Did Bill Nye Lie About Creationists and Climate Change?

Bill Nye, TV’s popular “Science Guy” and vocal evolution defender, is scheduled to visit Australia in February. News stories indicate that he will be spreading evolutionary propaganda in an attempt to influence educators and politicians to indoctrinate school children in evolutionary naturalism (really, an atheistic view of origins).

On the Sydney Morning Herald’s (Australia’s largest newspaper) website, an article presents an interview with Nye about his Australian speaking tour.

In this article, Nye is reported as stating the following:

Climate change is the biggest problem facing humankind,” said Nye. “But keep in mind that Mr Ham and his Answers In Genesis group deny climate change routinely. It's part of their big picture. The denial of climate change seems to be very important to him.

Generally, climate change is generational. That is to say, there are very, very few young people who are in denial of climate change.

My concern with Ken Ham and his people is that they work so very hard to indoctrinate schoolchildren. They have a very expansive education program; they want to raise a generation of kids in denial of climate change.

Bill Nye also appeared on the American TV news program CBS This Morning to talk about his new anti-creationist book, saying, “It’s not a coincidence that the creationists also deny climate change. It’s this really important thing to them.”

There are a number of articles on our website that deal with climate change. Anyone can easily search out our views and read them.

More important as it relates to Bill Nye is that immediately after our evolution/creation debate in February, he and I were interviewed by CNN’s Piers Morgan (who no longer hosts the program due to poor ratings) on live TV. Here is what I wrote about that CNN interview in an April 16, 2014 article:

First, the CNN interview with Piers Morgan was a setup. Our understanding was that the interview was to be about the just-concluded debate. But Morgan launched into climate change, which had nothing to do with the debate topic. From statements Bill Nye made in the interview, I am quite sure he and Morgan set this up ahead of time. Also, I did not deny climate change. I observed that there had been climate changes ever since the Flood of Noah’s time. What I did say was that the debate over what has caused climate change is somewhat like the creation/evolution debate. You see, how you interpret the evidence in regard to the past about what causes climate change depends on the person’s assumptions.

Furthermore, here is what I wrote on my blog in 2013 and well before my debate with Nye in response to statements about climate change made by President Obama:

Now, we at Answers in Genesis certainly don’t deny the reality of climate change—we just have a different idea about why the climate changes and what causes it. After the catastrophic global Flood, the earth was dramatically changed, and much of the change in climate over the centuries has been due to the changes from the Flood.

So, Bill Nye—who sat beside me during the CNN interview—knows full well that we do not deny climate change. As Piers Morgan interviewed Nye and me after the debate, I said plainly that I did not deny climate change!

Unfortunately, though, many websites and news outlets are repeating the lie that creationist researchers deny climate change—and many news outlets are making that claim because of Nye’s insistence that we deny climate change. For example, Mediaite is one of many news sources spreading this falsehood.

As an author of an article published in our Answers magazine stated:

The key controversy seems to be “do human activities significantly affect climate?” If so, changing those activities (for example, reducing our output of greenhouse gases) would have a measurable effect on climate. On the other hand, if human impacts are insignificant, controlling human emissions will have a negligible effect.

I also encourage you to read this article on climate change from The New Answers Book 4.

If the Sydney Morning Herald, read by millions of people, has quoted Bill Nye correctly, then his statements that Answers in Genesis and I supposedly deny climate change are simply untrue—and if he was quoted accurately, Bill Nye knows it is not true, since he sat just a foot away from me on TV when I stated that I acknowledge that the climate can change. Moreover, if he did any research at all on the AiG website, Nye would know that while we do not deny climate change, we would disagree about its major causes.

I had to just smile and shake my head at this statement in the Sydney Morning Herald:

My concern with Ken Ham and his people is that they work so very hard to indoctrinate schoolchildren. They have a very expansive education program; they want to raise a generation of kids in denial of climate change.

Nye is upset that we at Answers in Genesis are teaching children and teens about God’s Word on creation, just as he aggressively wants to indoctrinate children in his naturalistic (atheistic) worldview. And to claim we want to “raise a generation of kids in denial of climate change” is ridiculous because we say the opposite.

Of course, our emphasis at AiG is not climate change. We are promoting biblical authority and the gospel, and we are equipping children, teens, and adults to defend the Christian faith against the secular attacks of people like Bill Nye.

The Sydney Morning Herald article states the following:

When Nye and Ham went head-to-head at the Queenslander's Creation Museum in Kentucky, 3 million people watched the livestream. The same number have since watched it on YouTube. Ham's mob claimed a great victory.

Where have we ever claimed a “great victory”? Actually, I do answer the question of who won the debate in the recently released book Inside the Nye Ham Debate—but even there I did not claim a “great victory.”

There is much more that could be exposed about the Sydney Morning Herald’s article, which is full of untruths and misleading statements!

I find it curious that Nye and other secularists usually do not provide the link to the actual debate recording in their writing, much less encourage people to watch it. Why not? Is there something they are concerned about? Is it because during the debate I taught people how to think correctly and critically about science and origins, and now the secularists really do not want people to watch the revealing debate?

We estimate (conservatively) that upwards of 14 million people have now watched the debate. You can watch it at this link and also purchase the DVD of the debate on our website. You can also buy our new book about the debate that I coauthored where we answer every one of the points Bill Nye brought up during the debate, as well as the DVD and the book Confounding the Critics in a special boxed set.

Just as with the many false stories about our Ark Encounter project that continue to be spread by the media and bloggers, we see many secularists misrepresent AiG regarding our beliefs about climate change and other science topics. Please visit our website often so that you can be better informed.