the equivalent of a Holocaust Denier.

This sort of name-calling, loud self-promotion and fact twisting actions, closer to political rodeo than to healthy scientific debates, are simply telling us that our opponents have already lost their fallacious arguments and are getting short on any real scientific facts.

Professor Albert Einstein had it perfectly right. When he was told about the publication of the pamphlet “100 authors against Einstein” in 1931, he replied: “Why 100? If I were wrong, one would be enough.”

It is fitting to hear the comment of Professor Hubert Goenner about the three main editors/contributors of “100 authors against Einstein”:

Obviously, these three men were united not only by their common interest in philosophy and opposition to relativity theory but also by their incompetence in the fields of mathematics and physics.

In his recent article “Why I Choose to Challenge Climate Change Deniers,” Mr. Bill Nye is found to issue a firm challenge to all those who do not accept his CO2-based religion by claiming that “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.”

This is so true that when the Australian government recently decided to shift their funding from studying climate change to preparing to address the threats assumed to originate from it, the very scientists who claimed that the science of global warming is settled started howling that this was not so and that their words have been misunderstood. They argued that climate is a very complex phenomenon (true) and that much work is needed to understand it in order to be able to provide any future global temperature evolution scenarios. This incidence can best be remembered as the return of the boomerang.

Maybe Mr. Nye should discuss things with these Australian scientists. He may have yet other revelations: That climate science is young and everything except settled, that we understand little of it, and that the predictions made by the climate models are akin to computer-assisted divinations. Call them, Mr. Nye! You’ll be amazed!

As for the claim: “Carbon dioxide has an enormous effect on planetary temperatures. Climate change was discovered in recent times by comparing the Earth to the planet Venus,” this is a truly strange, rather incorrect, and scientifically empty claim.

First of all, we know that the relatively rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 over the last thirty years has not produced any large and significant global warming, just a meager ~0.2°C. This compares favorably with the ~1°C increase in the temperature anomaly registered since the past 150 years, indicating an absence of acceleration in temperature rise. In fact, in nearly 19 years, a plateau has been observed, which has been acknowledged even by the IPCC (the so-called hiatus). Therefore, one is left to wonder what the words “enormous effect” mean in this particular case.

By now, the proper scientific conclusion regarding the greenhouse effect role of the rising atmospheric CO2 is clear: It plays a very minor role on the measurable “planetary” temperature, if any. For readers — and Mr. Nye — who may not be familiar with this latest experimental result, we suggest reading a recent article, “What we know about CO2 and global atmospheric temperatures?” on Breitbart News.

For all objective readers, and even Mr. Nye himself, we wish to remind everyone of the independent investigation led by Mr. Anthony Watts and many serious scientists who reached the conclusion that the greenhouse effect produced by CO2 molecules is, of course, real but that the “science-is-easy” type of experiment produced by Mr. Nye in Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project has been found to be a product of “video fakery.” That experiment “could never work” as advertised.

So much for Bill, the science guy, who simply confuses “scientism” — i.e. a belief — with experimental sciences. The only question left for everyone is when will Bill Nye or Al Gore stop pedaling their brand of Hollywood special effects?

Full article here: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/24/bill-nye-scientism/

And finally:

billnye_idiot_guy

Source: http://lidblog.com/bill-nye-is-still-weather-idiot-guy/

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Robert
May 24, 2016 11:01 pm

It seems to me that Bill is arguing the following .
Temps have risen
Co2 has increased
Sea levels have risen
The climate is changing
All of this we know are true but with Bill there is no devil in the detail a fact is a fact , I’m right you’re wrong nah nah na nah nah .
When you can’t get a word in to say (but ),his version remains the only version .
All the biggest warmists seem to use the IPCC as having proof and “evidence” when even they are no longer as sure as the once were and now place caveats on the predictions of their predictions .
But getting the Bil Nye’s of this world to shut up and listen will never happen we can only hope the CAGW crowd keep crying the sky is falling ,people are starting to doubt their doomsaying because the sky isn’t falling the ice isn’t gone the rich scientists keep buying sea front property.
Making a big thing over failed predictions does more to hurt their cause in my opinion .

May 25, 2016 2:33 am

Posting a cogent, reasoned and scientifically sound rebuttal to this piece would be like debating a spheroidal earth and Heliocentrism with FlatEarth-ers (www.theflatearthsociety.org); I know, I’ve tried. For every scientifically-sound point, they would counter with another ridiculous, scientifically unsound piece of pseudoscience, cooked up to support their truly indefensible position. No matter how sound the science or reasoning, they would come up with more nonsense and, with each iteration, the next becomes more absurd and ridiculous than the previous. In fact, the use of the word “Scientism” in this piece’s headline is quite similar to the use of that same word by FlatEarth-ers to discredit the “long-settled” science (in that case, that the Earth is not flat but spheroidal).
Read my response in its entirety here: https://astronomytopicoftheday.wordpress.com/2016/05/25/in-defense-of-sound-science-bill-nye-and-climate-change

Reply to  T. Madigan
May 25, 2016 9:26 am

“Read my response in its entirety here:”
From what I can tell your link above is glossy handwavium.
Please R&C on my earlier posts, point by point for each of the three.
1) An 0.5% fluctuation in the 46,713 Gt carbon balance amounts to bubkis.
2) 2 W/m^2 out of 340 +/- amounts to double bubkis.
3) Even IPCC admits their models are lacking.

JohnKnight
Reply to  Nicholas Schroeder
May 25, 2016 3:14 pm

It’s the fingerwaggium that makes it truly Siantific, it seems to me . .

Bernie Hutchins
Reply to  T. Madigan
May 25, 2016 10:10 am

to T. Madigan
Your linked post is very hard (too hard) to read: grey and dark blue on black. Can you fix that?

rw
May 25, 2016 9:51 am

Bill Nye is to science what Bruce Jenner is to the fair sex. So, I suppose you could Nye a transcientist.

jakee308
May 25, 2016 11:22 am

Bill Nye’s as much a scientist as I am a rocket engineer. I can whistle the tune but can’t write the score and I surely couldn’t conduct the orchestra.
Bill is a propagandist. A useful tool. Emphasis on TOOL.

May 25, 2016 4:39 pm

Found the following on a WriterBeat thread I was following. Thought it was good example of the ground rules for effective debate and discussion.
1. Thou shall not attack a person’s character but the argument itself. (“Ad hominem”)
2. Thou shall not misrepresent or exaggerate a person’s argument in order to make it easier to attack. (“Straw Man Fallacy)
3. Thou shall not use small numbers to represent the whole. (“Hasty Generalization”)
4. Thou shall not argue thy position by assuming one of its premises is true. (“Begging the Question”)
5. Thou shall not claim that because something occurred before, it must be the cause. (“Post Hoc/False Claim”)
6. Thou shall not reduce the argument down to two possibilities. (“Fake Dichotomy”)
7. Thou shall not argue that because of our ignorance that the claim must be true or false. (“Ad Ignorantiam”)
8. Thou shall not lay the burden of proof onto him who is questioning the claim. (“Burden of Proof Reversal”)
9. Thou shall not assume “this” follows “that” when “it” has no logical connection. (“Non Sequitur”)
10. Thou shall not claim that because a premises is popular, therefore, it must be true. (“Bandwagon Fallacy”)

Reply to  Nicholas Schroeder
May 25, 2016 7:59 pm

Nicholas Schroeder,
Thanks for that. I’ve copied it. Sooner or later I’ll beat someone over the head with those logical fallacies. ☺

Leveut
May 25, 2016 6:19 pm

It isn’t climate “science” but it does seem relevant. It’s from the world of math, a solution/proof to/of a Conjecture has been found. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160525132837.htm
“….Nearly four decades after Seymour had his idea, the fight for its proof is still not over. Other researchers are now called to tear at it for about two years like an invading mob. Not until they’ve thoroughly failed to destroy it, will the proof officially stand….”
It sounds like actual science to me.