Having gotten tired of being beaten up by Marc Morano multiple times in TV debates, Bill Nye decided he would give it a go against Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn), and really fared no better (video of the whole exchange here). Host David Gregory even interrupted Blackburn multiple times and tried to help out Nye and the Warmists, to no avail. Blackburn was calm, rational, adult, and had facts on her side, rather then hyperbole, “consensus” (which isn’t science), scaremongering, and creating links out of thing air.
Perhaps we should note that television production uses lots and lots of energy, which Warmists say causes “climate change”. Weird, eh?
Anyhow, Warmists were really not happy that NBC would even allow a debate, being the big time fascists that they are. Here’s National Journal
Senate Democrats recently joined a longstanding liberal coalition of media critics to demand that major news networks up their coverage of climate change.
This is not what they had in mind.
Sunday’s episode of NBC’s “Meet the Press” will feature a “climate change debate” between celebrity science educator Bill Nye (“the science guy”) and Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn.
For the political coalition—and, indeed, for the overwhelming majority of climate scientists— the connection between human greenhouse gas emissions and climate change is settled science, and they were hoping the networks would cover the impacts of that change. But Blackburn has disputed the scientific consensus on human-induced global warming, and the segment’s critics fear the episode will feature a he-said-she-said vibe that’s at odds with the science.
No, what they’re really worried about is that a Warmists would get beaten yet again. And they’re correct to be worried. Salon was concerned. So was Talking Points Memo. Here’s the Huffington Post
First, some context: TV news shows almost never cover climate change, which ought to be one of the most aggressively-reported issues around, given that, y’know, it’s a dire threat to the planet and everyone on it. A recent study from Media Matters found that the Sunday shows on NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox spent a combined 27 minutes on the topic in the whole of 2013. Meet the Press was singled out as “failing to offer a single substantial mention of climate change” for the entire year.
So, when “MTP” does finally decide that the issue merits its consideration, what does it do? It sets up a “debate” about the issue between Bill Nye—who, despite the great things he has done to popularize science, is not a climate scientist—and Blackburn, who has previously tweeted about how proud she is to deny that global warming exists.
The existence of climate change is no longer an issue up for discussion, and hasn’t been for decades. The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said there was a 95 percent chance that humans are responsible for global warming.
Interestingly, these are the same people who take long fossil fueled flights from all over the world to attend a nice working vacation, often on the taxpayer dime, in great spots. What the Warmists do not like is that anyone is allowed to debate the issue in the public eye. They want the opposition silenced.
Oh, and let’s not forget that 95% of the Warmists models have failed. If you want to talk consensus, that is it.
So, Nye was given the opportunity to go up against a politician in a supposedly scientific debate, and lost yet again.
“The existence of climate change is no longer an issue up for discussion, and hasn’t been for decades.” Wow. To believe that something, anything, should never be discussed again is beyond words. How sad.
How dare you discuss evidence! The experts TOLD you what you’re supposed to believe, so just shut up and believe what you’re told!
Yeah, I think we have a consensus. Global warming is not caused by man. That is the consensus. It’s funny how the fools can state with absolute certainty that global warming is happening when none of their predictions of dire events have come true. They point to hurricanes and claim that as proof of global warming, and man’s involvement in it. So what are they saying, that there were never any hurricanes before the industrial age? The ocean bottom is littered with wooden sailing ships that were unfortunate enough to wander into the path of one of these monster storms. There have always been hurricanes, strong ones and weak ones and there will always be hurricanes in the future. Just as there will always be cold snaps and tsunamis and tornadoes. And the earth has had many transitions from hot to cold and back to hot. Notice how the media didn’t want to report that a boat that recently got stuck in antarctic ice was a global warming research vessel. I say they got stuck in some scientific evidence they did not expect to be there. I hope they took notes. Such delicious irony. Notice how they got their argument set up so that no matter what happens, they can blame it on global warming. But there has been no warming to blame it on. So they came up with “the sea ate my warming” Just how stupid do they think we are? So now they are saying “Like, we have a consensus, so, like, shutup!” If there was a consensus, I would agree with them.
It is ironic that the very people that laugh at bible thumpers for believing in established authority, use the same same “authority” argument by saying “there is consensus”.
I guess that if you are losing the argument, you fall back on authority, consensus, majority rule, — any thing but logic, data, facts, science.
If we lived by authority, the earth would still be flat and the sun revolve around the earth, the USA still ruled by royalty.
The primary difference between religious authority and scientific experts is, of course, evidence. Well, that and snake-handling – scientists know that venomous snakes bite. The evidence in support of human-caused global warming is overwhelming to all but a minority of anti-scientific, ideological or financially-dependent carbonauts.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair
Most far-right science deniers such as monckton, morano, watts, jimhoft, goddard, Limbaugh, beck etc make a good living telling lies to their audiences. They may even believe some of the lies themselves.