Netflix Original: Bill Nye Saves The Earth

[naynay]

this is where we get to see the de-evolution of society, as SS junk lures a smart, positive, free-thinker, into a level of stupiedity that can only be recognized or comprehended by craizie people.

[SS Junk]

On this specific quote, Bill is bated into an argument on "belief" when in reality, what he's trying to spit out is that he believes observable science to be truth.

LOL. Whatever you say. It's comical how a mechanical engineer is calling those with PHD's "incompetent."

this is where we get to see the de-evolution of society, as SS junk lures a smart, positive, free-thinker, into a level of stupiedity that can only be recognized or comprehended by craizie people.

Didn't you say at one time you were a Christian, or is this another one of those "right up the middle like an asscrack" points of view. You have no balls, my former monica.

[naynay]

im a christian, but thats another story. i believe i am my own god.

[mschmoyer]

LOL. Whatever you say. It's comical how a mechanical engineer is calling those with PHD's "incompetent."

A pivot for sure, but we can go down this rabbit hole if you want. So Bill is clearly quoting other scientists here. Your being ignorant if you think he came to this opinion by himself.

The vast majority of the scientific community and academia supports evolutionary theory as the only explanation that can fully account for observations in the fields of biology, paleontology, molecular biology, genetics, anthropology, and others. One 1987 estimate found that "700 scientists ... (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) ... give credence to creation-science".[23] A 1991 Gallup poll found that about 5% of American scientists (including those with training outside biology) identified themselves as creationists.

Widely, widely supported.

Anecdotal evidence is that creationism is becoming more of an issue in the UK as well. One report in 2006 was that UK students are increasingly arriving ill-prepared to participate in medical studies or other advanced education.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution

[SS Junk]

A pivot for sure, but we can go down this rabbit hole if you want. So Bill is clearly quoting other scientists here. Your being ignorant if you think he came to this opinion by himself.

https://youtu.be/T9A-F8JEFyY?t=155

Bill Nye "... the explanation you provide is completely unreasonable..."
Kind of like Adam Savage saying "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Of course it's unreasonable to you and your boy because you're conditioned in your belief system, and will claim and say whatever you want to try to get your point across because you have faith in what you are saying is correct.

[mschmoyer]

https://youtu.be/T9A-F8JEFyY?t=155

Bill Nye "... the explanation you provide is completely unreasonable..."
Kind of like Adam Savage saying "I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Of course it's unreasonable to you and your boy because you're conditioned in your belief system, and will claim and say whatever you want to try to get your point across because you have faith in what you are saying is correct.

Again, see above. It's not just unreasonable to two people. It's unreasonable to a large majority of humans on Earth, INCLUDING many religions and including many Christians.

The question to you is...what amount of evidence would be required to make you shake your belief that evolution does not exist?

[SS Junk]

Again, see above. It's not just unreasonable to two people. It's unreasonable to a large majority of humans on Earth, INCLUDING many religions and including many Christians.

"Group X believes in evolution therefore it must be true because the science is settled!"
If a Christian does not believe in creation then they are not Christians since it goes against what the Bible teaches. Much like me trying to get you to believe Genesis 1:1 and Revelation 22:13, you cannot convince me the theory of evolution is the reason we exist.

[naynay]

Am I this only ones that never fully understands what Brian is trying to say?

[mschmoyer]

"Group X believes in evolution therefore it must be true because the science is settled!"
If a Christian does not believe in creation then they are not Christians since it goes against what the Bible teaches. Much like me trying to get you to believe Genesis 1:1 and Revelation 22:13, you cannot convince me the theory of evolution is the reason we exist.

Clearly. But when it comes to young people wanting to take up fields in medical and biological study, don't impede on the observable truths that lead us to medical and other breakthroughs. How does saying "we were created" help us solve diseases and other biological problems? Are we just forever going to say "you got cancer because got willed it"? We can do better.

[SS Junk]

Clearly.

Good. Then we agree to disagree.

Are we just forever going to say "you got cancer because got willed it"? We can do better.

Where did you hear that? It's an ignorant statement. It reads like something said by a bat shit crazy televangelist. No true Christian believes God punishes us using an illness.

[naynay]

like the bat shit crazy televangelist with whom you were employed as a sound engineer?

[naynay]

If we can get back to Netflix, albeit Amazon Prime, there is a really interesting documentary from two french reporters who finally got Visas to visit North Korea.

Interestingly enough it is called North Korea. check it out.

[Strychnine]

It's been a long day, so I'm catching up. I'll reply in pieces as I get time this evening.

Keep in mind that Bill's "go to" talking point on temp rise is THE RATE! It's all about the RATE OF CHANGE! Well apparently he can't grasp the RATE of change when it comes to the expansion of seawater.

I think you misinterpret this scientific point. It's the rate of change of temperature of the earth, and rate of change of pollution being put into the atmosphere. Not rate of change of ocean expanding. Let's say we believe your model...with enough time, does it really matter? We just get to the same end a hundred years later. That makes it your grandchildren's problem instead of your childrens. So is he really wrong to bring it up?

I understand the scientific point - the rate of temp change is quicker than in the past. He’s talking about the consequences, but fails to make any mention of the rate of change of those consequences and implies that the existing problems, and the near-term future problems, are all our fault, when in reality the climate change effects we have (sea level rise) have a slower rate of change than other factors. That’s like saying, “I didn’t lie, I just didn’t tell the full truth.”

He's illustrating what happens if water were to rise in a populated area. At least, that's how I took it. An example of where a predisposition changes how one interprets a segment.

True. The way I see it, he devoted an entire segment of his show to the fact that the city of Venice floods. He, with his own hand, demonstrated that at least 12” of water on the ground would be the new norm in coastal cities. He chose to use Venice as his case study and he implied that the “expansion of the oceans” is causing Venice to flood. Not once was he fully transparent, which would have meant saying that Venice is actually subsiding.

He implied that Venice needed $6,000,000,000 of protection from global warming caused sea level rise, when in reality the rate of change in the sea level in Venice is 1” every 25 yrs, and they are protecting it from its own sinking which is happening at a 275% faster rate than any sea level rise (0.8-1.0mm/yr subsidence from natural causes, and 2-10mm/yr subsidence from human causes like building on shittly land… so even on the extreme low end of 0.8+2.0 that’s 2.8mm/yr or 2.75” over that same 25 yr period)


Info like this is very readily available from the city of Venice: http://archive.comune.venezia.it/fle...a/22795#da0f50

Exceptional tides (when the water-line is equal to or more than 140 centimetres on the mareographic zero of "Punta della Salute", located near the Salute Church, in front of St. Mark's Square) statistically occur once every 3 years. They are caused by a combination of various factors, such as the astronomical tide, low pressure on the Tyrrhenian Sea, strong south wind (scirocco) and the Adriatic seiche. Further two larger phenomena also contribute to increase the water level: eustasy (see glossary below) and the subsidence of the Venetian Lagoon, which, together, have caused an altimetric loss of about 26 centimetres in the last century.

They even talked about the fact that residents know this and prep for it... but it was right after the discussion about "expanding sea water" with ZERO mention that this has been happening for centuries.

He’s muddying the waters, and omitting pertinent facts to skew perception.

Inefficient solid fuel stoves, lack of electricity for lighting, etc lead to particulate matter that’s fucking horrible for health. So on the other side of Bill’s coin is the moral case for fossil fuels, at least in the current global state. In the future they will go away, but right now GDP, life expectancy, mortality rates, etc. are very closely linked to energy availability and with carbon based fuels being the most easily dispatchable… technically, by giving diesel generators, coal plants, etc to developing nations you can save lives. Just another part of the discussion that should be happening, rather than saying “the science is settled!”

But Bill won’t ever mention those details during his circus show – they don’t fit the narrative that his scientist persona is being paid for

Why does he need to? He doesn't disagree, and it's not exactly relevant.

However...later in the show they discuss how 3rd world countries don't matter for pollution, they can have all the oil&gas they want. These people use something like .1 tons of carbon per year, whereas us Americans use something like 20-30 tons. Give them all they want, they still don't drive SUVS to the mall everyday...

So I don't think anybody is against them getting whatever they need. He's against US getting this crap when we have something better sitting right in front of us, and the money & tech to build and use it.

So if the developed world can go purely carbon free i suppose it might not matter, but since that is highly unlikely I think the discussion is relevant. Diid he really say “give them all they want” or that they “don’t matter for pollution” because each person has a small carbon footprint?

Those developing countries may only be at 0.1 tons(/year/person?) currently, but that is a metric fuckton of people, and it all adds up. Even at the 0.1 tons number (I did not go fact check that) the developing world currently has a higher carbon footprint than OECD countries - basically the top 35 countries of the “developed” world - but even worse: Developing Countries to Vastly Outpace OECD in Carbon Emissions

In 2010 developing nation carbon emissions were 38% higher than the OECD nations, Energy-related CO2 emissions from developing countries will be 127% higher than in the world's most developed economies by 2040.

That's a lot of carbon to write off as irrelevant. What do we do about that in the mean time?

If the Earth is a closed system where we all affect each other then that’s a big problem, right? So

What I was getting at in my last post is that GDP is tightly linked to energy consumption, so without more and more energy they won’t grow… do you tell those countries they’re not allowed to grow their economies and join the "first world"? Whose right is it to tell someone else they can’t better themselves?
There’s some hope that the developing world might leapfrog carbon fuels and not be a CO2 nuisance as they grow their GDPs, but a lot of those countries don’t have the resources to develop their own renewable energy. That makes the situation reliant on existing companies/countries to invest in those regions… but that’s market driven. If companies can’t make money they won’t go do it. Whose right is it to demand that a private company go do business somewhere?

These are ethical questions that are not as simple as “Bill Nye said don’t worry about it, because WE are the real problem.” Developed nations are growing renewable energy sources, and they might all be offset by developing nations’ growth over the next couple decades which solves nothing in the end… but we get a moral win because we cut back? These things all link together.



Again, I don't have a solution, but to act like we're the problem and we shouldn't worry about other stuff is retarded. I love renewable energy technology and I’m 100% for it, but the way info is presented in isolated silos is fucking dumb.

[Strychnine]

Do you disagree we should let wind/solar/renewable at least have a fair shot to win in the open market? remove oil&gas advantages, encourage renewable?

I agree that competition should be fair.

Monetarily, do they not have a fair shot?
O&G gets the lion’s share of global subsidies b/c it’s the largest provider of energy (80% vs 5% for renewable). It’s been argued that if you look at subsidy dollars per unit of energy then the renewable space actually gets 25 times more than O&G… and there’s this part that no one mentions either:

Global fossil-fuel subsidies do exceed those for renewables in raw dollars—$523 billion to $88 billion, according to the International Energy Agency. But the disparity is reversed when proportion is taken into account. Fossil fuels make up more than 80% of global energy, while modern green energy accounts for about 5%. This means that renewables still receive three times as much money per energy unit.

… these fossil-fuel subsidies are almost exclusive to non-Western countries. Twelve such nations account for 75% of the world's fossil-fuel subsidies. Iran tops the list with $82 billion a year, followed by Saudi Arabia at $61 billion. Russia, India and China spend between $30 billion and $40 billion, and Venezuela, Egypt, Iran, U.A.E., Indonesia, Mexico and Algeria make up the rest.

These subsidies have nothing to do with cozying up to oil companies or indulging global-warming skeptics. The spending is a way for governments to buy political stability: In Venezuela, gas sells at 5.8 cents a gallon, costing the government $22 billion a year, more than twice what is spent on health care.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/11/13/renewables-get-25-times-the-subsidy-that-fossil-fuels-do/#54741a4219d8

But here’s how it breaks down in the US:

On March 13, 2013, Terry M. Dinan, senior advisor at the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives that federal energy tax subsidies would cost $16.4 billion that fiscal year, broken down as follows:
1.Renewable energy: $7.3 billion (45 percent)
2.Energy efficiency: $4.8 billion (29 percent)
3.Fossil fuels: $3.2 billion (20 percent)
4.Nuclear energy: $1.1 billion (7 percent)

In addition, Dinan testified that the U.S. Department of Energy would spend an additional $3.4 billion on financial support for energy technologies and energy efficiency, broken down as follows:
1. Energy efficiency and renewable energy: $1.7 billion (51 percent)
2. Nuclear energy: $0.7 billion (22 percent)
3. Fossil energy research & development: $0.5 billion (15 percent)
4. Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy: $0.3 billion (8 percent)
5. Electricity delivery and energy reliability: $0.1 billion (4 percent)[27]

In the United States, the federal government has paid $74 billion for energy subsidies to support R&D for:
1. Nuclear power - $50 billion
2. Rewable energy technologies and energy efficiency - $26 billion
3. Fossil fuels from 1973 to 2003 - $24 billion

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/03-12-EnergyTechnologies.pdf

Beyond that, 5th and 10th amendment infringements aside, the Clean Power Plan is huge for renewable energy.

the Obama Administration announced the new “Clean Power Plan” (CPP) to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, which account for 40% of total US greenhouse gas emissions. Implementation of this plan has begun, with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) just announcing the final rule on October 23, 2015. The rule works by setting an emission reduction standard and then providing flexibility to states to meet it.

This is relatively good news for renewable energy. One of the ways a state can comply with the EPA rule is through integrating renewable energy into its electricity system. Choice of policy tools to facilitate this are left to the states for the most part. Some states are already taking action, and California is actually on track to exceed CPP requirements by a significant margin.

https://law.stanford.edu/2015/11/01/policy-challenges-opportunities-renewable-energy/

As for legislation, Stanford Law said this recently:

the outlook for renewable energy in the U.S. remains relatively bright. Flexibility offered to states by the CPP fits well with the lack of consensus around optimal legal instruments for adding renewable energy capacity. In this way, the EPA’s approach is wise. What’s more, the proliferation of different state approaches is likely to create what could be thought of the world’s largest “policy lab” experimenting with policy levers for renewable energy. This means that CPP benefits may actually accrue beyond US borders as other jurisdictions will be able to watch, learn, adapt and implement at home

It’s hard to argue that renewables are getting the short end of the stick these days.



Same source:

last year more than 86% of the world’s primary fuel came from fossil fuels. This reality is anchored by the fact that environmental externalities associated with burning fossil fuels, such as climate change and local air pollution, remain largely unpriced in the global economy..

“Unpriced” means “we don’t have a carbon tax or a cap & trade system in place.” Is that the level playing field you’re really looking for?


Every industry has its hurdles, even O&G – think about all of the anti-fracking stuff around the country right now – but to imply that renewables are just dead in the water and don’t have a “fair shot” doesn’t seem truthful.

I appreciate the discussion btw. It's interesting to debate this in a somewhat-random melting pot of opinions.

I agree. I don't care if we ever agree on anything or not, sometimes it's just fun to research and argue

[SS Junk]

like the bat shit crazy televangelist with whom you were employed as a sound engineer?

I say nothing, former monica.