One of the most bizarre interviews in television history took place on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show when bill nye the Science Guy appeared to proclaim that the science was settled on the subject of climate change and that anyone who disagreed was suffering from cognitive dissonance. Nye did not elaborate why the science is settled but instead tried to explain why Carlson and anyone else who question human-caused climate change has a mental disorder. Nye did not repeat his proposal that climate change “deniers” should be jailed.
The conversation took a strange turn when Carlson asked how much humans are affecting climate change and what would the climate be if it were not for human activity.
Nye finally agreed that the climate would be the same as it was in 1750 which, though he did not mention, was the start of the industrial revolution. He went on at length about wine-ready grapes in England and parasites in the Midwest, brought on by the acceleration of natural climate change by human activity. Nye also seemed worried that the world was not likely to experience another ice age.
The conversation ended with Nye going off on a tangent on leaks coming from the White House and then announcing, ominously, "I'm sure we will cross paths again." Carlson, who had tried to explain how open minded he was as opposed to Nye, whom he called a bully, was almost speechless, but his facial expression was most eloquent.
Bill Nye likely does not know it even now, but he did the cause of convincing people that human-caused climate change is real and that we have to take drastic action to stop it least England begin a wine industry. Nowhere in the discussion was any mention made of scientific evidence for and against human-caused climate change, it’s severity, and what appropriate measures should be taken to deal with it.
Nye, who spent the 1990s as a children’s science show host and is not, strictly speaking, a scientist forgot that one of the ways of winning a television debate is to assume an agreeable on air persona. He came across as dogmatic, arrogant, and a little bit creepy.
