Hey Bill Nye, 'How Will Quantum Mechanics Change the World?' | Big Think

Hey Bill Nye, 'How Will Quantum Mechanics Change the World?'

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Taking individual steps to affect the course of climate change is valuable, but collective action is more essential. To get there, we must talk about climate change, says Bill Nye the Science Guy.

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BILL NYE:

Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life.

In Seattle Nye began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night. Nye then quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle’s home-grown ensemble comedy show “Almost Live.” This is where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®” was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle’s NBC affiliate.

While working on the Science Guy show, Nye won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing, and producing. The show won 18 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote five children’s books about science, including his latest title, “Bill Nye’s Great Big Book of Tiny Germs.”

Nye is the host of three currently-running television series. “The 100 Greatest Discoveries” airs on the Science Channel. “The Eyes of Nye” airs on PBS stations across the country.

Bill’s latest project is hosting a show on Planet Green called “Stuff Happens.” It’s about environmentally responsible choices that consumers can make as they go about their day and their shopping. Also, you’ll see Nye in his good-natured rivalry with his neighbor Ed Begley. They compete to see who can save the most energy and produce the smallest carbon footprint. Nye has 4,000 watts of solar power and a solar-boosted hot water system. There’s also the low water use garden and underground watering system. It’s fun for him; he’s an engineer with an energy conservation hobby.

Nye is currently the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, the world’s largest space interest organization.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Bill Nye:  So people say to me Bill Nye, what can I do about climate change? And these days I acknowledge that not wasting water bottles, not throwing newspapers away, recycling, that’s all good and important. Driving less, driving smaller cars or more efficient cars, electric cars. But the main thing we can all do about climate change right now is talk about it. We just talk about climate change and raise awareness of it. Then the world’s biggest economy, the United States, might lead the world in addressing climate change, creating resources of renewable energy, wind and solar, most notably titled energy. Than we can export those technologies and change the world. So if I – since I believe that talking about it’s really important I talk about it all the time. And that’s – the more you think about it everybody – 97 percent of the world’s scientists – not 97 percent of some institute that somebody started in a remote part of the world and is making or releasing press releases. Ninety-seven percent of the scientists in the world are very concerned about climate change.

And you can look at the graphs. You can study the stuff for yourself. If nothing else do this. Wherever you live get access to the coldest temperature of each year for the last century. Unless you live in just very few places you will see the coldest temperature where you live is steadily increased. There’ll be some dips. There’ll be some ups but overall you’ll find it – and that’s just almost everybody who has Internet access can get those data that are available. And just look at that one thing and you’ll see the world’s getting warmer everybody. The ocean’s getting warmer so it’s getting bigger and those people are going to get displaced and we’re going to have to change our economy and where we do business. We’re going to be abandoning – heck there’s acres and acres of asphalt, roadways, copper plumbing. We’re going to be abandoning all that and it’s going to be expensive. So the sooner we get to work the better.