[people chattering]
Bill Nye's just such a charismatic individual,
and he just inspires the enthusiasm for the love of science, love of life.
[announcer] Currently, he is traveling the country speaking about climate change,
science and space exploration.
I grew up watching Bill Nye, and it was live action,
and, like, kids did it, and I was a kid.
I was, like, "I could do this." I'm a doctor.
And, uh, I do infectious disease, actually.
I think science is everything. It connects us all.
[announcer] While working on his TV show,
he won a total of 18 Emmys in just five years.
[man] When it was a rainy day or the teacher wasn't feeling so well,
you would just see the TV cart come in and the VHS, and you just hear,
"Bill, Bill, Bill!" That's how you knew.
The whole class was so happy. It was just a perfect moment.
[crowd chanting] Bill! Bill! Bill!
[announcer] Please join me in welcoming
America's favorite scientist Bill Nye the Science Guy.
[upbeat music playing]
[crowd cheering]
[man on videotape] Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill! Bill Nye the Science Guy!
[Bill Nye] Whoo! Oh, I love you guys! Greetings!
[whooping]
[instrumental music playing]
Just the start of things. We're getting things wrapped up here.
We're taxiing out. We're gonna take off,
and we're gonna see if these wings develop a difference in air pressure.
[Nye] So it was really the 1990s
that I started feeling bad about the United States,
and its relationship to science.
[indistinct]
I wanted to make a world where young people were excited about science again,
and that set me on a quest.
[man] Okay, Bill, go!
It's a pretty good day for parasailing!
[loud thud]
[wind blowing]
Bill himself was the face of the Bill Nye the Science Guy show.
Uh...
But there really was this triangle, the three creators of the show.
Bill, Jim and Erren.
There was this creative energy
that I don't think has ever quite been replicated.
Jim, writer-director,
could really challenge Bill and bring out the best in Bill,
and Erren, who was the mama bear of the whole organization.
She was the consummate producer.
We should... Where is that home movie?
So, all the video that we know of that is left of the show is right here.
[Erren Gottlieb] Oh, my gosh!
This is all of the research. Background information, shows...
America needed scientists. We'd see PBS stories,
Time Magazine, Newsweeks about this crisis.
There are no scientists out there.
We're going, "Well, we've got this scientist right here.
We can do this." So we set out to make this Bill Nye the Science Guy TV show.
Oh, man. What a mug! What a mug on this guy!
That was pretty much a silly venture, that we thought that we could produce
this national show out of Seattle.
But I don't think anyone ever expected that it would become what it became.
The main stage where most of the show took place
is right on the other side of that brick wall,
and one of the most popular shows is the gravity show.
And we threw stuff off that roof.
[static]
The pull of gravity isn't so strong that we can't raise our arms or anything,
but it does pull on everything all the time.
Now, we can test this.
This is an old idea, but a good one.
Watermelon!
Ah!
A computer, sure!
I think the zaniness, uh, was a great tension reliever
for all the kids in the audience who were afraid they couldn't understand something.
Before they knew what was happening, they understood.
Science!
He's the science teacher we all wish we had in elementary school
or in middle school, high school or even college.
Here's the fastest thing in the universe. It's light!
Light goes 300,000 kilometers every second.
[electricity buzzing]
Things in the universe...
[Neil deGrasse Tyson] The Science Guy show contained the science that excited Bill,
and you, the viewer, can't help but be just as excited as the instructor.
It was a game changer for an entire generation of people.
There's only 92 naturally occurring elements.
But if you think about it, you can think of a lot more than 92 things.
[explosion]
They're all made of the elements listed on this table.
So they're grouped together...
[Emily Graslie] Bill Nye days in school were the best.
When the teacher plugged in the VCR, you knew you were going to walk away
having learned something, and having enjoyed learning something.
Which, for some reason, is a novel thing in schools.
See the air rushing over the blades of grass,
taking carbon dioxide from the air,
light from the sun and water...
the grass is making its own food. It's growing.
The point was, anybody can be a scientist. Any kid. Anybody.
[static]
[goofy sound effects]
The cone built up the negative charge. That's what pulled the water molecules.
[both] Static!
We always told Bill that he should be the next Carl Sagan. That's the plan.
Science is a self-correcting process.
To be accepted, new ideas must survive
the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.
The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion or in politics,
but it is not the path to knowledge,
and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science.
[Nye] I studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University.
I decided to take astronomy from this famous professor, Carl Sagan.
He was a great scientist, and when I had my chance to do my Science Guy show,
I went back to Carl Sagan.
And he said, "You should focus on pure science.
Don't do science demonstrations without describing the bigger idea."
What he said was, kids resonate to science.
That was the verb he used. Resonate.
And I really embraced that.
I will now open the door with my mind.
I am influencing physical objects around me with the power of my brain.
Do you think I did, or did it just look that way?
We have a saying in science.
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
The process of testing claims, the world is flat, the world is round,
is what we call science.
There has always been this little behind- the-scenes thing between scientists.
"Is Bill really a scientist? He doesn't have a PhD."
We catapulted Bill into who he is.
But it is a big step to go from this television host, kid goofy guy,
to a really well-respected expert.
[whirring]
[whistling]
[blows]
[Nye] So the Science Guy show is over.
We did 100 shows. It almost killed me,
and I gotta move on to something bigger.
But the frustrating thing is, I would continually be asked to be on
the news as a commentator,
about the weather especially, and about climate change.
Bill, over to you.
The problem is, we're just burning carbon
and spewing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at an extraordinary rate.
What Bill Nye just did was waste everyone's time explaining
that C02 is rising.
Bill Nye is just going around saying, "C02 is up.
Therefore, global warming is dangerous.
We should be concerned." It's not. It's not dangerous.
The world is getting warmer. It's continually getting warmer.
If I'm right, the reversals will lead to a degree, to a degree and a half cooling.
If you're right, they're not. But what are we worried about right now?
Okay.
[Nye] We have this increasing
anti-science movement in the United States.
Our president is worried about global warming.
What a ridiculous situation.
All right, that was Donald Trump calling out President Obama.
It seems our commander in chief is...
[Nye] It's worse than ever.
The anti-science movement is more powerful than it's ever been.
Charles Darwin never thought of evolution as anything other than a theory.
He hoped that someday it would be proven by the fossil record,
but did not live to see that, nor have we.
[Nye] The longer we put off doing something about it,
the more serious it's gonna get.
It's this problem where the anti-science people have been so successful.
I mean, there's this guy in Kentucky who doesn't believe in evolution,
who doesn't believe in the fundamental idea in all of biology.
[Ken Ham] I don't believe that at all.
I don't believe that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago,
and I certainly don't believe
that you came from ape-like creatures, or anything like that.
I mean, did your grandfather look like that?
[kids laughing]
I don't think so. Does your grandmother look like that?
No, not at all. You're very, very different to...
[Nye] If we raise a generation of kids,
they can't think critically, they can't think scientifically,
we're headed for trouble.
We don't believe in evolution,
and I certainly don't believe that life came about by chance,
random processes millions of years ago in some soup in the sea,
life was formed and then one kind of animal...
What has evolution got to do with engineering?
I mean, Bill Nye himself actually is not a scientist.
He studied mechanical engineering.
As a science educator, I'm really more serious about it than ever,
these people who are denying science,
denying evolution, denying the efficacy of vaccinations,
and especially denying human-caused climate change.
We just can't have this. We've got to fight this fight.
I have got to fight this fight.
[people chattering]
[growling]
[Nye] Now, this is scientifically inaccurate.
Humans and ancient dinosaurs did not live at the same time.
The evidence for that is overwhelming,
and to suggest this to schoolchildren is irresponsible at best.
It's very troubling.
[snarling]
The Head Minister, Ken Ham, challenged me to a debate.
And after consideration, I accepted it.
[Eugenie Scott] Ken Ham is the most successful creationist
in the United States.
I first heard about the debate when Bill sent me an email saying,
"Hey, I've signed a contract to debate Ken Ham.
Can I talk to a couple of your people?"
[chuckles] And I wrote back saying,
"Seriously? Do you realize what you've gotten into?"
Debates between scientists and science deniers
could be a trap that scientists probably should not get involved in.
[Nye] Well, they present Lucy as a gorilla.
And in mainstream science, Lucy stands upright.
And she has a lot less hair.
You will not see that in a mainstream museum.
Understand that in mainstream science, when we find this, we consider evidence.
[Jerry Coyne] The Creation Museum is a temple of ignorance,
but it's also a temple of lies.
And warping the minds of children,
which is what the Creation Museum is dedicated to doing,
is one of the most awful and mendacious things I think anybody can do.
[recording of gunfire and people screaming playing]
There's a lot of anxiety and concern about evolution,
because people see it as somehow incompatible with religious beliefs.
I'm a believer in God myself,
and I don't, at the present time, see any conflicts between understanding
the nature of living things and how they're related to each other,
and what I believe as someone who perceives God as the creator.
You can find fossils in the DNA of humans.
Genes that don't work anymore, and haven't worked for a long time.
They're called "pseudo genes,"
and they're on the same place in the human as they are in the chimpanzee.
Unless you're gonna say that God was playing a trick by hiding some sort of
misleading clue, you have to conclude that we had a common ancestor.
Bill has an opportunity, and has taken that on
in his discussion with Ken Ham,
to try to explain what the scientific facts are.
I'm Tom Foreman from CNN,
and I'm pleased to be tonight's moderator for this evolution-versus-creation debate.
And now let's welcome our debaters, Mr. Bill Nye and Mr. Ken Ham.
[cheering and applause]
[Tom Foreman] Mr. Ham, you opted to go first.
You cannot ever prove, using, uh, the scientific method in the present,
you can't prove the age of the Earth. So you can never prove it's old.
Mr. Nye?
Well, of course this is where we disagree. You can prove the age of the Earth
with great robustness.
Radiometric dating does exist. The universe is accelerating.
These are all provable facts.
I just want people to understand too that there's aspects about the past
that you can't scientifically prove because you weren't there.
We can be investigating, uh, the present.
Understanding the past is a whole different matter,
and, uh, let me just say this. My answers...
[Coyne] To say that evolution is somehow questionable
because we only have the historical remnants of the process
is a complete misunderstanding of how science operates.
We have so much evidence in the fossil record.
We have so much evidence from our DNA.
We have so much evidence from embryology
that you don't need to see it happen, because we have the historical record.
It's like trying to deny that Napoleon existed.
Mr. Nye, the next question is for you.
How did the atoms that created the Big Bang get there?
This is the great mystery. This is what drives us.
This is what we want to know. Let's keep looking. Let's keep searching.
Bill, I just want to let you know that there actually is a book out there
that tells us where matter came from.
[audience laughing]
Mr. Ham, this is a simple question, I suppose,
but one that actually is fairly profound for all of us in our lives.
What, if anything, would ever change your mind?
[Ham] Hmm.
Well, the answer to that question is, I'm a Christian.
And the Bible is the word of God.
No one is ever gonna convince me that the word of God is not true.
[Foreman] Mr. Nye?
[Nye] We would just need one piece of evidence.
We would need evidence that the universe is not expanding.
We would need evidence that the stars appear to be far away, but they're not.
That rock layers can somehow form in just 4,000 years.
Bring on any of those things, and you would change me immediately.
[Scott] That last question just so crystallized this whole debate,
and I think the answers of both Ken and Bill were very, very telling.
Is Ken Ham's creation model viable?
I... I say no. Absolutely not. Thank you very much.
-Thanks so much to Mr. Nye and Mr. Ham... -[audience cheering]
...for an excellent discussion.
Thank you. Goodnight from Petersburg, Kentucky and the Creation Museum.
[tweeting]
[keyboard clacking]
-May I touch these things? -Sure.
I know you're not supposed to touch science demonstrations.
That's conventional Newton, but what happens here
when they're in different, uh... Oh, it's a wave. That's beautiful.
There was a point where I had thought that Bill Nye was dead,
because he was no longer putting out any kind of informational videos
trying to teach kids about science.
-[woman] Love you, Bill! -Thank you. Good morning. Good morning.
He did disappear for a little bit, and everybody was, like,
"Where did the Science Guy go?"
What is he, "Soil Man"? Who is he?
Well, we are teaching forensics, and he is our, uh...
He's dead.
[audience cheering]
[Nye] It's the National Science Teacher Convention.
These are the people, man. These are the science teachers.
They're really the fans.
People still watch Bill Nye the Science Guy in school.
Teachers showed it in class for years and years.
Greetings, greetings! It's great to see you all,
and I'm very happy that, as I understand it,
I've been teaching a lot of your classes this year.
[audience laughing]
Here we go.
[indistinct chatter]
-Whoa, whoa. -One more, Bill, thank you.
There you are. Hey.
-Thank you. -Cool.
-Hey, cool. -Thank you.
[exclaims]
Hey...
Go, go, go! [exclaims]
-Three, two... -We got it. Yeah, yeah.
We don't need a countdown. Just go for it.
You've gotta reach out. You've gotta go. Gotta turn it around.
-Catch up! -All right, all right!
How hard can it be? I'm not sprinting.
Reach out, man. You're too close.
I was asked to talk about selfie fatigue,
and I haven't.
I'm pretty sure it shortens your life.
[exhales]
[audience cheering]
Now, you may have heard about this thing I did last year.
I went to Kentucky and I took a meeting with this guy
who insists that the Earth is 6,000 years old.
[laughing]
So, along this line, the next morning,
maybe you guys saw this, it was all over the Internet.
[audience laughing]
Bill Nye knows a lot of science, but when he gets off into evolution, he's lying.
Dogs are always gonna be canines. They always will be.
Felines will be felines. That's real science.
"Client requests that Bill steer clear of any controversial topics."
"We also live in a pretty conservative state,
so the climate-change environmental conversation
wouldn't be well-received by some members of our audience, unfortunately."
That is unfortunate.
The main thing everybody could do about climate change is talk about it.
[cheering]
Hi, you guys. Greetings, greetings.
High five. Yes. Cool. Hi, you guys.
[woman] I love science.
We're reaching the end of the line. I love you guys! Carry on. One more! Ah!
The message I want to get across today is that climate change is serious business.
[crowd cheering]
Why is this country, which, for over a century,
was the world leader in science, engineering and innovation...
[Nye] Nowadays I'm talking to adults, and I'm not mincing words.
The climate is changing. It's our fault.
We've gotta get to work on this.
So Sarah Palin was on this panel.
"Bill Nye is as much of a scientist as I am.
He's a kid's show actor. He's not a scientist."
I want people to feel empowered to ask questions about what is being fed them
from the science community, um... That, uh,
something's not making a whole lot of sense
when it comes to inconsistent data that is being produced and being fed,
especially to our children,
when it comes to global warming or climate change.
Whatever they're calling it today.
Man. That they can get on the news,
and by "them," I mean climate-change deniers,
they really are leaving the world worse than they found it.
[man on video] Some of the most trusted names in the weather business
dispute that global warming exists.
It turns out your favorite TV meteorologist
may have more clout than you think.
Surveys show Americans are more likely to believe weather forecasters
than politicians, when it comes to global warming.
And many of those forecasters insist
that climate change poses no imminent threat.
To think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant.
Mother Nature is so big. I think we're gonna die from a lack of fresh water,
or we're gonna die from ocean acidification
before we die from global warming, for sure.
So, I was on CNN in the morning,
and I made an offhanded comment. We were talking about floods in Louisiana.
You know, here at CNN you have a climate-change denier meteorologist.
I doubt this one is even right.
[Nye] Knock yourselves out, but this is a big problem.
And the next morning Chad Myers posted this,
succinctly saying, "I have now changed my mind.
Had I flip-flopped?
Well, that is what it would be called in politics, but in science,
it's just an evolution of understanding."
As I tell my 11-year-old,
it's okay to be wrong,
as long as you learn from your mistakes.
Chad Myers, I love you, man. If we can get more,
as they're called nowadays, thought leaders changing their minds,
maybe we can change the world.
[dog barking]
[toy train whistling]
[bell tolling]
[Nye] Load up some barrels.
[Nye whistling]
Here's the mark. Whoops. That's got it. We're done.
[Nye laughing]
Look, a couple of them land upright. Come on.
But my brother has positioned this building so close to the track,
it can't get the barrels to land in their official barrel catcher.
Look out! Okay, I'm gonna do it. Whee!
[laughing]
So, our dad enabled this hobby.
[Darby Nye] He helped me with it.
He's the one that bought the trains in the first place for me.
[Nye] This car is 70 years old.
[Darby] It's from a set from 1955.
A lot of the dates are stamped on the car.
So 1955 was 61 years ago?
-[Darby] Sixty-one. -Yeah.
That's a long time ago.
We're pretty close, Darby.
[toy train whistling]
This is the house where my family grew up.
My parents built this house, and apparently, at that time,
this was out in the country.
[rapid wooden rumbling]
That is a sound from my youth, people, right there.
So, in here's the laundry room.
Right here is where I was Bill Nye, boy scientist.
But this is where I used to do science experiments.
This was my little space right about here.
[Nye] Darb, were you here when Dad fell down the stairs?
[Darby] He was carrying laundry.
He was doing something he shouldn't have done.
[Nye] Well, that's what you guys say.
But he was doing a thing that, to an able-bodied person, is routine.
This is what my sister talks about all the time.
You just... You forget that you can't do regular stuff.
[indistinct chatter]
[Steve Wilson] Bill is probably one of the best friends I have.
The first time we met, Bill was in a Steve Martin lookalike contest.
He was a guest and so I miked him up.
He is true blue.
He's always there. He's a good guy.
[Nye] So I'm gonna try the mystery song.
[Wilson speaking]
Oh, it's, uh...
Um, Angie, "The Christmas Tree Angel."
["The Christmas Tree Angel" playing]
So, my mom used to sing this song.
And I thought... Listen to that.
Here they all come.
I used to cry. This is my mom.
Wils, you're a mensch, man.
[laughing]
♪ All dressed up in stardust and tinsel ♪
Amazing.
♪ Have a merry, merry, merry Christmas said she ♪
[seagulls cawing]
[waves breaking]
[Nye] My mom was a big believer in women doing everything.
During World War II, she was in the Navy.
She was recruited to work on the Enigma code.
And so, she wasn't Rosy the Riveter.
She was Rosy the Top-Secret Code Breaker.
We had a very good family
My brother and sister loved me.
We remain very close.
[Susan] Our family has a genetic problem. It's called "ataxia."
It affects our, uh,
motor coordination and our speech sometimes.
My brother Darby and I, we both seem to be affected by it.
The ataxia, this thing where you fall backwards and you catch yourself...
You start to fall backwards...
It's cerebellar, and it's related to balance.
I've seen my brother do it, I saw my dad do it.
And my sister...
-Well, she's way past that, I gotta say. -[Wilson] Okay. Yeah.
So every time I lost my balance, I'd presumed it was ataxia, so, uh...
And part of the reason that, you know,
-I never had kids and stuff... -[Susan] Well, sure.
...is because I was afraid of passing this on.
[Susan] Right. Absolutely.
[laughing]
What are you laugh... She's, you know...
Because I can't stand up.
That is funny, you know.
That's the fence.
[Susan] Bill's so charming to help us get along in life.
-[Nye] Do you want your little feetsies? -[Susan] I do.
And he helps us to cope with what we have to deal with.
[Nye] That's true.
-[Susan] You don't need to... -[Nye] I was the obnoxious kid.
[beeping]
[Amy Bastian] Hold it there.
Okay, you can move your right arm into the next triangle.
Go the other direction. Finger.
Nose.
Finger.
I don't see any change at all from the last time we saw you.
-Oh, really? That's-- -Two years ago.
And right now I don't see anything that looks ataxic.
All right. I'm gonna look at your eyes now.
What I want you to do is focus right on my nose.
Open 'em nice and wide for me. Now look at my finger.
So you can see the beading movements of her eyes?
And now look at my nose.
Good, Susan. And slide it down.
Okay. Let's switch sides.
[Nye] I really worry about my sister falling,
or if something goes wrong.
Because I watched how ataxia affected my dad's life,
and look how it affected my sister's life.
So, I may have a so-called survivor's guilt,
where, "I don't have it?
Do I deserve to not have it?
What did I do that allows me to not have it,
where my beloved brother and sister do have it?
What happened? Do I owe the world a living?
If I were to have kids, would they not have gotten it?"
I am aware of how fortunate I am.
It makes me all the more... It motivates me all the more to do
something to leave the world better than I found it.
Hey! Dude. Man.
-How you doing? -Good.
[Tyson] So what did you bring?
[Nye] Some Aveeno.
Very nice. What's gonna happen is, if I'm drinking wine with my man here,
it's gonna have to be cosmic. Just so you know.
[Nye] That's right. He's proud of his 'stache.
[Tyson] Here you go.
-Rocket science! -Yes!
That's the bottle I'm drinking with Bill.
[Nye] We're living at this extraordinary time where people are anti-science.
Anti-science in the country
that got to be preeminent through its innovation.
-[Tyson] Okay. Let me get on your case. -[Nye] All right.
-There's an entire generation of people... -I know.
...who grew up looking at you in their elementary school classroom.
I know. It's all me.
-[laughing] It's all your fault! -It's my fault.
-Whatever I did wrong... -Where have you failed?
You had as much street cred as is possible among schoolchildren.
But somebody's gotta believe you more than a childhood educator.
Yeah, yeah.
But I knew you had it in you. I knew. We knew. We knew it.
I went to the board...
[Tyson] I serve on the board of the Planetary Society.
Carl Sagan founded the Planetary Society back in 1980.
[music playing on TV]
Mars is the world next door.
The nearest planet on which human explorers could safely land.
[man on TV] The Planetary Society,
with Cornell University astronomer Carl Sagan as its president,
is the largest space interest group on this planet,
with some 125,000 members in over 60 of Earth's nations.
I and other board members determined that the best thing for the society
would be to have Bill become its CEO.
So, here's gonna be where the work's gonna get done.
Look at all of the space we have for people. "Space," get it?
Before Bill took over, we had been in a low point for some time.
And Bill coming onboard started to change us really dramatically.
One thing that's very important to Bill is the Planetary Society's solar sail launch.
It's been our mission since 1980.
[Johnny Carson] Isn't this interesting.
Well, there's just a tremendously exciting prospect called "solar sailing."
-"Solar sailing"? -And this is a very crude model.
And it works exactly as an ordinary sailboat does,
but it would travel on the radiation and particles that come out of the sun.
The wind from the sun.
[Tyson] If you look at old footage of Carl Sagan on The Tonight Show,
it's Carl Sagan unfurling a model of a solar sail,
describing that to Johnny Carson and to the American public.
[Ann Druyan] Carl was so excited about the solar sailing project.
What could be more mythic than riding the light?
[Nye] At the Planetary Society, we are gonna launch LightSail.
When this thing gets in space,
Mylar sheets are deployed, and the photons from the sun will give it a push.
You never run out of fuel.
You could greatly lower the cost
and make space exploration accessible to many, many more people.
We will be able to launch spacecraft
and take them farther and deeper into space.
[Druyan] It's the best shot we have at getting to travel out into the cosmos
on the scale of even the nearest stars.
This is my office. This will be my office.
Carl Sagan changed my life, and I am honored
to be the CEO of the society that he started. The Planetary Society.
[indistinct chatter]
[marching band playing]
[cameras clicking]
[crowd applauding]
People from all over the world have heard of Noah's Ark.
People say, "What are you really doing here? What statement are you making?"
See, people haven't been taught genetics correctly,
haven't been taught about speciation and natural selection correctly.
We're gonna correct that in here and undo
the brainwashing that's occurred, uh, through...
[crowd cheering]
I'm gonna challenge Bill Nye's evolutionary worldview. So, Bill,
you're invited to come, and I'll personally tour you through the Ark.
You can do it ahead of opening, if you want,
or you can do it after opening. Whatever.
As we stand here, the Juno spacecraft just went into orbit around Jupiter,
which is an extraordinary accomplishment of engineering and rocket science.
Here's anti-science.
[crowd applauding]
What do you say to those who scoff at dinosaurs on the Ark?
People have so many misconceptions about dinosaurs.
You know, Bill Nye scoffs at me for believing dinosaurs were on the Ark,
but people like Bill Nye believe dinosaurs grew feathers and became birds.
-It comes down to beliefs. -[crowd laughing]
It's a clash of worldviews. That's what it's all about.
[crowd applauding]
It's not a problem with religion. I'm hip.
The Earth's not 6,000 years old.
It is inappropriate to teach that to young people.
[man speaking Spanish]
Well, I know enchilada and taco and...
[people laughing]
Speciation is not evolution, because dogs actually always remain dogs.
It's one of the things we've observed, and cats always remain cats.
-We've observed that too. -[crowd applauding]
Oh, and by the way, elephants always remain elephants.
[people laughing]
[recorded animal calls]
[Nye] This looks like an apatosaurus, or a something...
[Ham] Yeah, it's a sauropod. Yeah.
Your claim is that a family built this enclosure for ancient sauropods.
-For each kind of land animal. -And then the sauropods disappeared.
Oh, lots of animals have disappeared.
I mean, that's why we have endangered species--
But it happened in the last 4,000 years?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
[Ham] Would you allow someone to teach the possibility
that God created them in the public schools?
-No. -Okay.
-Not in science class. -Mm-hmm.
In religion class, in history class, philosophy class.
But that's not science.
But you said your belief was everything happened by natural processes,
and they're teaching that religion in the science class.
-Well, you're calling it a religion. -Yeah, it is.
We're calling it "the process of science."
-No, but it is a religion. -So you can teach...
It's a belief.
Teach your worldview in a different class, but not in science class.
[Ham] You must admit, these are quite exquisite exhibits, right?
They're very troubling.
[stammers] But they're beautifully done, aren't they?
I guess.
[Hams voice] And the Earth was without form and void,
and darkness...
[somber instrumental music playing]
[Nye on TV] My scientific colleagues go to places like Greenland,
Arctic, Antarctica,
and they drill into the ice.
And we pull out long cylinders of ice.
Certain of these cylinders have 680,000 layers of ice.
The truth is that these layers in the ice are not annual layers.
So Bill Nye and others have pushed the idea of millions of years
while talking about annual rings in icicles are simply wrong.
So this is the most troubling thing you do, Mr. Ham.
Trying to convince young people
that climate change is not real is very serious,
because they're gonna have to grow up and deal with it.
[Ham] Actually, climates change all the time.
Let me rephrase it for you.
Human-caused climate change is very serious.
-Well, there's a lot of debate about it. -This is the worst thing you--
There's a lot of scientists who would disagree with that.
-In fact, we-- -Very, very few.
We have PhD scientists on our staff who would disagree with that.
We have PhD scientists.
Your scientists on your staff, as respectful as I can be, are incompetent.
[Ham's voice] ...contradicts the secular belief of millions of years.
[girl] How did God create us?
[Ham] "How did God create us?" The Bible says He spoke, and it happened,
because He is all powerful, because He is infinite creator God.
So, young woman, I would say to you,
that there's a process
that humans have developed over a millennia by which we know nature.
And we call that "science."
The big thing in science is questioning things.
So, are you telling this little girl that she is just an animal?
The word "just" I disagree with.
She's a wonderful, beautiful animal.
I believe Mr. Ham.
-Say that again? -I believe Mr. Ham.
Okay. So, as you get older, just look at the world.
I really encourage you to go to college.
[Nye] Some of those kids, I don't think they were in fifth grade.
You know, when we did the Science Guy show,
we had very compelling evidence that ten years old
was the oldest you could be to get the lifelong passion for science.
We're gonna lose thousands and thousands of kids from this area,
who grew up with this weird, untenable worldview.
[people chanting] ...we don't want your Ark no more!
One, two, three, four, we don't want your Ark no more!
[people cheering]
Today that grand opening of the Ark Encounter kicked off about an hour ago.
Across the street, we saw a lot of people going in there.
Hundreds of people.
I want to go talk to Jim Helton, the president of the Tri-State Freethinkers.
Science is part of it,
but you say there's more to it than just that?
Yes. We want to draw attention to where your money is going to,
and that your children will be indoctrinated
to say that evolution and science aren't true.
Here's what happened. They strategically placed Bill Nye at the Creation Museum.
After that debate, they raised millions of additional dollars for the Ark Encounter.
Was Bill Nye responsible for some of that?
Unfortunately, probably yes.
[people chanting] One, two, three, four, we don't want your Ark no more!
[TV reporter] It's a theme park of biblical proportion,
but until now, the money to make it has not been flooding in.
But $15 million in the last two weeks
came from a rather ironic chain of events.
...who don't understand natural law...
[TV reporter] When thousands watched science advocate Bill Nye
debate Ham online,
believers pulled out their wallets.
[Coyne] Nye's mistake was giving credibility to Ken Ham
by giving him a public platform.
Everything I've seen about Nye is that
he really misses being the Science Guy,
because he was much beloved and very popular.
It's hard to give up celebrity.
The starting position for me is, "What is your goal?"
My goal is helping the public understand
why evolution is good science, why climate change is good science,
why they should be taught to kids.
I don't know what Bill's goals are.
Bill has always wanted to be famous from the get-go.
He's actually said that to me, "I wanted to be famous."
He wanted to be a star.
I see...
You've seen the pictures with the drone on the back.
[man] Okay, Bill. I'm rolling, whenever you're comfortable.
Okay. So everyone just give a big...
[Jim McKenna] The Science Guy is a character,
but Bill is a human. He's not perfect.
See, that's why airplanes take off and land pointing into the wind.
[McKenna] So we committed to a TV show with Bill,
but suddenly Bill went to Portland, and he did a pilot with our material.
Our show, Bill Nye the Science Guy, almost did not happen.
[TV show theme song playing]
Hey, Bill Nye the Science Guy here.
What I've got is a set-up for making hydrogen gas.
I have a special chemical in here that...
If you need any proof that there was more than just Bill Nye behind the success
of the Bill Nye the Science Guy show, all you have to do is look at the version
of the show that was produced down in Portland, and it was ridiculous.
It was like some form of crazy, manic Captain Kangaroo.
Bill really wasn't at his best, it didn't make a lot of sense.
It didn't get picked up. It kind of went nowhere.
[loud explosion]
Would you look at that?
He's gonna blow up the whole neighborhood if somebody doesn't do something.
[glass breaking]
Whoa! [laughs]
[McKenna] We lost him for a year, contractually.
We were threatened with lawsuits if we even talked to him,
and I felt pretty raw from that.
[TV static]
So, overall, the page and a half scene is all different locations,
but we'd like to cut up sentences.
[laughing] Oh, yeah. Let's go shoot.
We have to go shoot some stuff. I forgot about that.
-And go to the doctor. -Yeah, go to the doctor.
I think fame changed Bill, and I think probably the biggest way is, um,
his trust issues, and I think also his vulnerability.
He's very protective of it,
and then now you're not seeing a Bill
that we grew up with, you know, 20 years ago.
[Heather Berlin] When you started getting more popular
and your brand of science humor caught on, and you started getting recognized,
how did that make you feel? I mean, were you, you know...
[Nye] It makes you feel cool. It makes you feel appreciated.
Yeah. But now you have millions and millions of people
who know you or your persona.
What does that do to your psyche and what does it do to your brain, ultimately?
I'm studying the effect of celebrity and fame on the brain and the psyche,
and Bill is a great test case, where I can explore my thesis.
I won't be surprised if your brain, my brain, is meh from all this.
[Berlin] Yeah. I mean, and that's my theory,
is that being in the limelight for a given period of time
can affect even the way your brain is wired up.
So, in terms of engaging with the public, getting approached by people,
is there this constant having to shield yourself and close your real self off?
Well, I close off a lot. I don't know if it's constant.
Do you think that has affected you in your personal life as well?
Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Yes!
Do you think you've sacrificed having a family...
I think about that all the time. And I just... I never did that.
Do you think that you sacrificed that to pursue this career?
Well, how about this. I chose to pursue this instead of doing that.
I mean, there were opportunities...
-Right. -To get married and have babies, for sure.
But I know people can do both.
Well, this it. Dude! Dude. [laughs]
I think women that I've known are frustrated with me, because I don't...
I won't commit-commit, because...
[stammers] But I think that's not to do with fame so much.
My parents stopped getting along in a very important time in my development.
How old were you?
I don't know. I was 12.
-Hmm. -My mom was very, very unhappy,
and my father was extremely stubborn. And he was...
Bitterly sarcastic.
And I think a lot of that rubbed off on me,
and that's not good all of the time. I have angered some people.
So you have a fear of intimacy,
perhaps related to the fact that your parents' relationship failed?
Yeah.
So if you just keep a little bit of distance, you're always safe.
But at the same time, it never allows you to have a real full...
[McKenna] I think about this often. I had trust issues with Bill.
But he's got this mission.
I see Bill go on and do great things,
and I am happy and proud that he has done this.
And I think it's brave.
My dad's big thing was, "Every man's responsible for his own actions,"
and "Leave the world better than you found it."
These are Ned Nye's rules of life right there. Guiding principles.
My parents participated in this world war.
They contributed to winning it.
So, my parents made me who I am.
I mean, for better or for worse.
Uh...
You feel great about it, but I also feel, like, "Man, I could do more."
Would they be proud of me,
the mistakes I've made? Would they go along with it?
I try to be worthy of them.
I try to leave a legacy.
My drive to do all of this is from my parents.
[people chattering]
[woman] I got it.
The actual reason why I'm actually here is going well.
[cheering]
Hi, you guys!
[all cheering]
Don't you people have school to work on?
[all laughing]
Carry on, carry on!
Oh, my God!
There's the spacecraft over there, and you say, "That's it?"
Yeah, that's it. It's that big.
It's literally smaller than a loaf of bread.
It really is gorgeous. It's just gorgeous.
When I was in class, 40 years ago,
Carl Sagan talked about a solar sail mission.
But it never happened.
So this is realizing a 40-year-old dream,
building a spacecraft that would fly in space,
propelled just by light.
So, Professor Sagan, this one's for you.
[indistinct chatter]
[Nye] We're all very hopeful. This is an important day in testing the spacecraft,
to turn it on and see if it does everything it's supposed to do.
The LightSail spacecraft will go there in the middle.
The antenna will spring out,
and the sails will deploy,
if nothing goes wrong.
[indistinct conversation]
-[man] All right. Are you ready? -[man 2] Ready.
Countdown.
[all] Five, four, three, two, one, zero...
[Nye] Oh, man. Right there.
Hey, you guys.
I'm really glad it works. Woo-hoo!
Oh, that's great. That's really great, you guys.
It's really nice. It's working perfectly.
[people cheering]
[Nye] So the reason we're doing this is to advance space science.
There's just a few missions that a solar sail is ideal for.
You could monitor the Earth's climate, sort of, indefinitely,
and that would be a worthy use of these inexpensive,
lightweight spacecraft.
So, next year we're launching a solar sail into space...
And I'm quite anxious about it.
The Planetary Society launched a solar sail in 2005,
and the result was catastrophic.
[Ann] After Carl's death, I was the program director of Cosmos I,
which would be the very first attempt to launch a solar sail into space.
[Nye] We launched it on a Russian Cold War ballistic missile
in the Arctic Ocean.
Everybody was, sort of, gathered around listening for information, updates.
"Well, we're waiting for a signal." No. There was no signal.
[Ann] And word came that our tracking seemed to indicate that it was off-course.
[Nye] And it crashed.
[explosion]
And it's in the bottom of the ocean.
[Ann] And so our attempts to launch humanity's first solar sail were thwarted.
[Nye] While we're sitting here,
the spacecraft is sitting on this laboratory bench,
the antenna deployed.
But then you've got... There's nothing to do for 40 minutes.
So, in this meantime, Joe Bastardi,
the meteorologist-weightlifter,
sent me a direct message on Twitter.
"Hey, Bill. Sorry I blocked you last week.
That really is not me, as I am a libertarian."
Please welcome, for meteorologists, the chief forecaster for Accuweather,
NABBA American Bodybuilding Tall Class Champion, Joe Bastardi.
Joe, thanks so much for coming on.
[audience cheering]
Do you believe that global warming is man-made?
Global warming is basically natural.
It's a fraud. I don't know if that's true, and I don't care.
What do you say about that, Brenda?
Well, meteorologists are focusing on the short-term,
and climate scientists look at the long-term.
These are, like, natural cycles.
[Stephen Colbert] What's the long-term?
It just seems so unlikely that a guy with a degree in meteorology
does not have a grasp of the greenhouse effect.
And it wouldn't matter,
except the deniers have been so successful in keeping the United States
from becoming a world leader in addressing climate change.
I agree that there's climate change, all right?
Do humans have something to do with it?
They probably have something to do with it. I don't know what.
Is it worth crashing the American economy? No. I don't believe that.
[announcer] Please welcome Joe Bastardi!
[audience cheering]
[Joe Bastardi] I just think that C02 is very, very small,
relative to everything else that's going on.
If the environment was a workout, to me, the sun would be squats.
The oceans would be pull-ups.
Power cleans would be stochastic events, like volcanoes.
All those things are the climate control knobs.
All right. So set it slow, set it fast.
C02 would probably be, you know,
band curls on a Thursday morning circuit or something.
Relative to those big-ticket exercises,
I don't think it's a control knob.
When they argue the warmer water that runs into
the Arctic thingamajig that's cold,
they say that that is all global warming,
climate change, whatever. So what is creating this phenomenon?
Well, what's creating it is the natural,
cyclical processes that we've seen for years and years.
In this particular year, because of our forecast in WeatherBELL,
we thought that it's going to be an in-close year,
high-impact year for the United States.
[Michael Mann] Climate-change deniers
have this huge megaphone that has been provided to them
by fossil fuel interests, by conservative media outlets
that are part of this larger climate-change denial machine.
And so what you've gotta be concerned about...
[Mann] Much of the denial comes from an ideological viewpoint.
You know, regulating greenhouse gases must be bad because all regulation is bad.
Well, you do the math and add it up,
and if you go back and look and study what happened before,
you come up with your answer.
Well, I go to you for those answers because you're that good.
Thank you, Joe. I appreciate it.
-Get home safe. -I appreciate it.
Joe Bastardi. All right. In the meantime, what the frack?
The White House today piling on more rules when it comes to fracking on public lands.
That's extracting oil and all that stuff we need in this country.
Critics say it's just gonna drive up energy costs for all of it,
Jay Lehr says, "Enough is enough."
Joe Bastardi has challenged me
to "Some questions for Bill Nye, six years after our O'Reilly Factor debate."
They think climate deniers are doing us a disservice these days, and Bastardi,
at least currently, Joe Bastardi, is a climate denier.
Joe Bastardi, who is our go-to guy,
he points to a lot of interesting facts in history.
You know, the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, the dinosaurs' extinction.
I like bringing those things up so people don't believe this is global warming.
And the snow...
[Nye] Joe Bastardi is the meteorologist of record for conservative media.
Maybe I can nudge him.
Show him the importance of carbon dioxide.
We'll give it a run.
Take you on, Joe.
[Garrett Bastardi] That's right here. Right there. That looks like that.
[Joe] Yeah, it does, a little bit like it.
What's going on is you're cooling the Indian Ocean.
That's what the implications are here.
Ever since I was a very young child, I was fascinated by the weather,
and I see it in my son, who is very interested in the weather.
You know, we've just been in the warm cycle over the last, uh...
-What, 30 years? -[Joe] Thirty years. So...
And the temperature has been a little warmer the last 30 years.
There seems to be a correlation there.
Yeah. Well, I see the...
When I found out my dad was gonna be debating Bill Nye on The O'Reilly Factor
on Fox News, I was in sixth or seventh grade, and we had just finished watching,
you know, for the past few years,
watching Bill Nye the Science Guy, those videos.
So he was a celebrity to me, and a lot of people my age were, like,
"Please be nice to him."
Do you agree, Joe, that in 1750
the world's carbon dioxide was about 280 parts per million?
Do you agree with that?
Bill, you don't want to go here. You know why? Because I'm going...
[Garrett] And it got kind of testy, a little bit.
We were, like, "My dad's not listening to anything we're saying,
and they're just kind of going at it."
So if you want to believe that, you can go ahead and believe that.
-Let Bill reply. Go ahead, Bill. -Seems kind of hard to.
[Joe] Before the O'Reilly debate, Garrett says to me, "Dad,
he's like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus rolled up into one.
You can't get mad at him."
In an unusual publication called The Patriot Post,
a bodybuilder and meteorologist named Joe Bastardi challenged me.
He challenged me to show a connection
between carbon dioxide and the world's temperature.
I predict that 2016 will be among the top ten hottest years ever recorded.
Mr. Bastardi, I cannot help but note
that you've spoken at the Coal Training Conference,
Nebraska Propane and the Gas Forum.
Where you speak is your business,
but it also seems to be your business.
Have you ever seen a check arrive from the Koch brothers out there?
[Garrett] No.
-No? -I've never seen a Koch brothers check.
Have I made speeches directly related to climate change? Yes.
Have I been paid for them? Yes.
Will I do that again? Yes.
But the idea that the oil companies are paying me,
and that's why I believe what I believe, is total nonsense.
And if Bill's making money because he's talking about climate change, great.
More power to you.
He says it here.
"Bill Nye is wrong. He's not a real scientist," right?
That's a big thing with Mr. Bastardi.
"Bill Nye's an actor." Wait, I'm both.
Or, at least I'm an engineer who took a lot of physics. How about that?
[airplane whirring]
[Nye] I don't have a PhD.
So, I talk to the experts,
to people in the field who know all about climate science.
And if I can, I really want to see the process,
and hold the evidence in my hands.
[wind whistling]
[James White] Wow. This is where the magic happens.
This is where the ice core is drilled.
Ice cores are the best archive of the past.
They tell us about what happened on our planet
tens to hundreds of thousands of years ago.
So we just go down at ten-foot chunks, all the way through the bottom.
-Two miles? -Yeah.
Once this becomes solid ice, it's still 10% air.
So we can take that ice core back to the lab,
shave it down in a controlled environment, collect the air
and measure what was in the atmosphere
10,000 years ago, or 20,000, or 100 or 200,000 years ago.
And you melt it too, right?
[White] In the 1960s, we discovered that humans were indeed causing climate change.
That was a surprise,
and we didn't know that our climate system was capable of such an angry response.
Snow falls every year and you get layers and layers of ice,
which are like pages in a book.
And as we read this book, we learn more and more about the story of our planet.
One of the most important findings that ever came out of ice cores is that,
when it's warmer, C02 is higher. When it's colder, C02 is lower.
Our planet, over the last million years, naturally varied between
really cold times, glacial periods, and warm times.
And the difference was 100 parts per million of C02 in the atmosphere.
But as we get closer to the surface,
we start to see traces of human activity.
Since the Industrial Revolution, we have increased C02 from 280 parts per million
to 400 parts per million, and the pace of change is going faster and faster.
With the amount of C02 in the atmosphere we have today,
the planet is gonna continue to warm.
An interesting question I get asked a lot is, "Do you believe in climate change?"
And, um, the question is interesting to me,
because the word "belief" implies that there's some choice involved.
Whether I choose to believe in God or not, belief in God is a choice.
I believe in God, um, but the... Whether you believe in climate change,
it's physics.
Um...
Greenhouse gases trap the Earth's outgoing energy.
That's all they do. That's what they do. They can't do anything else.
You can see in this one. See those--
-[Nye] Oh, man. -[James] Those are all years.
You can actually see here, years where you had more snow,
-years where you had less snow. -[Nye] Absolutely.
So look at this. There's a layer of, what is that, a volcano? What is it?
[White] That's a volcano about 27,000 years ago.
[Nye] God. See, it's 15, it might be 17 years of eruptions. Is that possible?
[White] It's very, very possible.
[saw whirring]
[Nye] This is where we see the smoking gun
for human-caused climate change.
I just don't see how anybody like Joe Bastardi
could come here, look at the way
the ancient ice is extracted from the Greenland ice sheet,
and not agree that humans have put enough greenhouse gas in the atmosphere
to cause global climate change.
[White] This is raising sea level.
This is drowning Miami eventually.
This is 50,000-year-old water?
On average. It's about probably 40, 50,000 years.
[White] I was here in 1989, and it did not look like this.
[Nye] What did it look like?
[White] It was a much smaller stream in 1989.
Oh, you mean the river. Was the--
The river. Yeah, no. We would come and walk down here.
It was just water there, but it wasn't...
-It was a creek, rather than a river. -Yeah.
Rather than a river.
So this is the Russell Glacier, and it's melting like crazy.
The white ice reflects a lot of sunlight, but as the ice goes away...
[loud crash]
[sighs]
As the glacier does stuff like that,
uh, it's exposing bare rock and is warming even faster.
It's very troubling. It's, uh, heartbreaking.
Humankind has hardly done anything about this,
and we've known about the problem since the 1980s.
[Nye] Here comes the jet stream.
-[Michael] Yep, and they form-- -So where's the warming? Right here?
The warming is right there.
It's right there, and it isn't just any old warming.
These are the warmest sea surface temperatures we've ever measured there.
Three degrees Celsius. We've never seen that before.
[Nye] That's huge!
[Mann] Bill is going to do this event
in my seminar series tomorrow with Joe Bastardi.
Bill representing the scientific case for human-caused climate change,
and Joe Bastardi, a climate-change contrarian, against the science.
...where it normally isn't, because you have the upwelling cold water...
[Nye] The ultimate thing
would be to get Joe Bastardi to change his mind about climate change.
If I'm on Fox News, they dismiss me. They don't listen to what I have to say.
But if Joe were on there, saying that he's changed his mind,
that could be very influential.
And so it's worth a shot.
[Joe] It's nice to have you over here.
-Nice seeing you. -This looks fabulous.
Now... If you took all the carbon dioxide out of the air today,
what would happen to the Earth's temperature?
It would get very cold.
No, it wouldn't get that cold at all.
Are you trying to tell me that 0.04% of the atmosphere,
and that increase is only 0.01% since you've been a kid, you think that's--
It's a 30% increase.
-A 30% increase against-- -In just three decades.
That's enormous.
Against the entire ocean atmospheric system?
It's minuscule, Bill. It's minuscule.
What if you're wrong? What about Garrett?
Garrett, do you get mad sometimes when I actually concede that it's warmer?
Yeah. How are we measuring, you know, accurately,
4,000 years ago or 6,000 years ago?
[Nye] Well, 4,000 years we can do very accurately.
-[Joe] Okay. -[Garrett] Okay, so--
[Joe] We can't do it the way we're doing it today. Come on.
[Nye] So that's where we disagree, you guys.
-[Joe] But you cannot use a tree ring-- -Dad, Dad...
I know I'm not in this debate. I just wanted to say something real quick.
[Nye] No, you're not in the debate. No. No, you're over there.
I know, I understand.
I'm arguing with my fifth-grade childhood hero, so it's pretty cool.
The point is, 2016 is warm, but 2017 is going to be cooler.
All right, now, if it's not cooler, I'm obviously in trouble, right?
Yeah. Do you guys, do you understand the significance of the ice?
There's nobody running around with a hypodermic needle squirting bubbles
of atmosphere in 4,000-year-old ice.
I understand that. I read everything you look at.
The fact of the matter is that being on the other side of the issue
is probably hurting me economically.
Here's my claim though, Joe. You're hurting everybody.
I want you to come around.
"Hurting"? Who am I hurting?
Garrett. The future.
I'm not hurting Garrett.
-That's my claim. -You don't understand.
You don't fight. Have you ever wrestled?
You wrestle the match when you're wrestling it.
You don't sit there and worry about what the guy's doing in another bracket
that you might have to wrestle down the road, and that's the problem.
The problem... I'm not trying to save the world.
What you're saying is, "Joe, you've gotta do what I say."
I say, "Bill, do whatever you want." So what happens is, you get this control.
[Joe] Hey, where's the wine? Do you want some more wine, Bill?
[Nye] I'm okay.
So are you gonna come to Mike Mann's class tomorrow?
You know what? I don't know that I should do that. If I do--
[Nye] Well, what's there to lose?
-What's there to lose? -I don't know.
[indistinct chatter]
[Nye] These are first-year students at Penn State.
So I want to get them inspired about the problem of climate change,
and the opportunities.
And Garrett showed up.
I think it just shows an open-mindedness. That's really good.
...NASA. The records of global temperature
based on averages of all the thermometer information go back to...
[Nye] Joe Bastardi sent an email that said he would not come.
He's got a chip on his shoulder.
He wants to compete, and here he would have been outgunned.
Do I look like someone that's afraid?
[scoffs]
The Cornell engineer is tougher than the Penn State wrestler.
Whatever. Okay?
I mean, come on.
Does Bill understand that I work?
I have X amount of hours to do X amount of things.
Obviously this is more important to Bill Nye than it is to me.
If we just got to work, we could address climate change [snaps fingers] like that.
I'm very hopeful about the future.
Technology has matured.
There is enough wind and solar that we could run the US, we could run the world,
renewably, right now, if we just decided to do it.
Maybe I'm wrong.
[laughs]
What I've told Garrett is this.
I may have to see that my son
is writing things and researching things
that say, "Dad, you're wrong about this, okay?"
"I want you to make sure that you know everybody, all the facts,
then you can come to your own conclusion." We've always taught that in our house.
Boy, I'll tell you what, I think of that all the time.
What if I'm digging that kid a hole?
What if he has to pay for the sins of his father,
whether his father is right or wrong, or not?
[Nye] Do we have any questions?
Yeah. There was a question here earlier.
I was wondering if you could maybe comment on constructive ways we as scientists
could reach out and try and communicate with non-scientists,
because I feel like climate deniers have been very good at capitalizing on, like,
"It's only a theory,"
or this idea that there's always gonna be some margin of doubt.
So what I would say is, just keep talking to people.
"Why do you believe that?
What makes you think that climate change isn't happening?
What makes you disagree with all the world's scientists? What is it?"
And so, uh...
But I strongly believe that,
with you all being the future of the world,
you will be able to use science and our process of science.
And the arguments that we can make,
based on the facts that we discover in nature,
and processes in nature...
Since I was a kid, I'd look up at the sky.
The stars are out there. This is our star.
And there's 200 billion stars in our galaxy,
and then there are in turn that many galaxies.
Galaxies!
It just reminds me of the importance of space exploration.
The reason we have these rockets on the horizon
is to know our place in the cosmos.
It's just an extraordinary idea, and there might be a time
when we start doing interplanetary regattas.
See, it's a whole new kind of idea.
[Nye] Thirty-nine years after Carl Sagan showed this thing on The Tonight Show,
we're gonna launch a solar sail as part of his legacy.
It gives me great pause. It's quite a responsibility.
Even though we've been launching for 50-plus years,
rockets are still a tricky thing.
Every time there's a rocket firing,
there could be a catastrophic explosion right there on the pad.
[loud explosion]
It could start up on this journey,
and then some stage separation not work correctly...
And that's actually what happened to us when we flew in 2005.
[indistinct announcement over PA]
[man over PA] Seventeen seconds and counting, guidance internal,
fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, nine...
Three, two, one...
[loud roaring]
[crowd cheering]
Now I feel the rush!
-[crowd cheering] -Wow!
-[man over PA] ...past the hour. -Whoa!
[Nye] We're going to space. Go, I said!
There's chemical reactions making water vapor. Yes!
[indistinct radio chatter]
[man] This is mission resistance report.
Indications are that a signal is being received.
That would indicate that the antenna deployed successfully.
So that's it. We're...
[indistinct]
Mission Control, it's Bill Nye in Florida.
Do you hear me?
[man] Go ahead, Bill Nye. We receive, five by five.
I would just like to say the following thing.
Woo-hoo!
[Ann] Under Bill Nye's leadership,
the Planetary Society picked up this great dream of solar sailing.
I'm so proud of Bill.
[indistinct chatter]
[Tyson] Bill slowly but successfully transitioned from Bill Nye the Science Guy
for kids, to the science statesman.
More power to him. The passing of a torch.
We are advancing space science and exploration.
We are, dare I say it...
[all cheering]
Changing the world!
[all cheering]
It does not always seem as if science is in the room when it needs to be.
And so, gifted teachers of science, with a lot of credibility,
a sense of humor and ability to convey complex information,
are needed more than ever.
And so, Bill Nye, we need about a thousand more of you.
Okay, pause. We have a ton of evidence that Mars used to be covered in oceans.
So here today to talk to me about... Wait, you're not in it yet.
-Oh. -Okay.
I think a lot of people of my generation
attribute their interest and love of science to Bill Nye.
What words of inspiration can you give...
Uh, science is the best idea humans have ever had.
You and I drink freshwater.
There were people before him like Carl Sagan, for example, but I don't think
our generation necessarily saw Cosmos,
because it was a little before even our time.
So Bill Nye was, sort of, the headline for science for kids,
and I think that definitely has spawned this entire generation.
Although I've never had kids, I am largely satisfied with my legacy.
Yeah, I've made some mistakes.
But if we have inspired millions of kids to at least appreciate science,
then that's a heck of a thing to leave behind.
So...
Playing the hand I was dealt, people. Just trying to change the world here.
Greetings.
[man] His show and just all the fooling around, it made me
really excited that, you know, to know that science is not just this very dull
profession or career,
that you learn something new, and that's exciting.
[Nye] I love you, man.
I'm also a mechanical engineer.
Oh, cool. Great.
I came here to see Bill Nye,
because he was my inspiration for being a scientist.
Bill Nye is the voice for science and technology,
and I think there's definitely a need for that.
Science is about dinosaur bones,
and it studies dinosaur bones, and I like dinosaur bones.
-[Nye] Oh, thank you. -Our class made it.
Oh, that's really nice.
Thank you, thank you.
My favorite about Bill Nye... When I watch him,
he makes me sometimes learn.
Not many women are in the path of the scientist,
and he always says that you should change the world.
I'm hoping to change the world by becoming a geneticist
and stopping all of these terrible genetic diseases.
[indistinct conversation]
When I met him in person, I was, like, "I want to be Bill Nye when I grow up."
-[Nye] What a nice shirt, may I say. -Oh, thank you.
[Nye] Check it out.
Hi.
-Look at the lens over here. Look! -My bad.
Sweet.
That is awesome.
[Joe] The total journey of Bill Nye is a pretty remarkable thing,
because he's involved in something that I'm fascinated with, too,
you know, this whole light sail project. And, uh... Who knows,
100 years from now he's the Thomas Edison of our time, or something like that.
[crowd chanting] Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill, Bill!
[Nye] We love that song! Yes!