Unde-NYE-able

Your bow tie-sporting, soon-to-be Universal Overlord wants you to understand why we humans are in fact changing the climate for the worse.



And before you screwball deniers carry on and crow away incessantly about Nye being a "GMO denier," he's really not. He knows they are safe to eat; he just has doubts about their effects on the ecosystem. And even if he were a true "GMO denier", here's the essential difference between his "denial" and yours: he's willing to change his opinion in the face of THE SCIENTIFIC FACTS.

Here's a Nye quote from the Science Friday interview linked immediately above:

"You can show with great confidence that these [GM] foods are safe to eat...But what you can't be sure of is if you messed with [the ecosystem]...What I plan to do is go to Omaha, Nebraska, and meet with [Rob] Fraley, who's...the chief technology officer of Monsanto, and he's gonna give me an earful, and if I'm wrong, I will write about it."

For the record, I, personally, am more concerned with the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on the environment than that of GMOs. Mostly, what concerns me about GMOs is that their advocates trust them to "save us all" way, way, way too much. They ain't all that, people. Get over it. In fact, neonics probably deserve more credit for recent increased crop yields than they do. Problem is, they just might be responsible for the vanishing pollinator insects as well.

Well, OF COURSE Bill Nye Agrees with Me...Uh...Mostly

About three months ago, I declared Bill Nye was worthy and capable of lording over our entire universe. He appeared on CBS This Morning to promote his book, and to further prove his worthiness to rule the cosmos by agreeing with me. Like, OMG, as if, whatever, like he had a choice, duh.

"It's not a coincidence that the, that the, uh, creationists also deny climate change."

Does this proclamation sound familiar? It should.



Of course, not every bow tie-sporting universal overlord candidate is perfect, mind, so perhaps it will come as a shock to no one, especially not my regular readers (all 2 of them), that I am gonna take at least some issue with Nye's glowing approval of the Pope's statement that evolution does not conflict with the "notion of Creation" (whatever the hell that is...I guess his Papalitude is trying to distance himself from creationism and creationists like Ken Ham), and that the Catholic head guy, as Nye puts it, has declared that the Church is "gonna join the mainstream of scientific thinking." Sorry, but I'm pretty sure you can search legitimate, peer-reviewed, biological literature from now till the end of time, and you will find nothing regarding a "notion of Creation" that applies to the God of Abraham and Pope Francis. Not a single, solitary reference. Nope, not one. Mainstream scientific thinking on evolution does not require Yahweh's assistance. If nothing else, scientists probably left Him out because they don't wanna make Zeus, Osiris, et supreme al, jealous, amirite?

On a related note, I recently had the pleasure of receiving an emailed reply from Dr. Steven Novella of the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe regarding this very same subject of the Pope and his statements about evolution and God. I have asked Dr. Novella's permission to post the exchange here. More on that when I get his answer...

Getting back to this post, all things considered, serious kudos go to CBS This Morning for giving air time to people who agree with scientific consensus more often than not. Now, if the producers and hosts of the show would just work a little harder on their unfortunate gullibility...

Bill Nye for Universal Overlord

I would only add one thing regarding the credentials issue raised early on in the video. You could have just evolved barely enough to grow a set of rudimentary limbs and crawled out of some bubbling, primordial ooze too soon to develop a neocortex, let alone pass a single technical course or earn a degree, skill, or expertise of any kind, then raised your drooling, dripping self to a swaying, semi-erect stance with your proto-knuckles dragging on the ground, declared to the world in halting caveman grunts, "SLIME SCHOOL NOT HAVE SCIENCE CLASS," and it would matter very little, as long as you trusted and listened to the analyses and explanations of people who do understand the issue. If you managed that much, despite your primitive state of intellectual progress, you would still exhibit more intelligence, common sense, and rational wherewithal than your average climate change denier, or, truly, even those "above average" ones with advanced degrees, who should know better, but unfortunately do not.

Climate Change Is Not Real Bcoz Liberals Hate GMOs

Before I started this blog, I used to comment a lot over at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy site. Phil's articles are great, and I still read them, but I mostly save my posting energy for here anymore. Phil is a climate realist, so, as I'm sure you can imagine, he gets more pseudoscience-loving denier trolls in his comment section than you can shake a hockey stick at.

If you lurk or contribute there, you very quickly see the same denier canards raised again and again. This steadfast dedication to ignoring the scientific rebuttals to these absurd talking-points can only be a sign of the troubling pervasiveness of serious mental disorders, or the fact that Phil's site has been targeted by shameless paid shills because of his modest fame and climate science advocacy.

One of the more popular shiny object distractions I noticed bandied about by climate deniers is GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, and more specifically GM crops. For some odd reason, deniers quite strongly believe that unless everyone hearts GMOs then climate science is automatically wrong, human-induced warming is not worth addressing, and all conversations involving it and its remedies must come to an immediate halt.

Not too long ago, Phil used the debate between Nye and Ham as an excuse to investigate what the Answers in Genesis (AIG) Web site had to say about global warming, and it elicited this strange retort in the comment section:

bcs89 Mar 24, 2014

bill nye is anti-science when it's convenient for his world view:

http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/03/24/bill-nye-anti-gmo-guy/#.UzBKhoVWhEM

so is he for or against gmos?

If it turns out Nye is truly anti-GMO (which I doubt), it's so important it had to be brought up in a climate change discussion, because, you know, views expressed on an unrelated subject affect the scientific veracity of the topic at hand somehow magically.

Phil's post on the IPCC AR5, prompted this comment:

Roger M. Wilcox Apr 1, 2014

Here's what bugs me. If the impending climate change is going to have such a negative impact on crop production (due to droughts and whatnot), then why is the public at large so averse to the use of genetically-modified food? If we can bioengineer wheat or corn that's more drought-resistant, won't that be to our benefit?

Right, because the impact of climate change on crop production is all we need to worry about. If GMOs save our food supply from more severe droughts (which they probably won't), then (***smacks dust off hands***) problem solved. We can continue to burn fossil fuels without a care.

An analysis of Fox News' opinion on global warming brought about this contribution to the discussion:

Mark S. Apr 8, 2014

How do other networks do on scientific topics not related to climate. Like, say, GMO...

Who cares if Dr. Oz is wrong when he says acupuncture has real medical benefits, because over on channel 237 an infomercial is selling magnetic therapy wristbands, right?

Wot?

And an article on the acceleration of Antarctic ice melt produced this gem:

HAL-9000 May 20, 2014

Huh? Then what's the deal with lefties and the whole 'organic food' movement and their rabid-stupid anti-GMO antics?

Its quite pick-and-choose from the science (organic!) salad bar in lefty-land.

You might also notice my farewell comment somewhere in that discussion. :)

Even if silly GMO-trashing is mostly a "lefty" thing, the fact of the matter is liberals can line up around the block at every Whole Foods and Trader Joe's on the planet, buy all the organic produce they want till the free-range, grass-fed cows come home, and IT WON'T RAISE SEA LEVELS ONE SINGLE MILLIMETER MORE, INTENSIFY HURRICANES, OR CAUSE ADDITIONAL GLACIER MELT, FLOODS, DROUGHTS, WILDFIRES, ETC., ABOVE AND BEYOND THE PURCHASE OF EQUIVALENT AMOUNTS OF GM CROPS.

In other words, carrying on incessantly about liberals' nonsensical objections to GMOs is as pointless as their personal choice to avoid them.