Bill Nye (the so-called science guy) is arguably the leading spokesperson for climate alarmism to the lay public. His YouTube videos are extremely popular, with collectively well over ten million views. But a close look at these numbers says he may actually be promoting skepticism as much as alarmism, maybe even more so. What a hoot!
Nye has a number of videos specifically designed to spread the alarmist doctrine. What is especially interesting is that he also has several videos that feature debates with skeptics. Contrary to Nye’s intention, these videos can be used to teach skepticism. This is because a central tenant of alarmism is that there is no debate over their claim that human activity is causing dangerous climate change. Thus a video that shows just such a debate supports skepticism.
YouTube provides viewing numbers for all videos. While there is no way to tell how these videos are being used, the numbers in Bill Nye’s case are very interesting. To see the videos and data, just search YouTube for “Bill Nye climate change.” Here is one to start with — Nye versus CFACT’s own Marc Morano — with over 2 million views and still growing.
Amazingly, the numbers for the debate videos are roughly ten times larger than those for the alarmist videos. This strongly suggests that the debate videos are being used in large part to see skepticism in action.
Below is the YouTube data for Nye’s top four debate videos, as of this writing (some are going up by thousands a day). There are roughly 12.5 million views. By coincidence this is almost exactly 10 times the number for the top four alarmist videos.
1. “Climate Change Debate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” (Oliver denigrates skeptics but the existence of the debate is still featured). LastWeekTonight 3 years ago
7,486,010 views
2. “Climate Realist Marc Morano Debates Bill Nye the Science Guy on Global Warming.” OnlyWaxing 4 years ago
2,013,591 views
3. “Tucker vs. Bill Nye the Science Guy.” Fox News 6 months ago
1,766,165 views
4. “Bill Nye Destroys climate change-denying Trump adviser William Happer” (clearly an alarmist title as scientist Happer does very well.) Politics Video Channel 4 months ago
1,228,413 views
Here are the numbers for Nye’s top four alarmist videos. There are roughly 1.25 million views. This is just 10% of the debate video views.
1. “Climate Change 101 with Bill Nye | National Geographic.” National Geographic 1 year ago
485,243 views
2. “CLIMATE 101 with BILL NYE.” Climate Reality 5 years ago
417,696 views
3. “Bill Nye Explains Climate Change with Emoji.” Mashable Watercooler 2 years ago
205,304 views
4. “Bill Nye And Bernie Sanders Discuss Climate Change.” Reflect 6 months ago
146,228 views
It is hilarious to think that Bill Nye may be doing ten times better teaching about the existence of the skeptical debate than he is teaching about climate alarmism. This is a variation of the classic saying: “I don’t care what you write about me as long as you spell my name right.” Every mention is publicity. That there is a climate change debate has 12.5 million Nye views and counting.
If Bill Nye is actually promoting widespread awareness of the climate change debate let’s hope he keeps it up. Go Bill.
Bill Nye, Linda Sarsour – both clowns, both just as relevant.
“Bill Nye (the so-called science guy) is arguably the leading spokesperson for climate alarmism to the lay public.”
I love the fake expertise that people with non-relevant PhDs speak with when it comes to climate change. I have a PhD in cog neuro, but I am the lay public on climate change. I’m not a geophysicist and neither are you. You’re essentially a historian for chrissakes. Stop the nonsense – you don’t understand the actual scientific work underlying climate change past the surface, and as such are in no position to be a primary adjudicator of said work. Adding this patina of expertise by referring to the “lay public” (and many other examples I’ve seen) conveys otherwise and is essentially a fraud.