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.
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Or maybe Viniculture Engineering?
viTiculture, (sorry a bit petty or did I miss something like Nye living in a whine cellar?))
tks asybot! I stand corrected. Viticulture is the science of growing the plant, viniculture the art of squeezing and fermenting its fruit.
Sorry I am late answering but I wasn’t trying to be picky there is another term Oenology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oenology, but heck I just grew the plants until I went to school and learned a lot about Terroir, microclimates irrigation and the list goes on. Although the basics look simple it is a wonderfully complex science. When I first started in 1972 we were at the low end of the totem pole by the time I left the field in 2006 the vineyard manager was as important as the wine maker and unless the two of you could not work together not much good happened. ( the payscale went way up thank god.)
Willis, did you see that in response to Tucker’s question on what the climate would be like without humans, Nye kept delaying and evading until he had a chance to stair at his phone. My guess is that someone texted him the wine-grape answer. He read the answer from his phone.
Being stupid and being dead are similar in that someone who is dead don’t know they are dead and someone who is stupid….well do I need to continue?
“I see dumb people” (old but still pertinent)
Should make all engineers cringe. Nye doesn’t even know we’re IN and Ice Age and the last glaciation occured about 12,000 years ago.
Not anymore. It was “adjusted”…
Before: http://www.sciencedaily.com/terms/ice_age.htm (old version of Wikipedia article stating we’re in an ice age)
After: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age (current version of Wikipedia article stating we’re in an interglacial)
It looks like the ice age ended in the last year or two, and the good news is that we’ll never have another one… which is nice.
Unfortunately, the term “ice age” doesn’t have a well defined meaning. We are in an interglacial during an ice age. Whether that age began 2.6 million years ago or 34 Ma is debatable. IMO the Cenozoic Ice House began with the Oligocene formation of Antarctic ice sheets 34 Ma, while the Pleistocene glaciations or Ice Age began c. 2.6 Ma, with the spread of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets.
It was too warm and the continents weren’t in the right places for a true Mesozoic Ice House, but the Paleozoic suffered two, the short but deep Ordovician/Silurian (despite CO2 eleven times higher than now) and lengthy Carboniferous-Permian (~360 to 260 Ma). The Proterozoic Eon (2500 to 541 Ma) was hit by Snowball Earth Ice Houses worse than anything in our present Phanerozic Eon (541 Ma et seq).
“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? ”
Logic? We don’t need no steenking logic.
Re: “CARLSON: You’re not even a scientist, you’re an engineer…”
Carlson has confused the use of science with its definition. The practice of science is the application of the Scientific Method as a tool, for research. But one need not be doing scientific research to be a scientist. A scientist is merely someone who has the education and training which should enable him to do science. That includes engineers.
E.g., a chemist who analyzes blood samples in a hospital is not doing research, but he’s still a scientist. Likewise, a mechanical engineer, like Bill Nye, who makes his living producing television entertainment, is still a scientist.
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/us/engineering
engineering. n. 1 The branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures. …
The reason that “Bachelor of Science” degrees are awarded by engineering colleges is that engineering is applied science.
My first degree was a “Bachelor of Science” in the field of “Systems Science,” and it was awarded by a “Department of Electrical Engineering and Systems Science.”
Bill Nye has only a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, and works as a children’s television entertainer. But he nevertheless has a profile on famousscientists.org, and is known far and wide as “the science guy.” He is a scientist — just not a very good one.
What’s the cutoff when being “not a very good one” precludes Nye from the designation of “scientist”, regardless of his paper-mill equivalent degree in whatever he was awarded.
It’s a stretch to apply either the term “scientist” or “engineer” after that demonstrably embarrassing interview.
daveburton,
Nye may be a scientist, but I have tremendous difficulty with any scientist, alleged or otherwise, who states “the science is settled”. I found Nye to be arrogant, impolite and hostile, practically from the beginning of the interview with Tucker Carlson. His behavior was typical of one that I have observed in others who support the idea that humans are responsible for warming. No data nor strong, defensible arguments were presented, though there was a feeble attempt by appealing to the “hockey stick” graphic in which people like Nye allege that the temperature is rising at a faster rate now than ever before. How in the hell does anyone know what the rate of temperature increase was, say during the Quaternary Era when most polar ice retreated. In giving credit to the Broadway show “Fiddler on the Roof” I’ll answer that question: “I don’t know!”
To be a scientist, you have to practice the scientific method. Having a BS (!) degree does not a scientist make.
Nye is a lying clown, not a scientist.
Gluteus, I agree. But I’m sick of the argument “you’re not a climate scientist, so shut up.”
Because there are many scientists like for example Willis, who maybe don’t have the degree but know more and are better scientists than those of the 97% Kabbalah.
Dunno to what extent Cornell mechanical engineering BS requirements have changed since the 1970s, but now it takes three freshman physics classes and one chemistry class.
http://www.mae.cornell.edu/academics/undergrad/memajor/
Bill Nye holds a degree in Mech. Eng. from Cornell. (There – that embarrassment is out of the bag.) I have a degree in Engineering Physics from Cornell, and taught there (EE) as a lecturer for 30 years. Once an engineering graduate gets a job, his/her training (actual coursework) will get you by for about six weeks! Your employer does not expect you were taught anything directly useful to them, except hopefully, the basics of analytic thinking and engineering intuition. Some do – some don’t. Nye seems to have been “update free” and found a soft niche where he thinks he gets away with it!
Forget human CO2 emissions affecting Climate.
We need to go back to the first step:
How are human CO2 emissions affecting the total CO2 in the atmosphere?
This is still very poorly understood.
Let me get this straight, according to Nye, if it weren’t for human activity the climate would not have changed in the last 260 plus years? (We would still have 1750’s climate)
Now that is the words of a “climate change denier” if I ever heard them.
Further, if the “science is settled”, then why wouldn’t Nye give a more scientific explanation of how and how much the various “human activities” each affect the climate?
JohnWho
Some on this thread have noted that Nye got angrier as the interview went on…I watched it with & without sound – Nye looked like a cornered animal who was hoping to just get out alive.
Bill Nye the UNscientific guy ignores the context that climate has always changed naturally asserting:
That source of “general” knowledge summarized (without ref)
To be quantitative: Roman vineyards in Britain: Stratigraphic and palynological data from Wollaston in the Nene Valley, England Brown, A G; Meadows, I; Turner, S D; Mattingly, D J. Antiquity; Cambridge75.290 (Dec 2001): 745-757.
PT Barnum science distortion for the cause
There is no honesty there. None
“… you’re an engineer.”
Gee, and that’s a rebuke? After the wonders created all around us, electronic rev., space age… . There is no such thing as a rocket scientist… er that would be engineer! Indeed the climate system is best understood as an engine. So Tucker where do you get your chops in climate science?
OK, that’s out of the way. Bill Nye is doubly a fool because he IS a mechanical engineer and central to the work of a good one is a thorough theoretical and practical working grasp of thermodynamics, which is apparently not the strong suit of most of the scientists in the global warming industry who stumble badly when dealing with the enthalpy elephant in their midst.
Not to second guess Tucker, but I believe a more insightful reply would have been, “One of your defenses of the climate consensus is that many critics are not specifically climate scientists. You are a journalist/entertainer and non-practicing engineer. Why should anyone take you seriously?”
Also ad hominen and appeal to authority attacks are the hallmark of the Climate Change Brigade.
IMHO, better to just stick to the facts.
I am Canadian, I live North of the 49th parallel, and I am a huge fan of global warming. I didn’t like the weather in the 60s and 70s. I hated freezing my nuts off trying to boost cars when it was -45 and windy. I love being able to put my boat back in the water in April. I just wish that we could release more CO2 and keep it going. Damn you, Milankovich!
there is ofcourse a much better “hypothesis” to explain climate variability and thats the sun.
then there is Galactic Cosmic Rays which might be VERY influential and seem to vary a lot in intensity as we travel around the milky way (rotate every 50K years, just like the timespan of an iceage)
A galactic year is more like 250 Million years. That’s the time taken for the Sun to go round the Milky way once. We pass through several spiral arms( thought to be standing shock waves) in a Galactic year where star creation is at a maximum. The cosmic ray intensity goes up as we approach the spiral arms. That could be a reason for Ice Ages, times when we get Ice formation at the poles in Milankovitch cycles.
Cosmoclimatologist Nir Shaviv, et al, have proposed that earth’s ice house intervals occur roughly every c. 145 million years, as the solar system passes through galactic spiral arms.
http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
The solar system also oscillates up and down as it rotates around the center of the galaxy.
The claim is that GCRs are heavier when the solar system is closer to the galactic plane of rotation.
A history of UK viticulture for Bill the gadfly, bearer of the cognitive dissonance bow tie:
http://www.englishwineproducers.co.uk/background/history
Nice……
The Romans maybe did not occupy the Tweed Valley long enough to justify planting vines, but its south-facing slopes might well have produced viable wine grape crops in the first to fourth centuries:
Bill Nye, like many of the ‘experts’ who float around the mediasphere, would be out of a job if there wasn’t some crisis to promote. He, like many others, has built a career on it. Therefore, he will never capitulate or back down from his position.
Nye said the rate of change was the giveaway to AGW being a human-caused problem, implying that natural climate change only occurred over tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Even I know of recent and clearly identifiable 30 cycles of warming and cooling. (See all through climate data since c1850 when accurate records were kept) That shoots his ‘rate of warming’ claim stone cold dead right there.
Bill Nye – the stingy guy.
If vineyards were good enough for Roman Britain, why can’t modern Britain have them too?
— Independent, 17 yrs ago.
They do, plenty of them!
http://www.englishwineproducers.co.uk
Gavin contradicts Bill…. Only last 60 years is human caused…..
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Hmm, what effect has human activity had on the Sun?
>> 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 …<<
Not sure this is a fair restatement of his position. He agreed that climate is always changing, only that natural climate change happens very slowly. I think the point he was trying to make is that the rate of change is happening faster today due to human activities. He thinks the climate should look more like it did in 1750 because natural climate change happens very slowly. I'm not sure he is correct that all natural climate change happens slowly. But I think that is the point he was trying to make.
What I found interesting in that exchange is that he completely avoided talking about the Medieval Warm Period of about 1000 years ago when paleo studies suggest it was probably about as warm as it is today, and the Little Ice Age that ended a couple of hundred years ago when it was considerably cooler than during the MWP. He did not acknowledge those naturally occurring events which happened over a faster time period than he seems to think is possible naturally.
The Modern Warming has not yet equaled the hottest intervals of the Medieval WP, but it still has centuries to run, thank God.
When they claim change is at an excessive rate, they are comparing changes in short term averages (5 years or so) with changes in long term averages (50-100 years or more). Statistics, when properly quantified can show a truth, but it’s just as easy to improperly apply statistical methods to support a lie. Another example of broken statistical analysis is Hansen/Lebedeff homogenization which requires a normal distribution of sites and globally constant trends, neither of which are true.
They sure don’t like it when you pin them down rather than leave them with their generalised doomsaying.
So, according to Nye if we eliminate the human production of all CO2 then global temperatures will go back to what it was in 1750, Then we will have less crops, and all of the associated problems that existed back during the Little Ice Age, like the Irish Potato famine, etc.
Was it a more favorable climate that got the Industrial Revolution going, or was it’s man’s CO2 emissions arising from the Industrial Revolution that led to a more favorable climate?
Without the extra food from a warming climate, there would not have been an Industrial Revolution.
Nye is a huckster who sells books and shows. He is not a scientist. Whenever he doesn’t know the answer to something he just shrugs and says “Its a mystery.” Go away Bill Nye.
The True Climate Deniers are those who deny climate change–after 1750–can be natural.
In their view, “proved” by “science”, climate changed radically, often rapidly, over the past four billion years and finally struck a perfect balance in 1750. Climate could now remain unchanged forever, if not for evil humans.
I’ve always thought the biggest problem with Fox News is they invite leftists on many shows, where they are allowed to lecture us, sometimes unwilling to stop talking, lie, and usually evade questions from the host.
Leftists are extremely irritating — they know how to lecture others, but have no idea what a real debate is.
I give Tucker Carlson credit for trying the hardest of any host on Fox News to make leftist guests answer his usually simple questions, but find these “debates” annoying to watch.
So I stopped watching Tucker.
I wish there was a news show that calmly reported what happened in the past day (or week) without bias.
PBS has a “calm” news program, but has a huge left-wing bias I want to avoid.
The loud “debates” on Fox News shows, where questions are routinely ignored, and media ridiculous fascination with making predictions, rather than just reporting reality (“news”), forces me online, and away from TV news.
“Leftists are extremely irritating — they know how to lecture others, but have no idea what a real debate is. ”
I think they do know what a debate is and avoid it at all cost because the logical side of their brains subconsciously knows how weak emotional arguments are when stacked up against the logical arguments used against them. Whether you lean left or right (or are an alarmist or a skeptic) seems to depend on how your brain resolves conflicts between emotion and logic. And of course, the alarmist crowd hypes up emotional triggers using guilt and predictions of doom and gloom. This also seems to be why the left gets far more angry then the right when they don’t get their way.
Check out Scott Adams blog on this. It is great.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/157823678756/tucker-carlson-induces-cognitive-dissonance-in#comments