On Feb 27, 2017 Bill Nye was a guess on Fox News with host Tucker Carlson. Depending on what political leaning you get your news from, you will believe very different outcomes from the interview. Before you read anything, watch the video and draw your own conclusions:
What I see is the host asking a very difficult question, believing it to be simple. “What would the status currently be if X had not happened” is very hard to answer in any situation. It also may not be relevant. If you are driving off a cliff, the precise location you would be had you not swerved off the cliff isn’t important information, but Mr Nye does his best to answer. Mr Tucker doesn’t like the answer, and begins to attack his guest’s personal character, not the facts.
If you get your news from the right, your news says “It didn’t end well for the ‘Science Guy.” They even go as far to say that “Bill Nye refuse to answer basic science questions about global warming” There are also articles that paint Tuckers comment “So much of this you don’t know” as having validity.
On the left, the articles say “Tucker Carlson bit off more than he could chew” and “Watch Tucker Carlson lose it after Bill Bye takes him to school on climate change”
Neither side talked about the facts, or where they disagreed. They took a few sounds bites and started cheering for their guy. This is absolutely not constructive and is set up to engage their base and increase add revenue. Meanwhile, the problem is still here and we are doing nothing about it. We need to learn how to listen to each other, understand the other persons argument and focus on the argument, not the person.
We have very important issues to deal with, and we are engaged in ad hominem tactics for profit. We need to do better.