Carl Sagan has rightfully earned his place in the pantheon of science popularizers. His long list of qualifications and experience working in academia, deep engagement with NASA, SETI, and the scientific community in general and receiving numerous scientific awards, having written multiple acclaimed science fiction books (one of which, 'Contact', was turned into a great movie), and creating the widely popular and effective show, 'Cosmos', leave no question as to his contributions. Further, he's long posthumously solidified his place simply based on how many prominent figures in science he's inspired.
... And then you have someone like Bill Nye. A lot of us fondly recall him as 'Bill Nye the Science Guy' on PBS from our childhood, who made scientific experiments look fun and interesting. I remember looking forward to watching his show wheeled in on a big CRT television, played from a VHS tape with poor tracking during science class in elementary school, and tuning in while staying at my grandparents' house. How fleeting such sweet nostalgia can be as you witness Bill Nye continue his fall from grace, but even I was not prepared for the shameful train wreck I was about to witness.
I'd already come to my own conclusion that his scientific mind and approach to things didn't seem to have aged well. Relying purely on nostalgic celebrity from (fellow) millenials as some kind of implied claim to scientific authority should almost be sufficiently disqualifying, but Bill Nye seems utterly relentless about whittling away at any perception of authority he has left. When live and in the hot seat and not following a script, his either remarkably obtuse or remarkably dishonest attempts to debate scientific issues he portrays himself as an authority on show a greater degree of intellectual vacancy than I would have thought. Unfortunately, what little respect I'd had left for him had been mostly drained, flowing from nostalgically positive, to now negative territory, especially after having finally seen a clip from his new show.
Seemingly, the SJWs have hollowed out and infected this man's mind, turning him into a veritable husk of his former 'Science Guy' self. Do you think I'm being a little overdramatic? Well, then... Please brace yourself, for we have now reached Mount Everest, peak-levels of cringe...
Oh, my, how far the mighty have fallen.
Let us have a moment of silence for what little dignity remains for this man, once a titan in our young, hungry, curious minds. What was once someone teaching and showing us about objective, empirical science has now crossed over into a sideshow of bizarro-world, gender-fluid theory, as so artfully and tastefully displayed by 'Rachel Bloom', from 'Crazy Ex-girlfriend', whoever the fuck that is, anyways. Seeing ole Bill Nye dancing around so creepily to it all is just cheap icing on this cringe-cake I wouldn't serve even to my worst enemy.
So how could this have happened? Let us top said cringe-cake with some sour grapes, to boot. Of course, Bill Nye was never a real 'Science Guy', anyways. He actually just has a Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering and merely played a 'Science Guy' on TV, according to a script. Being intellectually vacant and willing to do anything for money and some sad vestige of fame is what has turned Bill Nye into the Kim Kardashian of science.
Now, if some think I'm cherry picking only one cringey piece from an otherwise great or even mediocre or even sub-par show, I'm really not. Out of the sake of pure, morbid curiosity, I invite you to flip on Netflix and actually put yourself through an episode or two of this. I've watched a bit and there's really only so much I could take. With that being said -- I really, truly do hope that Progressive SJWs continue pumping out trash like this. They've become a parody of themselves, and they're too delusional, tone-deaf, and stuck in their sad little echo chambers to realize it.
Oh, and don't forget -- almost half of the fun of watching any youtube video is reading the comments!
How did the science behind episode 1 make you feel?
ReplyDelete-PsiSaGe
In a nutshell, it felt like watching an old episode of the Simpsons...
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1iCZpFMYd0
To expand more on this, yes, I did watch the 1st episode and I found most of it extremely *unscientific*, actually. The show plays more as a kind of agitprop show, like watching Sean Hannity (except as bad as Hannity is, at least he has *some* debate from the other side), than a 'science' show. Over the entire episode, they had a couple of very minor and quick, unoriginal and uninteresting lab experiments. They took AGW conclusions and said how 'we' need to do x, y, and z (implying primarily political and government actions) and when he had his 'panel', there was no scientific debate, it was just a one-sided mouthpiece with a political push.
Talking about Venice in the way they did was extremely dishonest. Established, uncontroversial, *actual science* says that Venice is primarily sinking, not that the issue the sea levels rising...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2120610/Venice-sinking-FIVE-times-faster-previously-thought.html
Also, almost no one, especially AGW skeptics (such as myself) are denying that 'climate change' is happening (which, btw, they 'keep changing it' -- decades ago it was 'global cooling' that we'd enter into an ice age, then it was 'global warming', now it's 'global climate change'). The skepticism comes not even that we're not even influencing it at all -- it's that our influence is relatively very, very minor, and global climate change is primarily happening with or without our influence, and any action we take to try to counter it will do little to virtually nothing to change its course, apart from these kind of government actions being implied and advocated reaping lower standards of living for all, and especially making the situation worse for the poor around the world and especially in third-world, developing countries. There's even a very interesting argument, called 'lukewarming', meaning that any warming we see in the future will actually be a good thing. Less cold, means less people dying of cold and the effects of the cold on crops and economies. Any place that is too warm that will be further warmed is far more offset by the benefits of wide swaths of cold areas that would be warmed and the ecological benefits that come with it. I don't know if I'm entirely convinced of it quite yet, but the argument may have merit and is worth considering.
Further, I would love to see renewable energies replace fossil fuels, for the economic benefit of lower costs and more individual autonomy more than anything. Unfortunately, they aren't currently profitable and can't sustain themselves in the market on their own. They can only stay afloat due to massive tax subsidies to both consumers and producers of the technology. This is tax money produced by carbon-producing activities, so not only can you not call 'clean energy' 'clean', but you can't even call it 'renewable', since it requires more energy to produce than it saves due to the subsidies and incentives required, even further making it an economically destructive policy. When renewable energy it becomes profitable on its own, that's when things will, and should flip -- and I want that to happen. But propping up and incentivizing artificial investment and redistribution to failed, economically destructive technologies actually only inhibits innovation in this field. We need innovation with renewables, and subsidizing profits for insufficient, unproductive technologies hinders said innovation, it doesn't help it.
DeleteI'd actually also posted about AGW some time back, here:
http://asisypheanrevolt.blogspot.com/2016/03/on-agw-co2-concentration-venus-and.html
I also think the general problem with this show, just like with the 'March for Science' (more like the 'March for Scientism' -- and Scientism is distinct for 'Science') and many people who claim to 'fucking love Science', etc) is very well illustrated, here, by a real scientist, on Slate (of all places), no less...
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2017/04/the_march_for_science_was_eerily_religious.html
On the show in general, Gizmodo, of all places, says some other problems with it...
http://gizmodo.com/bill-nye-spends-most-of-his-new-netflix-show-yelling-at-1794583045