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He’s the funny guy in the bow tie… taking on a very serious subject. This week on Firing Line.
SOT THEME SONG: Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill Nye the Science Guy.
He introduced a generation of children to the wonders of science.
SOT from program: Some of the electrons jump off…
But now Bill Nye is changing his message… and his style.
SOT NYE: [18:43] What I’m saying is the planet’s on [beep] fire!…
He is taking on climate change… and he’s taking on the climate skeptics directly.
SOT on Tucker Carlson:
Carlson: You don’t actually know, because it’s unknowable!
Nye: This is how long it took you to interrupt me.
With young people demanding action…
SOT GRETA THUNBERG: If you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.
… and politicians taking sides…
SOT AOC: small incremental policy solutions are not enough.
SOT TRUMP: global warming and all of that. It’s a hoax. A lot of it’s a hoax.
… what does Bill Nye – the Science Guy – say now?
‘Firing Line with Margaret Hoover’ is made possible by… Additional funding is provided by… Corporate funding is provided by…
HOOVER: Bill Nye welcome to Firing Line.
NYE: Thanks for having me.
HOOVER: It’s a pleasure to have you here. Thousands of young people saw you for many, many years on Bill Nye the Science Guy, a program that you hosted on PBS that ran from 1993 to 1998. You yourself won seven Emmys personally, and your show won 18 Emmys. And it really informed a generation of youth to, to learn to love science.
NYE: That’s the goal. Yes. That was the goal.
HOOVER: So you’re trained as an engineer. And you discovered performance and comedy very early in your life and then you found really a calling as an educator.
NYE: Yes. But also I was also very concerned. I mean, understand, as a guy born in the US, an engineer I was very concerned about the future of the United States. I just thought the U.S. is going to heck and the key to our future is technology derived from science. And so I was a young guy. And I just realized that young people are the future.
HOOVER: So I want to play you a clip of you your cameo appearance on John Oliver’s program back in May. Let’s take a listen.
NYE: That was fun.
JOHN OLIVER: Do you have a fun experiment for us?
NYE: Here. I’ve got an experiment for you. Safety glasses on. By the end of this century if emissions keep rising the average temperature on earth could go up another four to eight degrees. What I’m saying is the planet’s on [bleep] fire. There are a lot of things we could do to put it out. Are any of them free? No, of course not! Nothing’s free you idiots! Grow the [beep] up. You’re not children anymore. I didn’t mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were twelve, but you’re adults now and this is an actual crisis. Got it? Safety glasses off [bleep]!
OLIVER: I think we’ve all broken Bill Nye.
HOOVER: So, I mean –
NYE: I just want to say that’s objectively funny. Even though I was the guy on the TV that was pretty funny.
HOOVER: But the point of it is serious?
NYE: Heck yes.
HOOVER: Right.
NYE: Oh man. I’ve been talking about climate change you know my first kids book, published in 1993…
HOOVER: Right.
NYE: …is a reference to the greenhouse effect and how serious this could be. 1993 is getting to be a while ago.
HOOVER: So, um, I mean the idea of climate change is complex, but the science is actually pretty simple. So for the sake of the audience will you just explain, basically, why is climate change happening?
NYE: Climate change is happening because we have… humankind has put in a great deal more carbon dioxide, and a great deal more methane and a few other gases, than would normally be there without us having invented the steam engine and burning coal for a couple centuries, and gas and oil. And the word ‘fossil’ is an old Latin word that means buried, so this is fuel that we’ve dug up. So it is ancient sunlight that has been captured chemically in ancient swamps and trees buried, turned to coal gas and oil, dug up and burned. So we are burning it at a much, much faster rate than it was created. And so we’ve put a lot of these gases in the air that hold in heat. And this, you know at this level, this is not rocket surgery. People have been talking about this for decades. James Hansen testified in front of Congress in 1988 — US Congress 1988 about this —
HOOVER: Jim Hansen did testify in 1988. He was testifying before a Senate panel, and the next day it was on the cover of The New York Times, which was the first time climate change was actually reported on as a leading story. So, let’s talk about how climate change is showing up now.
NYE: So, well, a couple of things that have been long been predicted for a long time are happening. First of all, the world’s getting warmer. 2016 was the warmest year. But it looks like 2019 will be the warmest year. But the other thing that’s happening now — that’s everybody’s goal in climate science — has been to tie extreme weather events like hurricanes, like hurricanes, like catastrophic heat events, like extremely cold events, like a lot of extra snow events.
HOOVER: Mhhm
NYE: tie any of these things to climate change.
HOOVER: Is that correct?
NYE: Well, yes. This has been predicted for years, but now the model is getting sophisticated enough to show or predict that a hurricane like Michael or Dorian is going to move slowly and stay there a long time and dump a lot of water. And so…
HOOVER: And because the ocean is warmer…
NYE: The ocean is warmer so there’s more energy –
HOOVER: …there and there’s more energy and they have more-
NYE: The ocean’s warmer. The molecules are moving faster. They push each other apart faster, and the air is more turbulent and the storms are bigger. And people have been predicting this for decades but now… people are able to tie this mathematical model to what’s actually happening.
HOOVER: So can we talk about worst case scenarios? The worst case scenarios in terms of what could happen to the earth in the the worst models are of pretty biblical proportions.
NYE: Right.
HOOVER: You have migrations of people that are, could be pushed out of their homelands because of rising temperatures or rising seas, the disappearance of resources, the mass extinction of species.
NYE: All true. All big doggone deals.
HOOVER: How do you deal with this notion that for young people the scenarios can be so daunting that you can turn them off for fear of not knowing how to tackle it.
NYE: Real young people — people who are in school right now — they’re fed up. There are not going to put up with this stuff. And when they come, when they get to be a voting age they’re going to make changes people. Look out.
HOOVER: I want to show you a clip of a young person who actually made news this last week. A Swedish activist named Greta Thunberg who said this at the U.N.. Let’s take a look.
GRETA THUNBERG: This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you. // We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up and change is coming whether you like it or not.
HOOVER: So what was your reaction when that…
NYE: Right on Greta!
HOOVER: ..clip went viral?
NYE: Right on.
HOOVER: And do you, do you believe that it is as dire as she articulates?
NYE: Yeah sure. Yes. I don’t mean to be dismissive but I’ve been… People on the science side of this have been talking about this for decades. And now the public consensus is realizing the significance of it.
HOOVER: I mean you’re a scientist. I’m certain you have knowledge that the models, depending on how you model it, can have extremely biblical results, or they can be sort of moderately bad results, or the models can show they, you know, continue on the current trend line, which is bad.
NYE: Yeah. So –
HOOVER: So there’s varying degrees of what could happen. Is there a risk that, with the alarmism, that you could actually slow down the kind of progress you hope to achieve?
NYE: So, in the case of Greta Thunberg and the United Nations, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been quite conservative. It’s been scientists arguing about stuff and actually underplaying the risks.
HOOVER: So what does that mean? Walk us through what that looks like.
NYE: What it’s gonna be is populations in the developing world and Asia, South Asia, are going to go somewhere as sea level rise comes up in their relatively low land countries. And they’re gonna go somewhere and where are they going to go? And in the case of what we nominally call the Middle East, the droughts that have become more frequent and more severe have disenfranchised young people. And this leads to trouble. And so if you’re asking us on the science education side, the situation is generally worse than is presented.
HOOVER: And so, by critics you’ve been criticized for debating climate deniers. By, uh, by your supporters you’ve been heralded for taking on people who are the deniers. So how useful is it? I mean, You debated on The O’Reilly Factor with Bill O’Reilly. When you’re debating the deniers.
NYE: Your audience is not that guy.
HOOVER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. How does it help? How does it help spread your message?
NYE: That when people watch it, the first time… I say, everybody, if you believe in something very strongly that’s inconsistent with science, it takes a couple years. You’re not going to change your mind in a day. It takes hearing the message over and over again.
HOOVER: What does it feel like when you’re debating the deniers? Does it make your blood pressure go up?
NYE: Oh yeah. You have to really focus. And what they want, I believe, is for you to say something you’ll regret.
HOOVER: Like what?
NYE: I don’t know. Calling that person names.
HOOVER: I’d like to play a clip from a famous debate that you had with a creationist Ken Hamm on evolution back in 2014. Let’s take a look.
TOM FOREMAN/ MODERATOR: What if anything would ever change your mind?
KEN HAMM: Well, the answer to that question is, I’m a Christian. And so as far as the word of God is concerned, no. No one is ever going to convince me that the word of God is not true.
FOREMAN: Mr. Nye?
NYE: We would need just one piece of evidence. We would need the fossil that swam from one layer to another. We would need evidence that rock layers can somehow form in just four thousand years… We would need evidence that you can reset atomic clocks… Bring on any of those things, and you would change me immediately.
HOOVER: So most people agree that you won that debate. Except the flip side of what happened is that it generated an enormous amount of attention for Mr. Hamm who was then able to go raise money to build a Noah’s Ark…
NYE: So…
HOOVER: …in order to teach creationism.
NYE: So this is. You’re right.
HOOVER: I mean, you do this often, though. You’re debating people who are the naysayers, who have their own sort of entrenched constituency. And there’s a real question about whether you have, you’re going to have the ability to change hearts and minds.
NYE: My audience for that debate was not Ken Hamm.
HOOVER: No of course not.
NYE: My audience is the future. And so I get correspondence all the time — every month, week — from people who were enabled or empowered by watching that debate.
HOOVER: Should families be able to teach their children whatever they want if it’s inconsistent with science?
NYE: Well I guess so, but…
HOOVER: So then what about the state? Should the states be able to regulate the science curriculum in religious schools?
NYE: Well… What we want in the Science Teachers Association are national standards based on improving the quality of life for everyone. And you guys, this isn’t my idea. If you go to Article 1 Section 8 of the US Constitution, Clause 8, it refers to the progress of science and useful arts. It does not refer to… In fact they went to a lot of trouble to leave religion out of the Constitution and there were compromises made. And there’s reference to God and stuff. But they went to a lot of trouble to get religion out of there because they all in some form, or the founding fathers and their, the women that supported them, were from traditions where religion had caused trouble.
HOOVER: So it sounds like you’re making the argument that the Founders believed was consistent with this argument that there should be a national standard.
NYE: Oh yeah. Progress of science and useful arts.
HOOVER: Well that would absolutely allow a state to regulate the curriculum of religious schools.
NYE: Well… What we want are national science standards. So if you go to a school and they teach you one thing about religion, about the age of the earth, but you have to pass a national test or the equivalent of a national test with it — it features, accepted science — then we want you at least get the right answers when you take the tests.
HOOVER: So you’re in favor of it.
NYE: Well sure.
HOOVER: No, but are you uncomfortable saying that the states should be able to mandate a certain set of standards.
NYE: Well it just ticks people off when you tell them what to do. You want to sell them on the idea that science, vaccinations, addressing climate change, electrifying all ground transportation, providing clean water, renewably-produced electricity, access to the Internet, raising the standard of living of women and girls around the world, is in everybody’s best interest.
HOOVER: So even if it ticks them off it’s worth doing? What if they don’t buy the idea?
NYE: OK. Well, you want to show them the evidence, repeatedly.
HOOVER: And hope that they voluntarily choose to incorporate it?
NYE: Not just hope. But make an argument that they will eventually embrace.
HOOVER: You think that Ken Hamm is going to voluntarily embrace that argument?
NYE: No, but he… I think he will have fewer and fewer recruits, over the coming decades. *Bill predicts that in the next 20 years science will win out not in the next two years, but in the next 20.
HOOVER: All right. So I want to read you a tweet from President Trump: “Brutal and extended cold blast could shatter all records,” all caps. “Whatever happened to global warming?” How would Bill Nye debate President Trump?
NYE: I don’t think changing his mind… well, his mind changes quite frequently. But the problem is, apparently whoever he spoke with last influences him. So what I would say is, ask your daughter about climate change. That’s how I would get to him. And this is what I say all the time about Joe Bastardi, Marc Morano to name some names. What will your kids and your grandkids say to you. And this is what Greta Thunberg’s message is. We’re fed up, people. We’re 16 years old. We’re not going to put up with this anymore, you guys.
HOOVER: In 1990 William F. Buckley Jr. who hosted this program. He uh, he actually, maybe was early to this debate for conservatives. He invited a leading environmentalist and a leading major coal producer to the program to debate the pros and cons of coal. I want you to take a look.
CARL POPE: When you burn coal or oil or natural gas, although in smaller quantities, you put out carbon dioxide which is not in the short term toxic, but which does expose us to a risk of basically destabilising global climate. And that’s a cost. You can argue about how big a cost it is and I think that’s a reasonable argument. We don’t know exactly. But we think the lesson of what happened with acid rain is –
BUCKLEY: We being the Sierra Club?
POPE: The Sierra Club. And I think environmentalists in general, that when we see a problem like this we ought to begin buying a small insurance policy early instead of waiting until we have a crisis. The problem we have with acid rain is, it’s going to be much more expensive to clean it up now than it would have been if we had started 1981 when we first became aware of the problem, and put in place a modest program at low cost that could have protected the environment over a longer period of time and at a much lower total cost to the economy. But that’s not the way we do things. We like to wait for the crisis, and then we have a crisis solution.
BUCKLEY: That’s not the Sierra Club, right?
POPE: No, but that’s the American way. That’s the American way.
HOOVER: I mean with respect to, is that where we are with global warming? I mean is that the American way in your view? That we have to wait until it’s really a crisis. ‘Til global warming, is really a crisis before we get serious about it?
NYE: No. No. The really amazing thing about the current administration, to me, is the number of people that the president was able to find who are like-minded in anti-climate change and pro fossil fuel industry and anti-environment.
HOOVER: Do you think that we’re making progress in terms of understanding that climate change is a real issue facing the world
NYE: Absolutely. The polls—and I, all I do is read them, I don’t conduct them—There’s something like 80 percent of the U.S. population is talking about climate change. So here’s a claim for you to evaluate: In 2020, a conservative might be able to run for president who does not have a climate policy. No climate policy. Just ignore it. 2020, could be. 2024, maybe. But in 2028, everybody’s gonna have to have a climate policy. Conservative and progressive.
HOOVER: I actually, I mean, I think it’s gonna happen sooner than that.
NYE: Well we all hope so.
HOOVER: Look, it seems to me that attitudes are changing. 66 percent of Americans believe climate change is caused by human activity. Certainly, I can understand why you would think the current leadership of the Republican Party wouldn’t be interested in a climate agenda running on a climate platform. But, even major oil corporations, Exxon Mobil, have come out in favor of a carbon tax.
NYE: That would be great, a carbon tax.
HOOVER: Yeah. They’re in favor of a carbon tax. You have the secretary—Republican secretaries of previous administrations from James Baker to George Shultz to Hank Paulson are in favor of a carbon tax, and as a conservative approach to addressing climate change.
NYE: Just careful how the oil industry has couched the carbon tax…
HOOVER: But isn’t that? Even if they’re in favor of it — I’m sure you would probably quibble with some of the details — doesn’t it demonstrate a change in attitude?
NYE: Oh, it would be great. The word ‘tax’ is a fabulous word, but Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, got in huge trouble for accidentally…
HOOVER: …saying the word tax.
NYE: So how about the word fee? It’s a three letter word. We have a carbon fee. So when you produce—when your business produces carbon, the cost of your product goes up a little bit. This would discourage the reckless production of carbon, or methane — carbon monoxide or methane — and it would encourage innovation and conservation and efficiency. And this is the free market. It should be a wonderful happy thing.
HOOVER: So, I mean, it seems to me that the debate has shifted — at least amongst sort of thinking engaged policymakers — away from sort of the dynamic of the Bill Nye-Ken Hamm, believe or not-believe, to a, this is happening. And the debate is really how do you mitigate it and tackle it, and the varying degrees to which one should spend money on doing it how quickly or expeditiously, or over more of a long term incremental phase. It seems to me that that’s the dynamic of debate now, rather than the dichotomy of the deniers.
NYE: I hope you’re right but the current administration has just found all two dozen deniers that still walk the earth, and so they all got them working for him. And, as you point out, this can’t last. You can’t deny science, you know, for very long without it catching up with you. And so, I strongly believe we have to view the Earth as our home, or our house, and that we are in charge. Humans are in charge. And this may not have been our choice. And I’m an REI member, and I love the outdoors. And we all talk about wanting to leave the outdoors alone. And it’s natural and this and that. And there is a lot to that. And so we have– In my opinion, we have to take a top down or much more centralized approach to managing the Earth’s climate and our place here ‘s a huge amount to that. But we are in control.. And this requires international cooperation and everybody acknowledging that climate change is a serious problem and we’re going to address it.
HOOVER: We are a leader…
NYE: I want us to be…
HOOVER: … in the carbon reduction space. I mean, the United States has reduced its carbon emissions more than any other country, for sure. And more than any other industrialized country. And you mentioned China. I mean, China is responsible for 30 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.
NYE: Yeah, OK.
HOOVER: So how do you deal with this tension of these other post-industrialized nations who actually are worse offenders, by a significant margin, than the United States, and convince them to change their policy?
NYE: OK. So in the case of China, they have a situation now where people can’t be outside in their capital city on certain days of the year because the air is so bad. People aren’t going to put up with that. And this whole—this what about… There is an expression which I really, really like: What about-ism.
HOOVER: But I’m not doing what about-ism. I’m actually asking, like, if we’re facing—if you’re looking at Greta Thunberg, and she’s saying, ‘shame on you all, because I’m going to have to inherit a world that has more carbon emissions and more pollutants than you guys had,’ and we’re working with these partners across the world, and we’re not encouraging or helping, what do we do about the ones who are even worse offenders than us, that actually have no interest or aim to stop burning coal in the next 10 years?
NYE: What makes you say they have no interest? They’re caught up in the same thing…
HOOVER: OK, OK. Right. Well, this is the thing. There is… India, for example, will continue to burn coal until 2030 at least. China is also continuing to burn coal for at least the next decade. So how do you look at Greta Thunbergs of the world and say, we’re doing our part but we can’t we can’t do anything about that.
NYE: So, well, China is also the world’s largest manufacturer — or China writ large — manufacturers in China are the largest manufacturer of solar panels.
HOOVER: They are. But does that mitigate the fact that they’re still burning coal?
NYE: Well, so, you guys, let’s address these problems.
HOOVER: How do you do it, is my question.
NYE: Well, messing up decades-negotiated international trading agreements is probably not the best way to influence another government, for example. So, we’ve got to convince or show everybody that we’re all in this together and solve these problems. I want us to be leaders.
HOOVER: Mm. Hmm.
NYE: And so, let’s lead. And we can do this.
HOOVER: Do you think that addressing it will be solved through technological innovation? That there’s an argument that, we’re pretty clever animals. We’ve worked our way out of binds we’ve been in the past previously, and we’ll probably think through and create and innovate our way out of this one as well. And there are really interesting, sort of, technological ideas, hypotheses, that are that are really being looked at… spraying the atmosphere with particles that can reflect—
NYE: That is madness. I’m open-minded, of course—
HOOVER: Why is that madness?
NYE: OK. So. It’s this—There’s a word, which you can understand it, without much thinking. Geo-engineering. We’re going to engineer the whole earth. OK. If you put particles in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, what if there is some global conflict? What if people start pulling out of treaties? What if people stop supplying? What if— And then you stop putting the particles in the atmosphere. Then you stop cooling the Earth off, and all this carbon dioxide, methane you’ve put in in the meantime, now just sends this greenhouse effect into an overwhelming, very fast, much faster than it would have been, climate change.
HOOVER: All right, so bottom line: Do you think we can innovate our way out of this?
NYE: Yeah. But it’s going to take working the problem from both ends, or every end. It’s going to take innovation. It’s going to take investment. It’s going to take education. And you can’t—We have to stop burning fossil fuels. And that’s not something that is going to be accomplished technically. It’s going to take political decisions. And the sacrifices are really hard for people of my age, or your age, to really grasp. You know, I try to understand it. I do my best, but we can solve enormous problems. And my three ideas — you know you can read lists of 25 things we need to do or 54 things we need.
HOOVER: You’ve got three.
NYE: Try three:. Clean water, renewably produced reliable electricity, access to the internet. If we had those three things for everybody on earth we would change the world. But this is gonna take everybody working together and accepting that the earth is it. As Carl Sagan said, this is where we make our stand. There’s no cavalry coming over the hill.
HOOVER: There’s no planet B.
NYE: There’s no planet B. This is it. So let’s go people. Let’s work together and change the world.
HOOVER: Bill, thank you for coming to Firing Line.
NYE: Thank you.
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