Bill Nye talks climate change, racial conflict at Rutgers graduation

Graduation day at Rutgers University is a chance for students to relax after four years of college and celebrate with family and friends before entering the real world.

Or, when Bill Nye is the keynote speaker, it's a reminder that the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is rising and its future may be a "no-way-out overheated globe."

Nye, the bow-tied host of "Bill Nye The Science Guy," used his speech at Rutgers' commencement Sunday as a platform to tell students they must find a way to stop climate change.

Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish environmental economist and author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist", says that even though climate change may be a problem in a list of many that affect the world, it is by no means our main environmental threat facing mankind.

I would take issue with that. CO2 is a net benefit. As people have pointed out to me in many threads, the planet was in a CO2 starvation mode. That meant that a slight hemispheric anomaly (e.g. Antarctic sea ice) would throw the world into an ice age (as has happened in the past). As it turns out, we have increased Antarctic sea ice.

Warming saves lives. European study show 10 times more mortality in cold waves than heat waves (e.g. http://www.bmj.com/content/321/7262/670) A CDC study showed 2 to 1 deaths from cold: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf

Warming saves money. Americans spend 3 times more on heating than for cooling. Natural gas is relatively cheap, otherwise it would be an even bigger ratio. Heating systems also occasionally burn up and blow up causing deaths, injury and damage. Cooling systems do not.

CO2 allows many crops to be more drought tolerant. Regardless of the innuendo in the know-nothing media, drought is a natural phenomena. If anything there will be more rainfall with warming.

Sea level rises an inch per decade, mostly natural as we recover from the Little Ice Age. That is very manageable. Storms are not increasing, that includes hurricanes, strong tornadoes, etc.,

That's why I a disagree with Lomborg although he is definitely on the right track. I do not apologize for creating CO2, I am glad that we do it. I do not adopt fringe theories about CO2 sources that ignore very accurate economic estimates of man's CO2 creation and relatively accurate measurements of volcanoes. Thus my understand of the rise to 400 ppm is mainly manmade although there would have been a small rise regardless of mankind.

I also understand radiative physics but not down to the detail that really matters such as CO2 cooling in the upper atmosphere while warming in the lower. I look at satellite trends showing some warming, but not much, and as I pointed out, quite beneficial.

Hey palmer. This is all very interesting but to me you're just saying that the climate changes and that global warming is, well, warm. My question is, so what?

Lomborg says that the world could better spend what money they do have to solve global problems on other things beside trying to alter the climate. That they'll get more bang for their buck on issues that can make a real immediate impact on peoples' lives. He says that the money needed to be expended to significantly reverse the CO2 rise is prohibitive and just not available.

Lastly, I still haven't heard any specific solutions to fixing this problem that so many on the Left, including Obama, Kerry and this whole radical Marxist administration, claim is the most important issue of our lifetime. To the contrary, the public doesn't even list it in the top twenty issues they want their leaders to deal with. Nobody ever says what we have to do to solve this so-called number one issue of the human race. If this is so critical, why is there no plan besides taxing people? Give us more of your money but they never say what they are going to do with it. That's because this is a big scam to fool everyone into opening their wallets so they can increase their wealth. This is why people are yawning over climate change. They see it for what it is. A bunch of snake-oil salesmen trying to sell them something they ain't buying.

BIG problem here! My nephew is in the graduating class and we are going to the commencement. How do I restrain myself from voicing my disagreement with Nye’s lies? Mrs. JimRed will be awfully pi$$ed if I do so; but I might work myself up to a stroke if I don’t!

So, we went to the commencement Monday, which was nephew's college of education department graduation for his masters. Not the one at which Nye spoke.

The key speaker there was a highly honored (and highly propagandized) student who ranted about "social justice" issues, which was OK until he mentioned the "murder" of Trayvon Martin. I'm sure a lot of the audience heard me say "self defense is not murder", and it earned me an elbow from herself. Then he quoted W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson, two out and out communists! Indoctrination is proceeding apace.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.