The beauty of science is that you don’t have to believe it for it to be true. How it works is untouchable by humanity. It’s not an opinionated area of knowledge. That’s what gets me in this day and age- people still don’t understand that. Science is not an opinion. One more time- it’s not an opinion. There are theories, and they can be proven or disproven, but you can’t just not believe the facts because they’re not true in your opinion.

This is why everyone needs to watch Bill Nye’s new show on Netflix. For the scientifically sceptical, his show proves through simplified experiments why things like climate change and vaccines aren’t something that’s up to debate or interpretation. His new show is not the kid show most people grew up watching in science class. It’s not perfect either- the episodes are short, he yells and interrupts a lot, and critics say it’s too liberally biased. He’s still Bill though- he still wears his goofy bow ties and sports jackets, and gets overly excited about the simplest of experiments. He does something few are able to do today- summarize the why behind ‘controversial’ scientific claims, which are only controversial to those who don’t know anything about science. You so rarely hear the voices of professional scientists in the news. Often, the voices of scientists are hidden in their written works, behind large intimidating words that non-scientists may not necessarily understand. It’s hard to trust that what they say is true, when the reasoning isn’t obvious. Cue Bill Nye- he’s doing what he does best: simplifying and summarizing science for the non-scientists. He did it with kids, and now he’s doing it with adults. He’s taking scientific issues that have been debated in politics and showing how these issues are not opinion issues- they’re scientific ones, and not actually up for debate by people who don’t know what ocean acidification even is. There’s little to debate about how Venice is flooding because of rising sea levels, or how vaccines have stopped numerous deadly diseases like Polio. He helps support these facts by showing mini experiments that simplify the issues so you can logically follow along. It’s exactly what people need. It’s understandable to not automatically trust science when you don’t understand the reasoning of how they got from point A to B. Not everyone is a scientist, which is perfectly fine. They just need to watch more Bill Nye. There’s so much more of a process than what people realize that goes on within anything scientific. There are regulations, experiments, debate, research, ethical debate, and so much more. Which makes these issues not political- there’s nothing political about scientific facts because they’re not influenced by human opinion. Back to my main point- it’s true whether or not humans believe it, observe it, or want it to be true. The rules/laws of nature and science are untouchable to human influence.

So stop claiming these issues are political. There’s nothing liberal about it. Yes, you can tell Bill Nye is liberal and you can’t eliminate biases from anything you do. But the issues he presents and the facts he uses to support them aren’t liberal- they’re scientific. Stop claiming the reasons for not supporting climate change are because it doesn’t exist- you’re hiding behind an obviously false claim to distract from the fear of something you don’t understand. These issues shouldn’t be politicized along ideological lines. Whether or not they’re actually true or not is up to the scientific community- not the political one. That validity was already given by the individuals of the profession- the people that went to college and got their degrees in it. Why aren’t people trusting it like they trust politicians, lawyers, doctors, or accountants to do theirs? That’s what Bill Nye is getting at- let the scientists do the proving; they’re not going to publically claim something if the entire scientific community knows it’s not true. It may seems trivial for a former kids show star to be transitioning into this role of educating adults, but it’s a good thing. People are scared of what doesn’t make sense and he’s helping with the understanding. The dumbed down version of science is what the world needs. Trust the science.