Famed scientist and TV host Bill Nye really wants people to understand climate change, and is willing to drop F bombs in order to make that happen. While Nye is primarily known for his decades as a pop culture staple, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the man is also really, really smart. He may not hold a doctorate - outside of several honorary ones he’s received - but Nye is a trained mechanical engineer, and is just really well educated generally. To put it bluntly, there’s a reason Nye’s nickname is “The Science Guy.”
Nye’s intelligence and scientific acumen, combined with his personable nature and charm, have made him a go to person when it comes to explaining complex scientific concepts to those without his level of knowledge. Nye did this for much of the 1990s on his kids show Bill Nye: The Science Guy, but it’s not just kids that need a good scientific lesson from time to time, as seen in his latest TV appearance.
As part of Sunday night’s episode of HBO political comedy series Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Nye appeared during Oliver’s main segment, which discussed the Green New Deal put forward by Democrats in congress and the subject of climate change as a whole. The vast majority of the scientific community is onboard with the conclusion that not only is climate change happening, it’s happening due to the actions of mankind, and if unchecked, it will eventually render parts of the world uninhabitable. Unfortunately, the issue has been heavily politicized, leading some Americans to dismiss it as a hoax. That’s where Nye comes in, as he’s here to say that not only isn’t it a hoax, “The planet’s on f***ing fire.” Check out the profanity-laced segment below, starting around the 18:30 mark.
With many scientists predicting that rising sea levels will eventually swallow much of coastal states like Florida, one would think that everyone in America, if not the world, would care about such matters, making Nye’s lecture above unnecessary. The sad truth though is that recent years have given rise to multiple ridiculous conspiracy theories concerning climate change, the most popular being the aforementioned hoax idea. The funny thing is, there’s certainly a legitimate debate to be had about how to best deal with the problems posed by climate change, but that debate can’t really happen unless everyone first accepts that it’s an actual thing.
Outside of Nye’s passionate, yet humorous climate change rant, Oliver spends the rest of the above segment deep-diving into the issue in a way no other political entertainment series on TV really does, explaining why Last Week Tonight has picked up multiple Emmy and Peabody awards since its inception in 2014. Other various subjects Oliver has tackled in-depth recently include Brexit, psychics, WWE, opioid abuse, and just last week, lethal injection.
More: Stranger Things: Bill Nye Explains the Science of the Upside Down
Source: HBO
