A couple of weeks ago, National Geographic‘s website posted a video of Bill Nye teaching us five things we needed to know about climate change:

Creationist Ken Ham and his crack research team have now responded with “rebuttals” to all his points. And they’re full of as much science as you’d expect.

For example, Bill Nye said: “The atmosphere is thin. Barely 60 miles, 100 kilometers, in outer space.”

Ham’s response?

… God knew exactly what kind of atmosphere we needed and He gave us that atmosphere. He even made Earth the perfect size to be able to hold this atmosphere! We can be confident that we have the perfect atmosphere for our planet.

Nye: “There’s 7.3 billion people breathing and burning.”

Ham:

If Nye accepted God’s Word and God’s sovereignty, he would know that the all-powerful God would not allow humanity to die off by climate change or anything else.

Nye: “All this heat energy in the atmosphere is changing things. It’s not just getting warmer, it’s changing.”

Ham:

Temperatures have been changing since the time of the catastrophic Flood of Noah’s day around 4,350 years ago…

Nye: “This warmth is making the ocean get bigger… When the ocean rises just this much, this whole area will be under water, and not just this area, that area, that’s Miami.”

Ham:

… it’s ironic that Bill Nye is concerned about the people living in coastal cities. After all, wasn’t he just complaining about how 7.3 billion people breathe and burn our atmosphere? It’s inconsistent of him and others to express concern about the number of people on the planet but also be worried about the people living in coastal cities.

Nye: “But the main, main, thing, everybody… is the speed, it’s the rate at which things are changing… Oh yes, the world was once warmer, there was once more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than there is today, but all of this never happened this fast. And that’s what you gotta get your heads around.”

Ham:

So Bill Nye is saying that the warming isn’t the problem — it’s been warmer before, but it’s the speed of the warming that’s the problem. Really, this exposes how climate change is a matter of interpretation — just like historical science, which depends on your views of the unobservable past.

This is the essence of Ham’s climate change denialism. Ignore the details, mention the Bible, throw around numbers that end in “thousand,” and assume the Christians who listen to you don’t have the education to know you’re full of shit.



