Awkward Utopia

As you all know, UF recently paid Bill Nye to speak to us Gators in the Phillips Center. Some of his talk focused around global warming and its numerous alleged pitfalls. Personally, I agree that there has been some degree of warming, but I wonder about the parade of evils that will come about as a result, for one, and also still wonder about its all-around deleterious nature. Warming is a natural event, and it could be a good thing. What skeptics like me ask of science is robust analysis on the problem — and we need someone to present it well.

Bill Nye is not that man. Watch this clip.

Bill Nye is embarrassed by MIT’s Richard Lindzen and is too ashamed to argue coherently. At time 1:03 in the clip, Nye asserts that the gulf stream could stop from freshwater coming in from ice caps. Lindzen responds that Nye is wrong on the point around time 1:39. He explains why starting around time 1:50, with the nail in the coffin at 2:01. Nye admits he doesn’t know where Lindzen could be wrong at time 6:16, but goes on to try and recover from his embarrassing slaughter on national television (remember when scientists only drew conclusions based on the scientific method?) by saying that he trusts the IPCC (on faith, presumably, around 6:20), whose views he finds compelling (again, presumably on faith) and also, since he can’t explain why Lindzen is wrong, will only say that he is in the minority at time 6:33.

Bill Nye lies at time 7:27, when he says Larry asked about freshwater falling (nope!), as if this somehow explains his errors. Nye tries to rewrite the argument at time 7:34, saying that freshwater entering the ocean is his point (nope!). Between time 7:42 and 7:47, Bill Nye puts words into Lindzen’s mouth, trying to go on the offensive (and more importantly, trying to take attention away from his ignorance and to put it on something he feel like he can argue about: feelings and morals). Between time 7:57 and 8:01, Lindzen merely exhorts Nye to back up his arguments with facts.
All in all, a good day for science (Lindzen) and a bad day for quacks (Nye). Perhaps the Union of Concerned Scientists should just let politicians play politics.

All I’m saying is: if all this global warming stuff is so scientific, why isn’t there a coherent model that explains either the events that happened in the past or predict the events that will happen in the future — OR both? Science purports to do those things, only pseudoscience does not but claims to.