There are two reasons for the unusually mild Christmas weather in most of the country this week, said Bill Nye "The Science Guy" Wednesday: El Nino and climate control.
"I know we have a situation where no one in regular television will say the phrase "climate change," but the world is getting warmer," Nye told MSNBC's Luke Russert on the
"Andrea Mitchell Report" program.
And when there's an El Nino event, when the surface of the Pacific Ocean gets warmer, two things happen, he continued. With more moisture in the west, that brings snow, and when the jet stream remains where it is, it brings warm weather to the east.
"Since there's more energy in the atmosphere, these two phenomena are more amplified," said Nye.
Climate change is an accurate term, said Nye, because it means local climates are changing, and "sometimes you're going to have more snow, sometimes you'll have more warmth, but in general, all the effects will be amplified."
And then politics enters the picture, he continued.
"The deniers are out there and will go wild, but everyone is concerned about jobs, the economy and everyone is concerned about security, international relations or international terror," said Nye. "We in the scientific community connect all these things with climate change. If the United States did not need the energy from elsewhere in the form of fossil fuels, it would greatly affect the relationship between governments and the effectiveness of terrorists because they wouldn't be able to get money for black market oil."
Nye also wondered if a conservative could win the national election while denying climate change.
"I tried to do the national election based on the number of electoral votes in each state, it's a near run thing," he said. "It's a very close call."
Climate change will also affect the economy, Nye said.
"If we were building wind turbines in West Virginia and Kentucky instead of digging up ancient layers of coal, we would produce 50,000 jobs in each of the two states and commonwealth, and we would curtail the use of fossil fuels," said Nye. "This would be a boom to the U.S. economy. And so why nobody will say anything about this is what I would call charming and also troubling."
The warmer weather could also create issues for the agricultural industries, said Nye, after Russert told him he was bitten by a mosquito in Washington D.C. in November.
"Talking about mosquitoes in November, the biggest problem for agriculture is not that we are drying out, but instead the parasites and the pests have extended their seasons, both in the spring and the fall, the pests and parasites are around a lot longer than they used to be," said Nye.
"This has tremendous economic effects on the agriculture and food supplies, not just here in the United States but around the world especially, and if these tropical diseases end up here in the mid-latitudes, we are talking tremendous medical costs," Nye told Russert. "The sooner we get to work on the climate change the better for everyone. It's a win, win, win. Come on, let's get going! My parents both were World War II veterans, they solved an international problem in whatever number you like, five or six years. We can do the same thing in a decade or two."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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