This article was co-authored by Willie Soon. If anybody has a way to contact Bill Nye, make sure he sees this.

Bill “The Science Guy” Nye went on CNN recently and pleaded for a serious national discussion on global warming. This is an odd request because it appears we’ve been talking about nothing else but global warming for thirty years.

Evidently, Nye doesn’t think this non-stop chatter was sufficient. He said that if we talked about global warming in the same way we talk about “stuff” like “Ferguson or Baltimore” then “we would be doing something about” global warming.

Neither of us are sure precisely what Nye meant—was he asking how the mainstream media often gin ups controversy?—but in the proper spirit of amity and cooperation, we accept Nye’s offer to talk.

Let’s talk about how for about the past two decades people like Nye have been promising the global temperature would increase, yet it hasn’t. Let’s try and figure out why knowledge this like isn’t more generally known. Let’s especially discuss why Nye, who purports to be an expert on climatology, doesn’t know this amazing fact.

We also need to consider why Nye and others blame every routine storm on global warming. Nye in his interview said “it’s very reasonable that the floods in Texas, the strengthening storms…are a result of human activity making things worse.” We really need to talk about this, because it’s false. It isn’t at all reasonable to believe storms are strengthening when, as we just mentioned, temperatures have not been increasing. Indeed, it’s unreasonable, incompetent, and irresponsible to make a claim that has been repeatedly debunked: storms are not growing stronger.

Let’s chat, too, about how global sea ice has been growing, which is another way to say it is not melting rapidly, as was predicted many, many times. We can even talk about the many other failed predictions, like polar bear extinctions. Isn’t it odd that predictive failure never hurts global warming proponents?

That this failure doesn’t hurt is why scientists need to talk about why one of the fundamental tenets of science has been forgotten. It used to be, Bill, that when a model made failed predictions, the model was no longer believed. Can you remember that time? But now scientists appear to believe models because the predictions they make are politically and culturally pleasing! Being correct no longer seems to matter. Why? We ask, because this a subject with which you have some familiarity.

Mr Nye, why is it that so many politicians and your journalist friends can only imagine global warming will cause harm? Stick with us, because this is actually a great question. Why can’t, for instance, global warming be responsible for an increase in clement summer afternoons or in less harsh and deadly winters? Why can’t the increased carbon dioxide, a necessary plant food, result in larger crops? Why is it, in short, that global warming stories always sounds like bad science fiction?

Can we also speak about why “global warming” is now “climate change”?

Let’s have a sober dialogue about why every “solution” to global warming involves increasing the reach and power of government. Doesn’t it sound suspicious that the way to “save the planet” is always cede more power to the UN and to regulatory agencies?

And while we’re on the subject of politics, let’s talk about “hate” speech. Did you know, Bill, that many people who express uncertainty in global warming are called “deniers”? Does that sound scientific to you? Worse, some people foolishly call skeptics “unpatriotic”.

That was your word, Bill. Can we talk about how you, an engineer, untrained in atmospheric sciences, can call people like us, who are climate scientists, “unpatriotic”? Do you think this is helpful? If so, how does calling us preposterous untrue names advance science? We really need to chat about this, Bill, because it sounds as if you’re trying to stifle the truth.

Still, in the end we agree with you, Bill. Something should be done. What? Like, for instance, moving on to more important and interesting problems.

Update I have no idea how that repeated paragraph got there. My enemies are more powerful than I imagined!

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