Bill Nye blames powerful hurricanes on climate change — then a real scientist shuts him down

With two major hurricanes striking the United States in just two weeks, many liberals and climate change alarmists have pointed to man-made climate change as the reason such powerful storms are striking the U.S. so closely.

One of those alarmists is television host Bill Nye, of course.

Everything is climate change

Over the last several years, Nye, the former host of a 1990's children's television show, has become a leading crusader in warning against man-made climate change, denouncing anything other than his own version of science and truth.

To Nye, any anomalous weather is a sign of climate change. So with record-setting Hurricane Irma coming on the heals of record-setting Hurricane Harvey, Nye was quick to connect the dots and conclude climate change.

"It's the strength that is almost certainly associated with global warming," Nye told Dan Rather last week. "As the world gets warmer and there's more heat energy in the atmosphere, you expect storms to get stronger. You also expect ocean currents to not flow the way they always have. That will make some places cooler and some warmer."

"The problem...is that these hurricanes are very powerful," Nye said. "We're all gonna pay for Harvey, we're all gonna pay for Irma one way or another. So...anyway, the more heat energy in the atmosphere strengthens the storms — as you would expect."

The PhD meteorologist responds

Dr. Ryan Maue, a climate scientist known for his work with tropics, weather models and climate research shut Nye down on Twitter.

"The more heat energy in the atmosphere strengthens the storms, as you'd expect" https://t.co/rClFVh6iw0

— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) September 7, 2017

Bill Nye confuses the oceans with the atmosphere. #FakeScience

— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) September 7, 2017

When someone questioned Maue, he doubled down on his point that Nye was just plain wrong in his comments.

Listen to the end. Bill summarizes it for Dan just as I quoted. Regardless, hurricanes form over the ocean.

— Ryan Maue (@RyanMaue) September 7, 2017

What other scientists say

University of Washington atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass also put the brakes on the climate change theory in an extensive blog post last month about Hurricane Harvey.

"Hurricane Harvey developed in an environment in which temperatures were near normal in the atmosphere and slightly above normal in the Gulf," he wrote. "The clear implication: global warming could not have contributed very much to the storm."

"There is no evidence that global warming is influencing Texas coastal precipitation in the long term and little evidence that warmer than normal temperatures had any real impact on the precipitation intensity from this storm," he explained.