You can always count on climate alarmists for a giggle, and you can definitely count on self-proclaimed “science guy” Bill Nye for a belly laugh. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Nye called for a carbon tax on agriculture, which would burden farmers, raise food prices, and do next-to-nothing about so-called global warming. Nye then had the audacity to laud the scheme as a “free-market” solution.

“Well, this is what you do and it’s a win-win: to have a fee on carbon. So, if you are raising livestock and producing a lot of carbon dioxide with your farm equipment and the exhaust from the animals, then you would pay a fee on that and it would be reflected in the price of meat, reflected in the price of fish, reflected in the price of peanuts,” Nye said.

Nye and other environmentalists believe that a large portion of the world’s supposed climate problem is because of our insistence on having meat in our diet. In 2010, the United Nations Environment Programme even advocated a switch to a global vegan diet to address world hunger and climate change. Nye is a vegan himself and has been vocal in advocating such a diet.

Nye also absurdly claims that his proposed carbon tax is a free-market solution — because a free-market depends on social engineering and government intrusion, apparently.

“This would be a free-market way to reckon the real cost of a meat diet to the world,” Nye claimed. “But conservatives now are against such a thing because they’re against any regulation, any tax or any government involvement in anything. But again, it won’t last, and a carbon fee would be a fantastic thing for the world.”

Of course, what the “science guy” is advocating is ridiculous on many levels. Nye seems to be saying that his proposed carbon fee would raise the price of meat and encourage more vegetarianism and veganism. Ok, but what about the exhaust-producing animals? If we aren’t killing and eating some of them, won’t they continue to reproduce, growing their numbers even larger, and exacerbating the problem of their belching and flatulence? Or is Nye proposing to do away with the animals in some environmentally friendly way?

And just what about any of this is free-market? In a free market, goods and services are determined by the market and what consumers are willing to pay for those things. A carbon tax would be completely antithetical to a free market since it would artificially raise prices. Bill Nye may or may not be a “science guy”; but he is certainly not an “economics guy.”

While Nye’s proposal would probably cause mass starvation and food riots, especially in the third world where food options are much more limited, the fact is that it would do next to nothing to solve global warming.

Though Nye was referring to carbon, other “scientists” believe that the methane produced by animal exhaust is also making global warming much worse. However, Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball has already debunked the bovine-emissions-makes-global-warming-worse theory: “Methane is 0.00017% of all atmospheric gases and only about 0.36% of the total greenhouse gases,” Ball pointed out. “These fractions were so small that even people who didn’t understand the science became skeptical of the claims that it was doing harm.”

Regardless of what science actually says, Nye seems to be looking forward to the day when all of us stupid “climate deniers” will just die off. Nye apparently believes that almost all climate-change deniers are of the older generation, and that once they are gone, the world will be a better place. He believes that irrational fear drives climate change denial and he also believes that fear is generational. For example: “The people who are afraid in general — with due respect, and I am one of them now — are older,” Nye told the Los Angeles Times last year. “We’re just going to have to wait for those people to ‘age out.’” Nye later admitted that “age out” is a euphemism for dying. Thus far, Nye hasn’t advocated that anyone — bovine or human — be killed off in any unnatural way. Perhaps he just keeps those wishes to himself for now.

Bill Nye once did some good in the world. His 1990’s program Bill Nye the Science Guy introduced a lot of children to science in fun and interesting ways. But somewhere along the line, he transformed into a cow-hating, people-hating version of himself. Having made his name on science, he has now abandoned it for a cultish version of science where orthodoxy can’t be questioned. And that’s not science; it’s religion.

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