If you haven’t clenched your butt cheeks in frustration yet this morning, here’s yesterday’s Meet The Press “debate” over climate change between Our Friend Bill Nye and six-term Republican congresswoman Marsha Blackburn.
Climate change skeptics, remember: just because you are provided a forum in which to refute scientific evidence, that doesn’t give your repeatedly disproved views any validity. It just means that sometimes we like to see The Science Guy flex.
Obviously, if a debate is an exchange of ideas possibly leading to one person changing their opinion, then there’s really no “debating” with someone stubborn enough to consistently disregard compelling scientific evidence. Watching Nye mildly humiliate Blackburn is kind of cathartic–like watching a watermelon get thrown against a cement wall– but as Ria Masra of i09 asks,
Do debates over topics that have already been settled by scientific consensus play an important role in increasing public awareness and education, or do they just set up a false equivalency between a position that is backed by science and facts, and one that isn’t?
Indeed, Madam. Maybe it’s time to focus on the things we can alter–like open minds and probably the climate. Change must be Nye.
(via io9, images via Adam Fagen)
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Published: Feb 17, 2014 11:55 am