Bill Nye: Hurricane Irene evidence of climate change

We tend to avoid outright politics here on SmartPlanet, but Bill Nye -- known as "The Science Guy" after his popular television show on PBS -- recently visited the Fox Business channel's Freedom Watch to explain to host Charles Payne and his viewers the intricacies of drawing a line between Irene's destruction and climate change as a whole.

The conversation, while expectedly argumentative at times, was interesting if only because Nye took great pains to simplify the science in a way that's understandable to the layman.

For example, his first response to Payne's question of whether Irene was proof of global warming:

I don't think the word "proof" is what you're looking for. "Evidence," or "a result of"? Yeah. Yeah. Now here's what the people will tell you who run these climate models. Now everybody, the word "model" in this usage is a computer program, a very sophisticated computer program. So you take data from satellites about the thickness of clouds and the extent of cloud cover over the sea. You take data about the temperature of the sea surface. You take data about the existing weather in let's say, North America or the Gulf of Mexico, as the storm moves into it, then you compute how much rain fell out of it, how much energy must have been put into it to create that much rain and it takes many months to analyze an event like Irene. Now, climate colleagues that I have will tell you that they cannot tell you today that Irene is evidence or a result of climate change, but check in with them in about March, next year, after they have a few months to collect all these millions and millions of data from weather services and satellites and compile them and run a climate model and show that Irene was a result of the world having more energy in its atmosphere.

The conversation of course continues, with Payne asking whether it was fair for Newsweek to run the coverline, "The New Normal" in reference to Irene. And it gets a bit contentious when Nye asserts that the Earth is getting warmer ("You can't disagree with that") and the two banter back and forth about whether the phenomenon is man-made, impossibly, through the lens of racism as a cultural, not scientific, construct.

Heady stuff, but Nye receives my respect for retaining his patience in outlining a life's worth of work in a six-minute segment.

[Traveler2019]

Bill Nye isn't a scientist. He's a TV personality. Nye already shot himself in the foot when he went all crazy with the evolution BS and anti-Creation. Now this. Global warming has already been exposed as a hoax/money maker, when all those emails were leaked about the "scientists" fudging the numbers and not having any evidence for such "global warming". Then they changed global warming to "climate change" since enough people knew about global warming as BS. Re-label it, and it's still BS. Bill Nye is damaged goods. He's shot himself in the foot, and he's exposed his lack of knowledge on weather. He's not a meteorologist either.

[MemeMine]

History is watching this CO2 madness: "Change is all around us. " Climate Blame WAS modern day omen worship and REAL planet lovers are happy and relieved a CO2 crisis was proven to be a tragic exaggeration. Fear is always unsustainable and the new fear mongering neocons are the goose-stepping CO2 conformists. This former believer will no longer take part in this needless panic that has condemned billions of children to a CO2 death for 25 years. Call the courthouse.

[hawkeyenick]

Funny, that's not actually what he said.

He said we won't have the data for months to know.

[MemeMine]

History is watching this CO2 madness: "Change is all around us. " Climate Blame WAS modern day omen worship and REAL planet lovers are happy and relieved a CO2 crisis was proven to be a tragic exaggeration. Fear is always unsustainable and the new fear mongering neocons are the goose-stepping CO2 conformists. This former believer will no longer take part in this needless panic that has condemned billions of children to a CO2 death for 25 years. Call the courthouse.

[Who_Wants_to_Know]

Why don't you try listening to the video clip, where in the first few seconds Bill Nye states very clearly that Irene is evidence of global warming.

[Who_Wants_to_Know]

Why in the world did CBS remove my comment asking how Bill Nye would explain the worse hurricanes that occurred before any significant increase in temperature? I listed the hurricanes, beginning back in the 1800's. What could they possibly have found offensive in that, other than it makes a claim of global warming having caused or contributed to Irene look foolish?

Does CBS generally censor comments for no reason other than it happens to go against their view on something?

[darkknight_55]

I was going to post the same thing but you beat me to it! These guys like Nye look for any excuse to further their argument, thinking that nobody will take the time out to research past hurricanes BEFORE the whole climate change controversy.I'm sure that there is a change going on, but to what extent is the real question here. Seems to me that there was a huge climate change a long time ago too, something that led into the ice age???
(Yes, that was sarcasm)
What's their excuse for that?

[Jaylah54]

Awww, every good Rush-spouting Republican knows that climate change exists only in "libruls" imaginations.

I'm sure their grandchildren will thank them for that.

[AnnieDanny]

As if anybody could change it even if it WAS happening. I just read that Irene caused the worst flooding in NJ since 1905. That's what people don't realize is: these terrible natural disasters have been happening all along and just because it's the worst you've seen in YOUR lifetime, doesn't mean it's the worst there ever WAS.

And it especially does NOT mean that this is the END of the WORLD, which is what the global warming people sound like to me: a bunch of Chicken Littles who think the sky is falling.

The glaciers have been melting since forever, it seems like. I think the real question is how they got here in the first place, not why they're melting.

[darkknight_55]

"Awww, every good Rush-spouting Republican knows that climate change exists only in "libruls" imaginations."

Something only a narrow minded "librul" could say. Read my above reply to the other post.

[nearl451]

There are a lot of things that are evidence of further global warming this year...of which Irene is NOT one of them.

We've had one Hurricane of consequence this year (for crying out load).

[Forty-Four]

What? It was Category 3 at best. The only problem was the path it took. It wasn't a "terrible" hurricane, it just went up the east coast which is the most populus in the US. Katrina and Andrew were much worse, but they didn't threaten near as many people, although they killed more (So far). I don't want to start this debate again, (mostly because I have other things to do and want to be able to pull myself awar from this thing) but I don't think that we are the sole cause of global climate change. I agree that it is happening, but I think it is natural and we just happen to be in part of its cycle. For God sake, the ice caps used to extend into the middle of the US. Storms will happen.

I don't think we know as much as we "know." For instance (I know this has nothing to do with the story, but the Dinosaurs were more likely decimated by disease rather than a meteor. As a matter of fact, they had massive piles of "waste," just lying around. Also, people have been looking at the stomach contents of fossilized mosquitoes and finding many cells to diseases like small pox and other deadly things.

[Forty-Four]

Exactly,
It never reached anything more than Category 3 that I am aware of, and it was downgraded before making landfall. If this were a Katrina or Andrew following the same path, maybe I would buy it..but it wasn't.

[jmailbox]

Forty-Four

It was a lot of wind in the NJ area that did most of the damaged, we have been soaked with rain for the past 3 weeks. So most tree roots were already softened up. I had a 5'6" wide oak tree in my yard taken down by Irene, i will not have power back until sunday, hopefully

[Anotheryahoo]

If your a fox news republican there is no such thing. The FACT is the polar caps are melting away and we have made it a habit to build cities and homes near water. Do the math. You can call it a million things but the results are going to be the same. Call it Oceans rising if you cant handle global warming.

[Who_Wants_to_Know]

Fox News and Republicans have nothing to do with the issue and are just childish ad hominem attacks towards people you've no way of even knowing their party affiliation or news viewing habits. Shame on you.

Science is an amazing thing, and while you are welcome to your own opinions, you aren't welcome to your own facts.

Several recent peer reviewed published studies state that in the past 10,000 years there have been several times where the Arctic had LESS ice than present day.

Next, it's just Arctic sea ice that has been decreasing - the Antarctic has been holding steady. See the second graph, bottom curve: http://wp.me/P7y4l-5Kc

If polar caps are melting so fast, why is it that the "Glacier Girl," one of three planes that set down on the Greenland ice cap in 1942, was found 268 ft. below the ice in 1992? http://p38assn.org/glacier-girl.htm

If sea level rise is such a concern, why have the sea level rates decreased in the last few years? Why is it that islands around the world have increased their total land mass, not decreased? Not to mention at a rate of 3mm/yr, even assuming that continues, it just doesn't sound like much to worry about any time soon. If we can't keep ahead of that crawl, well, there'd be something a lot worse going on. http://sealevel.colorado.edu/

[WhereDidTheJournalistsGo]

You might want to check your facts. "The polar caps" are not melting. Yes, the ice in the arctic is melting (one polar cap), but the ice in the Antarctic is growing. And guess which is the larger of the two, by far? And please, the oceans have been rising since the Little Ice Age (as has the temperature), but neither has anything to do with AGW.

[WhereDidTheJournalistsGo]

@vielman & @gadfly65

Here is the link to the peer-reviewed paper in Geophysics Research Letters by Maue, et al that clearly demonstrates hurricane activity and energy at historic lows:

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL047711.shtml

Enjoy!

[WhereDidTheJournalistsGo]

Mr. Nusca - had you bothered to check your facts, rather than assume that Mr. Nye is accurate, you would have written a much different story. Mr. Nye's grasp of climate, weather, modeling, etc. are nearly 100% incorrect.

But don't worry, Dr. Ryan Maue has pointed out all the inaccuracies you should have found at WattsUpWithThat: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/30/bill-nye-is-the-anti-science-guy-when-it-comes-to-global-warming-and-hurricanes/#more-46334