Bill Nye uses profanity and fire to stress the enormity of climate change
Bill Nye just dropped a slew of F-bombs.
As a guest on the May 12 episode of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, the storied science communicator used profanity and half-jest to make a succinct point about Earth's rising carbon dioxide emissions, which are now at their highest levels in millions of years: CO2, a potent greenhouse gas, will continue to relentlessly trap heat on the planet unless the U.S. and the rest of the world ambitiously slash their carbon emissions.
As of now, global nations have little to no hope of curbing Earth's warming at levels that would limit the worst consequences of climate change.
"By the end of this century, if emissions keep rising, the average temperature on Earth could go up another four to eight degrees," said Nye.
"What I'm saying is the planet is on fucking fire."
Nye’s 37-second tirade took place near the end of the episode, wherein John Oliver dissected the concept of a Green New Deal. Such a plan -- which currently only exists as a visionary framework in U.S. Congress -- is a government-driven plan to radically transform the nation's energy system with the specific aim of slashing its ample carbon emissions.
Carbon emissions in the U.S. ticked up in 2018.
Nye chose a fitting time for his invective-laden performance. The same day the show aired, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography -- which has measured rising CO2 levels for decades -- announced that carbon levels topped another big, round number, at 415 parts per million, or ppm.
This atmospheric CO2 number isn't just growing -- it's picking up speed. "The rate of CO2 increase since the first Earth Day is unprecedented in the geologic record," Dan Breecker, a paleoclimatologist at The University of Texas at Austin, told Mashable last month.
As emissions rise, scientists expect Earth to keep warming. The planet has already warmed 1.8 Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. If carbon emissions double from the 280 ppm levels before industrialization to 560 ppm, climate scientists now expect the globe to warm astronomically, to between 9 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit (5 and 6 degrees Celsius).
If carbon emissions continue as they are today, we'll easily blow through 550 ppm, paleoclimatologist Matthew Lachniet told Mashable last year.
"What I'm saying is the planet is on fucking fire."
Transitioning our fossil-fuel dominated economy to carbon neutral energy production certainly won't be cheap. Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke recently unveiled a $5 trillion plan that would result in "net-zero" emissions by 2050.
But driving such grandiose climate change on the planet -- which is now fueling widespread drought and pummeling storms -- isn't just expected to devastate lives, it's expected to cost trillions.
After Nye lit a globe aflame in reference to the planet's accelerating temperature increase, he noted that "there a lot of things we could do to put it out," but asked, "Are any of them free?"
"No! Of course not, nothing's free you idiots. Grow the fuck up. You're not children anymore," spat Nye. "I didn't mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were 12. But you're adults now, and this is an actual crisis. Got it?"
"Safety glasses off, motherfuckers," said Nye, before ending his fiery scientific experiment and aggressively removing his safety glasses.
Mark was the science editor at Mashable. After working as a ranger with the National Park Service, he started a reporting career after seeing the extraordinary value in educating people about the happenings on Earth, and beyond.
He's descended 2,500 feet into the ocean depths in search of the sixgill shark, ventured into the halls of top R&D laboratories, and interviewed some of the most fascinating scientists in the world.
