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bill nye was a big part of most of our childhoods & now he’s cussing us out. i love him pic.twitter.com/g9KXpcLvwH — ً (@lovingquits) May 14, 2019

Gone was the Nye of the ’90s, the man whose show was a middle school substitute teacher’s secret weapon. This was the Science Guy, circa 2019, delivering a sermon squared directly at the legions of Gen Xers and Millennials who were weaned on Nye’s brand of wacky pedagogy.

And he had a message for his erstwhile pupils, especially those who eventually became members of Congress.

“Grow the f–k up,” he said, injecting some more language that wouldn’t fly in public broadcasting. “You’re not children anymore. I didn’t mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were 12. But you’re adults now, and this is an actual crisis, got it?”

Nye took to Oliver’s show to teach his audience about global warming and its possible solutions — namely, the Green New Deal and carbon pricing (in his words, “when something costs more, people buy less of it. Safety glasses off. That’s it.”).

Nye appeared to endorse Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s, D-N.Y., trademark legislation, telling lawmakers they needed to do something and chiding those who have said the proposal is too expensive. As he spoke into the camera, the globe continued to burn.

“There are a lot of things we could do to put it out,” he said. “Are any of them free? No, of course not. Nothing’s free, you idiots.”

His harsh tone surprised some – one viewer wrote on Twitter that he “just heard Bill Nye swear and it’s blowing my mind.” Another observed, “Global warming is so bad that it now has Bill Nye the Science Guy cursing us out to fix it.”