This is some kind of wonderful.

Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology. According to Bill Nye, aka "The Science Guy," if grownups want to "deny evolution and live in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them."

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Bill Nye "The Science Guy" found himself in the tough position Monday of explaining science to Fox Business guest host Charles Payne.

Payne began the Freedom Watch segment by pressing Nye to prove that Hurricane Irene was caused by global warming.

"I don't think the word proof is what you are looking for," Nye told Payne. "Evidence or result of? Yeah."

"Here's the thing though, Bill," Payne said. "Ever since Katrina, we heard that the hurricane season is going to be more devastating and it was apocalyptic and the end of the world. And the reality is we haven't seen that. So, how can Newsweek say this is a new normal? Is this irresponsible or is there any science behind that?"

"Well, there's a lot more science behind it than saying it's not," Nye flatly stated. "But that aside, that's only six years. In geologic times or in terms of climate events, that's not very long."

"The world is getting warmer, everybody. The world is getting warmer... Do we not agree the world is getting warmer?"

"I have no idea," Payne admitted. "Someone told me it's one degree in the last hundred years and I'll take their word for it."

The Fox Business host then changed the subject to Al Gore's suggestion that climate change deniers need to be confronted just as racists were confronted during the civil rights movement.

"[Gore is] very passionate about it," Nye explained. "As the world has become smaller -- this is to say that as communication has become better and better, and we get to know each other better, we all travel all over the world. It's routine to get on a plane and go to Asia and come back. As we get to know each other, we realize we are all one species; we are all the same human. But in tribal times, the importance of your tribe was so great that you were afraid of other tribes."

"If someone from New England has sex with someone from Papua, New Guinea, you get a human. You don't get anything else. So, racism is scientifically not especially compelling. If you learn the science of it, you let go of it. And when you learn the science of climate change, in my opinion, you will find it quite compelling and you will want to do something about it rather than pretend it doesn't happen."

"We brought you on because we knew you could connect the dots," Payne interrupted. "Although the route you've taken is still confusing some of the viewers."

Rachel Maddow calls out Beck for editing her criticism of him on her show and making sure his viewers didn't see Rachel calling him out for his bullshit. I had said before that Dylan Ratigan was wasting his time engaging Beck. That's because Ratigan actually thought it would be a good idea to either bring Beck on his show or go on Beck's show. I do not think when Beck lies about one of them they should let it go unchallenged and am glad Rachel Maddow pointed out Beck's hypocrisy here and how he edited her segment. Engaging him is a complete waste of time. He's not going to come on MSNBC any time soon and he sure as hell isn't going to bring either Ratigan or Maddow on his show any time soon and if he did they'd be in some debate box where he could hit the mute button any time he wanted instead of live on his set.

It's useless to even pretend like that might happen in any fair manner, ever, as Ratigan proposed. Calling him out for his bullshit is not. Although I would love to see the idiot try to debate Rachel in person if he wasn't just allowed to yell over her, cut her mike or filibuster the entire time. I would imagine it would be much like Beck bringing a toy knife to an assault rifle fight if he actually had to debate Rachel Maddow on any subject and those were the rules of the game. I hope Rachel doesn't spend too much time on this pissing contest with Beck though because in the end, too much time spent on this serial liar is just a waste of energy. Fox doesn't care how much he lies and neither do his brain dead viewers. Well enough to point it out and move along.

Rachel takes the clowns at ClusterFox to task for pretending they don't know the difference between changes in the weather and climate change. The science guy Bill Nye weighs in and explains why watching these idiots conflate the two disturbs him so much.

Stewart and Colbert both had a field day with Fox for this as well.

MADDOW: All right. There we go. Although the interstitial random Kent outdoor was almost more perfect. Of those full-court shots, the first one was college, the next four were all high school—high school games. Players making full-court shots—just incredible, right? I have to say, it was very cool to spend my snowy day in my office today, searching YouTube for all of those clips.

But no one would say that seeing those clips, seeing those shots, disproves that trying to make a 90-foot shot in basketball is a hard thing to do, right? I mean, even though there‘s evidence that it can be done, shooting from the backcourt is hard, and coaches, therefore, probably shouldn‘t plan on always making that shot in order to plan to win games.

Everybody understands that, right? It‘s the difference between observing a specific thing and understanding whether or not that specific thing is a fair representation of how things are generally in the world.

It‘s simple, right? It‘s kind of like being an adult. Everybody gets that—apparently, unless you are in politics.

In politics right now, full-court shots aren‘t hard. We know that because we‘ve seen YouTube clips of kids making them. In politics, now, whatever we‘re looking at right this instant disproves everything else we know about the world.

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Anderson Cooper with a perfect example of what the HuffPo's Matt Obsorne wrote about here--Climategate and the Life-Cycle of Nontroversy:

Nontroversy feeds on empty, twisted brains. In this case, a general unfamiliarity with the language of scientific banter allows the "climategate" nontroversy to overwhelm the consensus on global warming. That consensus is built on literally hundreds of thousands of studies at this point; and indeed, the stolen emails contain a wealth of proof that temperatures are rising. Yet the media stovepipe magnifies, even invents, discrepancies and minimizes evidence, even as the ice melts.

"Consensus" is the key word here. Nontroversy always aims to distort or destroy consensus. Birther sites and ACORN fantasies exist for the sole purpose of undermining the democratic consensus of last November's election; and insofar as they have convinced a majority of Republicans, they have succeeded.

So don't tell me that nontroversy doesn't matter. It really, really matters. We need to understand its biological processes.

[...]

Pandemic Stage: "Liberal" mainstream media organizations now run the "facts" and narrative pre-established by the right wing noise machine as one side of a controversy.

In its effort to show "both sides" and report that controversy, the one thing CNN does not report is the actual science of climate change. The public is left with the impression, however unjustified, that scientists have probably done something wrong, and denialists are given exactly the "fair hearing" they don't get from scientific journals.

Anyone think Anderson Cooper could have let his audience know who funds Mr. Cato Institute Patrick Michaels for sharing his opinions. I know... ain't gonna' happen.

h/t Jamie for pointing out the piece at the HuffPo

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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