Last month, as the East Coast was pounded by winter storms and the West Coast by drought, “Meet the Press” decided it was time once again for a climate-change debate. The NBC show predictably invited “two people on opposite sides of the issue,” as host David Gregory put it his introduction to the segment. One was Marsha Blackburn, the Republican congresswoman and vice chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who, if not qualified to speak authoritatively about climate change, at least influences climate policy (albeit to the detriment of the environment). But her sparring partner that morning wasn’t someone of officially commensurable stature—not a Democratic member of Congress, a prominent climate scientist, a green-NGO head, or even Al Gore. Rather, the man invited onto our most venerated political talk show to defend the scientific consensus was a part-time actor with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering: Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

Nye did exceptionally well, which shouldn’t surprise anybody who has followed his recent return to public life. He didn’t convince Blackburn of the reality of climate change, but that’s not the metric by which we judge these duels. Rather, Nye did everything you’re supposed to during a televised exchange of talking points: He spoke in digestible, declarative sentences, returning over and over to concrete examples for his arguments. More important, he kept is cool. When Blackburn cited a couple of PhD dissenters, he instead let the ostensibly objective moderator interject: “I’m sorry, congresswoman. Let me just interrupt you,” Gregory said. “You can pick out particular skeptics, but you can’t really say, can you, that the hundreds of scientists around the world who have looked at this have gotten together and conspired to manipulate data.” From there, it was all Nye scoring points while Blackburn mumbled semi-coherently about the “benefits of carbon and what that has on increased agriculture production.”

In today’s YouTube-ready debate contests, that’s considered a win. “Bill Nye Scolds GOP Congresswoman,” Time reported. “Bill Nye Schools Marsha Blackburn,” The Raw Story declared. Mother Jones began its analysis with, “Bill Nye is getting good at this.” Even the conservative Washington Times could only muster that Nye and Blackburn “don’t see eye to eye.” The media response was similar to just weeks earlier, when Nye took on “young-Earth creationist” Ken Ham in a debate, at Kentucky’s Creation Museum, over the origins of life. So one-sided was that victory that the biggest criticism of Nye was whether he should have participated at all, thereby granting undue credence to creationists and helping to fund the museum’s planned Noah’s Ark theme park.

Despite his superficially flimsy qualifications, Nye, who did not respond to interview requests, has emerged these last few months as perhaps the left’s most celebrated public advocate for scientific rationalism—more successful, so far, than the legions of more accomplished experts to come before him. As the Washington Post’s Scott Clement put it, the Nye-Blackburn “meeting puts in stark relief how much the scientific community has failed to communicate their message on global climate change. Perhaps Nye—who has perfected communicating complex subjects to children—will have more success.”

The “Meet the Press” and Creation Museum appearances are part of a broader cultural renaissance for the former host of “Bill Nye, the Science Guy,” a popular PBS Kids show for much of the 1990s, and the fawning doesn’t end with the press. Policymakers sing his praises as liberally as liberal pundits, with one White House official even telling Mother Jones that President Barack Obama himself “lights up when he sees Bill.” A recent photo provided proof of it: