Oh, Bill Nye. He still thinks he’s some sort of “science guy.” Imagine you’re him for a moment, as horrible as that sounds. You hate the Trump administration and facts so much that you go on national television to bash someone to the point where you make it seem like they don’t care about their own family's wellbeing. Meanwhile, the facts — and recent facts at that — dictate that you have no idea what you’re talking about. If you can wrap your head around all that ignorance, you could understand what it must be like to be Nye.
Nye was on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” on Monday to talk about the news that President Trump’s administration will be placing Mandy Gunasekara the new chief of staff for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). However, because Nye is big on conjecture and low on substance, he decided that he would bring the topic of Gunasekara’s family into the conversation.
Here’s a portion of Nye’s appearance on MSNBC:
Here’s a transcript of part of what Nye said above:
Now she’s moving up the org chart to here to the center where she’s going to have more influence and so on. So, the other thing I find striking about — she and her husband — Ms. Gunasekara, they have two kids. They have two young kids, and they’re going to inherit this Earth and they are going to have to interact with their parents when their parents have been strong advocates of putting more carbon dioxide in the Earth. What they do, very common in the people that they have hired, the environmental protection agency of late, including Mr. Wheeler, is confuse or try to blur the idea that carbon dioxide, although not a traditional pollutant, is a problem. Carbon dioxide is the problem. Yes, methane is a problem, some other greenhouse gases are the problem. But buzz there is so much carbon dioxide, it is the main thing that we need to address.
I’m not sure if Nye was trying to appeal to the human element by brining up Gunasekara’s husband and children, but it didn’t work. It just sounded like a low blow that is used when the person arguing has no argument.
Another aspect of what Nye said that shows he either has no clue what he’s talking about or ignores actual climate reports, is when he spoke about Gunsekara and the Trump EPA just wanting to put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — as if it were some kind of “Scooby Doo” level evil ploy.
The problem with Nye bringing up carbon dioxide is that just last week the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that the U.S. led all countries around the world in reducing carbon dioxide emissions in 2019.
Here’s a reminder of what the IEA reported:
...a fall of 140 Mt, or 2.9%, to 4.8 Gt. US emissions are now down almost 1 Gt from their peak in the year 2000, the largest absolute decline by any country over that period. A 15% reduction in the use of coal for power generation underpinned the decline in overall US emissions in 2019. Coal-fired power plants faced even stronger competition from natural gas-fired generation, with benchmark gas prices an average of 45% lower than 2018 levels. As a result, gas increased its share in electricity generation to a record high of 37%. Overall electricity demand declined because demand for air-conditioning and heating was lower as a result of milder summer and winter weather.
So, for alarmists like Nye, if the U.S. leads the world in reducing their carbon footprint, no matter what numbers the Trump EPA puts up in the future will never be enough. Because at the end of the day, it’s more about control and less about climate.