Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Bill Nye the not-really-Science Guy was on Tucker Carlson tonight. Tucker tried time after time to get Nye to say how much of the change was due to humans … and time after time, Nye refused to say what his opinion was.
So Tucker got him to agree that the climate has always been changing.
Then, in response to the question as to “what the climate would be like if humans weren’t involved right now”, Bill Nye said (according to my own transcription):
NYE: “The climate would be like it was in 1750. And the economics would be that you could not grow wine-worthy grapes in Britain as you can today because the climate is changing. The use of pesticides in the Midwest would not be increasing because the pests are showing up sooner and staying around longer. The forests in Wyoming would not be overwhelmed by pine bark beetles as it is because of climate change. That’s how the world would be different if it were not for humans”.
Oh, my goodness. Isn’t that touching? Nye refuses to say how much of the change in temperature is due to humans … but at the same time he claims that if there weren’t humans, that the climate would have stopped changing in 1750. Without humans, he says, we would have a climate which was forever the same …
… and people actually believe this guy? Tucker Carlson was scathing:
CARLSON: You’re not even a scientist, you’re an engineer … So much of this you don’t know, you pretend that you know, and you gotta believe people who ask you questions.
Another escapade in the world of pseudo-science. Anyhow, after writing this I found a YouTube video of the interview—check it out, it’s good for a laugh.
Regards to all,
w.
PS—When you comment PLEASE QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE DISCUSSING, so we can all be clear about your subject.
AP shouldn’t apologise on behalf of any type of engineers, one twit seizing on a chance to become a minor TV personality hardly invalidates a profession that has done so much good for humanity. Hell, even railway engineers have nothing to apologise for despite Pauchudri’ s appalling record.
The real damage Nye has done is in telling nonsense to so many people who have no chance to get the truth about How complex climate studies are and how great the uncertainties. ( I am not an engineer by the way).
Bill Nye is not a climate scientist so according to the alarmists he does not have the expertise of offer an opinon regarding climate.
The alarmists define scientist as being anyone who agrees with them.
Obviously, psychologists (Cook, Lewandowsky) and economists and professors of “issues of climate justice” (Torcello) can be climate scientists. Actually, pretty much anybody who doesn’t understand science (and a few who do should; e.g.: Harvard’s Naomi Oreskes) appear to be readily accepted as “climate scientists”.
A few of these guys actually would like to jail people who dare question their opinions. Since there are (as yet) no consequences for teaching these nut-ball opinions to 18-22 year-old students (aka: our kids), soon or later, it’s highly likely someone is actually going to to follow through and attempt to do it.
Very few who actually claim to be climate scientists have the formal educational backgoound in climate propoganda to actually be certified climate scientists Many alarmists, instead of arguing the science will argue that one is not a climate scientist and what one is saying goes against the sceintific consensus. I myself would like to use AGW as another reason to conserve on the use of fossil fuels but the AGW conjecture is just too full of holes to defend. When I went to school they did not have the climate change propoganda they force on students today. Instead I have to rely on basic mathematics, chemistry, and physics. I am sorry that I do not belive in the magical powers of CO2. For me that fact that there is no real evidence that the radiant greenhouse effect, that the AGW conjecture is based upon, exists anywhere in the solar system, tends ot make me believe that the AGW conjecture is just some form of sceince fiction. Science in not a democracy so a “scientific consensus” is meaningless and because sceintists never registered and voted on the AGW conjecture the consensus does not really exist.
So from 1750 onwards we selfishly changed the climate with our evil ways. Must have been all that horse manure. Honestly, what a prat.
There is some truth in what Mr Nye has to say.
He is a pest and he wasn’t around in 1750.
A person experiences cognitive dissonance only when he actually believes two irreconcilable things at the same time. Lying is a different thing.
Nye’s hysteria about the rate of change went unchallenged by Tucker.
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“The most spectacular aspect of the YD is that it ended extremely abruptly (around 11,600 years ago), and although the date cannot be known exactly, it is estimated from the annually-banded Greenland ice-core that the annual-mean temperature increased by as much as 10°C in 10 years. ”
http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/arch/examples.shtml
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I confronted the alarmists at The Conversation with that example when they were spouting rubbish about the “unprecedented” contemporary rate of change. Then I said,
“And you’re all freaking out about a paltry ~0.8 C…over 100 years!”
I would have thrown the same point at Nye.
Absolutely. Nye was grasping for examples, while Carlson could have simply asked him what caused the mile-thick ice that was over New England to disappear, and the ocean to rise 400 feet. Perhaps Native Americans’ use of fire pits was the catalyst.
Even that alleged 0.8 degrees C is bogus. In uncooked books, using raw, real and reliable data, earth has barely warmed since 1918. It warmed until the 1940s, then cooled dramatically until the late ’70s (leading to renewed ice age worries), warmed slightly for about two decades, and since then has stayed about the same or cooled, but for two super El Nino spikes in 1997-98 and 2015-16.
“…is so stupid and ill informed that he does not know he is stupid and ill informed.”
My thoughts exactly, Forrest Gardener. What an excruciating dill.
But pity the poor chap. Consistent with your diagnosis, Nye’s seems to be an acute case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, “…a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive incapacity, on the part of those with low ability, to recognize their ineptitude and evaluate their competence accurately.
Also known as “so far behind he thinks he’s in front.”
I had pencilled Nye in as FXS sufferer
You know the really sad part? Some people think Nye actually won that ‘debate’!
http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/im-open-minded-youre-not-tucker-carlson-melts-down-after-bill-nye-schools-him-on-climate-change/
If that was Nye patiently explaining something, I’d hate to see him exasperated.
Bill Nye says: “But the speed that climate change is happening is caused by humans.”
Nye presumes to know the speed of climate change, and implies he can measure an increase, and that that increase is caused by humans. Nye couldn’t prove any of this if his life depended on it.
Bill Nye says: “Instead of happening on time scales of millions of years, or let’s say, 15,000 years, it’s happening on a time scale of decades. And now years.”
“It” is happening. So climate change took millions of years to change at one time, and then took 15,000 years to change at a later date (wonder how that change came about without humans), and now it only takes years for the climate to change. There is no scientific basis for any of these claims.
This is why the climate change alarmists chose to use “climate change” rather than “global warming” to describe this phenomenon. That way, as Bill Nye does, they can claim that any change in the weather anywhere on Earth is a change caused by humans, and since the climate is always changing, they have plenty of opportunities to make these claims. They can’t prove any of this, but they can sure make the claim, and they do. Propaganda, pure and simple. Very expensive propaganda.
The good news is they are about to have their comeuppance. Their “science is settled” narrative is about to become undone. Bill Nye on Tucker’s show was just the beginning.
Bill Nye was a weak promoter of CAGW. Tucker should have him back and bring in Marc Marano too, and let them have a nice little discussion. Morano will discuss, and Nye will obfuscate.
The Piltdown Mann’s straight shaft on his Crook’t Stick. This is the Big Lie.
Bill Nye and so many other alarmists have repeated this so often that many of them believe it. It’s what they know that ain’t so.
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I know that 1750 in England is supposed to sound cold, but it always surprises me how relatively stable the climate can be over shorter periods. Willis wrote an article with some interesting charts a while back (the words were OK too, Willis) https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/23/maunder-and-dalton-sunspot-minima/ and one of these was a Central England Chart going back further than the standard one
?w=840 Correct me if I’m wrong, but that average temperature in 1750 does not indicate a small, ice-bound island.
These narratives are interesting too http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/1750_1799.htm It sounds as though in the early part of the period it was the winds and rain which were more interesting than anomalous temperatures.
There were some warm years during the LIA, in between the solar minima and volcanic eruptions. In Manley’s reconstruction of monthly mean CET (1698-1952), January 1740 was the coldest (volcanic effect) and 1916 the warmest:
https://www.rmets.org/sites/default/files/qj53manley.pdf
The Maunder Minimum was the most frigid, but the other three minima–Wolf, Spörer and Dalton–also produced cold decades. Some place the Wolf Minimum (1280-1350) toward the end of the Medieval WP than in the LIA.
Paul,
That site (Booty Weather) needs some one to save it from extinction, the Authour advises people to copy the contents before they ‘disappear’.
The ‘Shutdown’ is expected Spring 2017 so grab a copy while you can. Statement here—
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/climate/wxevents.htm
Bill Nye, skiing in Europe – what he’s talking about :
http://tv.orf.at/program/orf2/20170205/798410001/story
So the entire case for ‘catastrophic’ agw now comes down to Midwest pests and beetles in trees? Is that it?
There are more crop pests because the windmills and solar farms have killed the birds and bats which would have eaten the bugs.
So if it weren’t for humans the climate would have been both put on hold from 1750 AND we would be in another ice age by now. Given that, in his ignorance, he meant another glacial, I don’t see how 1750 was a glacial period. Still … he did say the science was settled on this. LOL
Oh dear, what an embarrassment the Fake Science Guy is.
Roman vineyards in Britain: stratigraphic and palynological data from Wollaston in the Nene Valley, England
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/roman-vineyards-in-britain-stratigraphic-and-palynological-data-from-wollaston-in-the-nene-valley-england/5FC9D857BAF6B948DAA7DF390889AB71
Incidentally, someone should tell Nye that 1750 was not the best year to cherry pick…
In 1715 the village of Le Pre-du-Bar vanished under a glacier caused landslide. The glacial high tide in the Alps came around 1750 and gradually the glaciers began their retreat, much to the relief of the people who lived there.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/glacial-advance-during-the-little-ice-age/
It really was a cringeworthy onterview.
Scottish vineyard fails:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3424009/Best-stick-Bucky-Scotland-s-vineyard-didn-t-make-wine-year-area-s-rainy.html
The extent of Roman wine grape growing in Lowland Scotland has not been as well surveyed as in England, but there were vineyards on both sides of Hadrian’s Wall. Rome periodically occupied the Lowlands, but the Highlands offered them nothing worth conquering.
Vines were grown, and wine was produced, in southern England in the 14th century. Also malaria was a problem in the wet fenlands during this period.
“You’re not even a scientist, you’re an engineer” – what the **** does Carlson mean by that?
Don’t dismiss engineers Carlson, many engineers are sceptics because they realise how ridiculous the concept of ‘global’ temperature is, they realise the implications of the noise (massive daily, regional, seasonal temperature swings) compared the tiny (fractions of a degree per decade) ‘signal’ being sought by climate ‘scientists’. Engineers live in reality, scientists, particularly climate scientists, seem to live in fantasy. I’d put my safety & my future prosperity in the hands of engineers any day rather than scientists based on many idiotic ones I have worked with over the years.
Nye is clearly not an effective engineer, engineering is a fact based endeavour, that’s why planes fly and bridges stay up (usually).
Well put. An engineer IS a scientist. That Nye isn’t practicing as one despite formal training is a good thing. Just like Al Gore not preaching despite attending divinity school or Bill Clinton being disbarred for perjury.
The Peter Principle applied.
yes but I think Carlson was trying to do to Nye what the warmists would do to any skeptic engineer … “you are not a climate scientist” …
jaffa68
Stop getting all huffy about Carlson pointing out that Nye is an engineer, not a scientist. He was applying a reasonable taxonomy, not being insulting.
In point of fact, having a BS in science (e.g.: physics, chemistry) DOES NOT MAKE YOU A TRAINED SCIENTIST – the discipline certainly requires graduate degrees. Having a BS in engineering (any kind) is a different discipline, but certainly does not short circuit the path to “trained scientist”.
This conversation conflating “knowing about the scientific method” (which most STEM educations supply in the freshman year) with actually being a scientist. That’s like saying because I can take my own blood pressure, you’d want me as your cardiovascular surgeon.
Of course, in typical warmist fashion when losing an argument that you can’t support because you have no facts to back it, bring out the old ‘what about the children?’ BS.
So this is an individual who believes living with hunger, disease and poverty as a result of decreased global temperature is somehow better than rising by less than a couple of degrees to where it was a few hundred years before 1750. I really don’t think he the right person to lecture anyone on cognitive dissonance and irrational beliefs.
And it amazes me, amazes, that someone who is supposed to be intelligent can fail so miserably to understand that climate is a chaotic system and has repeatedly changed, quite often rapidly since the end of that same ice age he constantly pointed to. That is based on evidence, and not a computer model. But then models only go up, which seems to be this belief. He just ignores the (historically repeated) drop in temperatures that allowed for a rebounding rise in the first place. Which would have happened after 1750 regardless of the industrial age or not, as it had done before
Complete tosser, and an aggressive one at that. But he is a useful idiot, and the more idiotic he is the more he is ignored. He doesn’t discuss, and he really doesn’t argue. He just makes statements, and then claims that everyone is wrong to disagree with him because they are irrational. He doesn’t listen to anyone or their point because he thinks he is above everyone else and their ability to process information, after all, he is ‘the Science Guy’.
DDP
People like Nye get in this game because it allows them to claim they are part of saving the world (leads to fame, fortune, respect and authority). I have to think that once on “the team”, even these useful idiots see the shabby process & thin evidence, and have doubts about the underlying premise.
However, once you have positioned yourself as savior of humanity and begin to exert real power over millions of people (e.g.: extracting billions in taxes to remediate warming; publicly discussing jailing doubters), the vast majority of acolytes will never back off – this much power is absolutely intoxicating, regardless if it’s founded on pure crap.
ouch, sorry, I did not close the quote properly.
Please notice at 4:54 in the video above that we — apparently — have prevented another ice age. It makes me feel all tingly and powerful.
I think we all deserve a raise, or at least a large hot fudge sundae.
In the meantime, I’m not selling my winter coat.
Just looking quickly for vineyards in Britain in the Eighteenth century. Here are two quotes from within 50 years of 1750:
‘Oct. 18th 1765. I went to see Mr. Roger’s vineyard, at Parson’s Green, all of Burgundy grapes, and seemingly all perfectly ripe. I did not see a green half-ripe grape in all this great quantity. He does not expect to make less than fourteen hogsheads of wine. The branches and fruit are remarkably large, and the vines very strong.'”
and from the 1790s
Epsom is an extremely pleasant well-built town, surrounded with good land, pretty fields, and plenty of trees, without being an incumbrance. Here I spent two or three days in the most agreeable manner, at the house of the Rev. J. BOUCHER, rector of this place. The elegant house, gardens, and pleasure grounds occupied by this gentleman, are his own property, and are planned with a degree of taste and neatness, not often equalled: his collection of plants is large, and curious; and besides all the common sorts of fruit, there is scarcely a wall which does not support the spreading vine, covered with clusters of grapes.
Bill Nye, the lying science guy, is not even a good engineer. He is a political hack pretending to be an educator who became a performer pretending to be a scientist. The idea that *anyone* knows what the climate would be like without humans is a laugh. And since wine grew in Britain before 1750, how dare he claim that is a bad thing. And pine bark beetles are more likely due to the stress caused trees by the over crowding due to fire fighting strategies that prevents too many fires. Good for Tucker Carlson.
I’m missing something and I think Carlson missed it as well.
If Nye doesn’t know how much of ‘climate change’ is due to human influence, how can he logically claim that, without human influence, the climate would be just as it was in 1750? Isn’t that a ‘back door’ claim that ALL ‘climate change’ since 1750 is due to human influence and human influence alone? It’s an absurd claim to begin with.
Would have loved to see Carlson point that out.
Carlson has to do BG research on a variety of topics. Better would have been, IMO, to have a skeptical expert reply to Bill (de)Nye the Bow-Tied Boob.
But Carlson could have done enough research or been briefed by staff that climate underwent drastic changes before and after AD 1750 without any help from humans. It warmed more rapidly and for longer coming out of the Maunder Minimum depths of the LIA (the early 18th century warming, c. 1690 to 1740) than it has since 1977, when the postwar cooling ended.
Most of the warming since the end of the LIA c. 1850 also happened before CO2 took off after WWII (with no warming effect for at least 32 years).
And do we have a Neanderthal industrial age to thank for the Eemian Interglacial, much warmer and longer lasting than our present Holocene to date?
I believe Carlson’s point about Nye being an engineer was that AGW types
usually argue that you have no right to speak on the subject if you are not
a scientist of the type which they approve.
BTW, didn’t the Romans leave England ~400 AD because they could no
longer grow wine grapes?
That and all the Germanic, Iranian and other barbarians invading more important parts of the empire like Gaul, Italy, Hispania, Africa and the Balkans.
Not that withdrawing from Britannia in AD 410 did much good. The Visigoths sacked Rome in August of that very year. The Vandals in 455 and Ostrogoths in 546 finished the job. By then Germanic raiders had occupied eastern and southern Britain, while Picts (from Scotland) and Scots (from Ireland) ravaged its north and west. Worse was yet to come for the remains of the empire, in the form of Norse and Muslim invaders. These weren’t climate refugees but climate opportunists.
However, at least some vineyards survived in the Mediterranean region.
The Romans withdrew from Britain several times, typically when the legions stationed there were needed elsewhere. They would then return when the crisis was over. Circa. 400 AD was when they departed for good.
Bill Nye showed incredible hubris by agreeing to talk with Tucker Carlson. Does he not realize that some people might actually be hostile to him? Does he not give credit to the idea that some of those people will be highly competent? Apparently not.
One of the reasons that alarmists refuse to debate with skeptics is that the alarmists usually lose. Bill Nye may have missed that little detail.
Of course 1 billion people would be starving and our forests would be much smaller and less dense worldwide without the extra co2. In addition of course if we had not burned all that co2 since 1750 most of us would be dead or not born because civilization as we know it would be nonexistent.
In addition of course none of what he said would be true because co2 isn’t the reason the world warmed from 1750. It was recovering from the LIA.
It is the diagnosis of this former SF medic that Bill Nye is suffering from Cerebrovascular ischemia of the global form probably resulting from wearing his bowtie too tight for so many years. It is irreversible and as long as the guy keeps wearing his bowtie too tight he will increasingly sound like peewee Herman discussing climate or any other science.
Unfortunately however bad he is on climate – he’s even worse on energy related issues.
Tucker cannot be an expert on everything, so please hold your fire. Remember, he is a layman, but he is fearless and smart as a whip.
He excels on calling idiots and deranged Leftists out on their inconsistencies and BS.
It was sooooooo much fun to watch him laugh at, and ridicule this fool.
Can anyone here imagine that airhead MeGYN Kelly even approach his level of intelligence and doggedness? I don’t think so. He is absolutely *destroying” her in comparable ratings.
I watch him and Lou Dobbs every night. They are only two shows on Faux News that are worth anything at all.
Tucker holds a degree in history, not journalism. I guess he could have insight on historical climate 😉
Mr. Nye must be a ‘Social Engineer’ or a Surface Engineer (floor polishing etc.) he clearly missed out on Thermodynamics.
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. . . he clearly missed out on Thermodynamics.
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While getting my EE degree, all engineers were required to take thermodynamics. The required class was only offered by the ME department. I guess ME Nye missed that class.
Jim
I knew a fellow grad student in mechanical engineering who thought it possible to split water using electrical current generated by burning the produced hydrogen AND harnessing useful work as a by product. How? Adding acid to the water would increase hydrogen concentration, in his limited chemistry background. Mind you, hydrogen ion (hydronium) concentration isn’t molecular hydrogen but he wouldn’t learn.
Yes, he passed undergrad thermo somehow…