Bill Nye's Solution For Defeating Bad Ideas

[FaithIsFilth]

Should climate change skeptics be jailed? "We'll see", says Billy Nye. What a shame. Turns out Bill is more Nazi than liberal. Watch the first minute of the video and ignore the rest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj2_uqR3t_4

[SGOS]

I don't get the same impression as you from the first minute of the video.

[Munch]

Your honestly calling him a Nazi for wanting to take action against morons with power to do better things then they are doing?

People who fuck up because environmental damage, should be held accountable.

Is David Attenborough a Nazi to for saying he dislikes human beings and prefers animals? Am I a Nazi for saying their are to many fucking human beings currently on the planet, and that the reason environment disasters kills so many people is because their are to many people to begin with?

[Baruch]

SJW maybe, not Nazi.  There are a lot of SJW that want to jail people for thought crime.  Bill Nye shrugs his shoulders and eyebrows ... so no fanaticism there.

Lobbyists for the energy industry ... we might jail them however ... not for their thoughts, but for bribing politicians ;-)

[gentle_dissident]

The face of a company isn't science, it's marketing. If science says something to detract from a product, industries like sugar have to fund skewed studies to save their business and provide returns to investors. In the case of Exxon, when their own study results would have harmed their income, they were forced to bury them. This is capitalism. You can't punish people for doing their jobs. Besides, if this creative advertising causes harm to any people or planets, the ad executives will eventually get theirs. American money doesn't say, "In Gates We Trust."

[Mike Cl]

What's phony about Bill Nye?  Seems to me he was toning down the criminal aspect of the issue a bit--he did not leap to support the jailing of the climate change deniers.   The creator of the video is putting words into his mouth.  Poorly done video from my view.

[doorknob]

It sounds more like Bill Nye is giving less of a straight answer and more like an I'm open minded to the option is what I get out of it.

I agree though that people destroying the environment should be jailed but I am crazy so what the hell do I know. And how exactly is that Nazi-ism? or fascism?

Actually that's quite a blanket statement I think each individual case will decide whether a person deserves to be jailed or fined or both.

[Hydra009]

It sounds more like Bill Nye is giving less of a straight answer and more like an I'm open minded to the option is what I get out of it.

Same here.

Asked about the heated rhetoric surrounding the climate change debate, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s previous comments that some climate skeptics should be prosecuted as war criminals, Mr. Nye replied, “We’ll see what happens.”

“Was it appropriate to jail the guys from Enron?” Mr. Nye asked in a video interview with Climate Depot’s Marc Morano. “We’ll see what happens. Was it appropriate to jail people from the cigarette industry who insisted that this addictive product was not addictive, and so on?”

“In these cases, for me, as a taxpayer and voter, the introduction of this extreme doubt about climate change is affecting my quality of life as a public citizen,” Mr. Nye said. “So I can see where people are very concerned about this, and they’re pursuing criminal investigations as well as engaging in discussions like this.”

Mr. Nye’s comments come with a coalition of liberal attorneys general pursuing companies that challenge the consensus of catastrophic climate change

He's floating the idea of deliberate malfeasance akin to the tobacco lobby's infamous efforts to deny/downplay the health problems associated with cigarettes rather than just holding an unpopular (and stupid) belief.  Your guardian-variety idjit may not know any better, but corporate promoters of climate denialism surely do.

[Baruch]

The tobacco settlement was class action, and very controversial legally.  And the powers that be are doing all they can to force people into mandatory arbitration, and away from class action lawsuits.  Away from lawsuits of any kind.

[Nonsensei]

Everyone thinks it's nuts to jail climate change deniers. I wonder how people 100 years from now will feel about our attitude, in a time where a breath of fresh air or a glass of clean water are things that belong to the mythical past.

Climate change deniers give political cover to those who wish to halt and reverse environmental regulation. The sheer weight of the cumulative  DURRRRRRRR spewed by their uneducated flock has lent a veneer of legitimacy to yet another position in american political discourse completely in opposition with reality.

While the pointless, merit less bickering drones on with no end in sight, the only place in the universe capable of sustaining human life slides deeper and deeper into unrecoverable ruin. Sounds pretty fucking criminal to me.

A great man once said give me liberty or give me death, perhaps never imagining that ultimately the universe would make us pay for our excessive liberty with our lives.

[widdershins]

He doesn't respond with "We'll see", insinuating that he believes it might be a reasonable thing.  He responds with "We'll see what happens", which seems to be indicating that he thinks it may be viable, but in context he asked if it would have been appropriate for the people at Enron or in the tobacco industry to have been jailed for actively spreading disinformation to protect their bottom lines.  It's a whole lot different when you're talking about a corporation purposely lying to the public, in some cases leading directly to an increased death toll, in order to make more profits.  In the two cases he mentioned, yes, people at Enron and in the tobacco industry should have been jailed.  Corporate leaders and experts who lied in exchange for fat paychecks should be in prison right now.

In that context, is it appropriate to jail people in polluting industries who lie about the science in order to bolster profits, causing very real harm to the American people?  Yes.  Most definitely.  Corporations have a proven history of lying about the safety of products, choosing the bottom line over public safety.  Right not they're lying about global warming.  Before that it was the tobacco industry.  Before that it was the lead industry.  And it's always happening in the pharmaceutical industry.  If CEOs started landing in prison over this then the tobacco industry might not have not only actively worked against science for decades to convince people that tobacco was safe, but might have never actively tried so hard to get people hooked in the first place.  MREs during WWII had Lucky Strikes in them whether you smoked or not.  And there might be MILLIONS fewer homes with lead paint and water pipes today if leaders of the lead industry had a real fear of serious prison time for trading the health and safety of the American public for higher profits.  And right now the coal industry would be simply quietly diverging into new, cleaner energy sources instead of pretending that there are tens of thousand of coal miners who REALLY want to keep working dangerous coal mines where their own lives take a back seat to corporate profits.

So, the average moron who thinks he knows something?  No, and I don't think anybody is saying that.  But corporate heads leaders who are actively and knowingly spreading disinformation, fucking the planet even worse for a few more years of higher profits?  I've got no problem with that.  And the "experts" who will make a report say anything you want for a buck?  Fuck yes!  And Andrew Wakefield, the asshole who got everyone afraid of vaccines by publishing bogus research on behalf of some lawyers suing the pharmaceutical industry?  Fuck yes, he should be in prison!  You take money from the devil you should spend time in prison getting to know him.

[FaithIsFilth]

SJW maybe, not Nazi.  There are a lot of SJW that want to jail people for thought crime.  Bill Nye shrugs his shoulders and eyebrows ... so no fanaticism there.

Lobbyists for the energy industry ... we might jail them however ... not for their thoughts, but for bribing politicians ;-)

I agree with this. Do something about the bribery, and then maybe you'll have a better chance at getting legislation to do much more than is currently being done to combat climate change.

[Baruch]

"You take money from the devil you should spend time in prison getting to know him."

It is devils all the way down.  Human history is just one criminal gang against another.  Money is what greases palms, liquid corruption.

Most people aspire to be white collar criminals, not to jail them.

[Hydra009]

SJW maybe, not Nazi.  There are a lot of SJW that want to jail people for thought crime.  Bill Nye shrugs his shoulders and eyebrows ... so no fanaticism there.

Lobbyists for the energy industry ... we might jail them however ... not for their thoughts, but for bribing politicians ;-)

This is not thought crime.  This is regular crime.

[Harassed]

He doesn't respond with "We'll see", insinuating that he believes it might be a reasonable thing.  He responds with "We'll see what happens", which seems to be indicating that he thinks it may be viable, but in context he asked if it would have been appropriate for the people at Enron or in the tobacco industry to have been jailed for actively spreading disinformation to protect their bottom lines.  It's a whole lot different when you're talking about a corporation purposely lying to the public, in some cases leading directly to an increased death toll, in order to make more profits.  In the two cases he mentioned, yes, people at Enron and in the tobacco industry should have been jailed.  Corporate leaders and experts who lied in exchange for fat paychecks should be in prison right now.

In that context, is it appropriate to jail people in polluting industries who lie about the science in order to bolster profits, causing very real harm to the American people?  Yes.  Most definitely.  Corporations have a proven history of lying about the safety of products, choosing the bottom line over public safety.  Right not they're lying about global warming.  Before that it was the tobacco industry.  Before that it was the lead industry.  And it's always happening in the pharmaceutical industry.  If CEOs started landing in prison over this then the tobacco industry might not have not only actively worked against science for decades to convince people that tobacco was safe, but might have never actively tried so hard to get people hooked in the first place.  MREs during WWII had Lucky Strikes in them whether you smoked or not.  And there might be MILLIONS fewer homes with lead paint and water pipes today if leaders of the lead industry had a real fear of serious prison time for trading the health and safety of the American public for higher profits.  And right now the coal industry would be simply quietly diverging into new, cleaner energy sources instead of pretending that there are tens of thousand of coal miners who REALLY want to keep working dangerous coal mines where their own lives take a back seat to corporate profits.

So, the average moron who thinks he knows something?  No, and I don't think anybody is saying that.  But corporate heads leaders who are actively and knowingly spreading disinformation, fucking the planet even worse for a few more years of higher profits?  I've got no problem with that.  And the "experts" who will make a report say anything you want for a buck?  Fuck yes!  And Andrew Wakefield, the asshole who got everyone afraid of vaccines by publishing bogus research on behalf of some lawyers suing the pharmaceutical industry?  Fuck yes, he should be in prison!  You take money from the devil you should spend time in prison getting to know him.

Ya, for intentionally cooking the #'s.  I guess it happens a lot in all industries.  But not Joe average for thinking