“The Science Guy” Bill Nye just schooled another prominent climate change denier and staked his fact-based claims in the best possible way.
Meteorologist Joe Bastardi wrote in a scathing opinion piece late last year that the educator, who regularly speaks about man-made climate change, “is not a man of science” but “an actor.”
Bastardi challenged Nye to not only show a link between atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature, but also forecast where global temperatures are headed over the next five years. “Put up or shut up,” the WeatherBELL Analytics chief forecaster said to Nye in the largely overlooked article in The Patriot Post.
Well, it looks like Nye has decided to put up — $20,000 to be exact.
Nye swings back in a new video (see below) response to Bastardi, with whom he sparred in a 2010 discussion about climate change on Fox News' "The O’Reilly Factor."
The scientist highlights the flaws in two line graphs in particular that Bastardi included in his opinion piece, and implies that coal and gas companies have paid the climate denier to give speeches.
"I can't help but think about Upton Sinclair," Nye says in the video, "who said, 'It's hard to get a man to believe something when his salary depends on his not believing it.'"
Not only did Nye accept Bastardi’s challenge to make a forecast, he also offered the same pair of bets he offered Marc Morano another climate change denier, earlier this month. Nye now has a total of $60,000 riding on the facts that 2016 will be in the top 10 hottest years on record and that this current decade will be the warmest ever recorded.
Morano declined to rise to the challenge, but Nye seems to be egging Bastardi to take it.
“So come on, champ,” Nye says to the bodybuilder, who is one of his most nagging critics. “Show us how tough you are.”
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