Bill Nye "The Science Guy" circling the drain

Back when he was on local Seattle television, he was funny and bright. Now he is just a bitter demagogue subscribing to all of the junk science fads out there. He has put his name to some videos that feature stunningly bad science. What makes this execrable is that these videos are for children's education -- children who are swayed by an authority figure and who do not have the mental toolkit to fact-check what they are being shown. Now this -- from Breitbart:

Bill Nye to College Grads: 'Change the World' by Fighting Overpopulation
In a rambling commencement speech to graduates of Lehigh University, Bill Nye, also known as The Science Guy to the under-40 set, told students that the world�s biggest threat was overpopulation. �As you commence your adult, taxpaying lives, these two troubles loom larger than ever. They both are readily expressed with numbers. The first is the number of us. People are being born much faster than they are dying. With every passing 15 seconds, the world has more people on it,� Bill Nye told the presumably riveted crowd. �The other problem is our air. Its gas fractions are changing faster ever than they have in the past 65 million years.�

How did this affect the graduates? �I want you to meet those two challenges,� Bill Nye said. �I want you to � dare I say it? � change the world!� He then went into a long rant about the history of population growth in the United States. �As a boy in the New York World�s Fair back in 1965, I remember well a large display, a tote board depicting the estimated world population of humans �. While we were at the World�s Fair, the world�s population changed from 2,999,999,999 to 3 billion people. Humans. On Earth.� He said we now have 7 billion people on Earth. �Wait, there�s more!� he said to the students. �By the time you graduates reach your billionth second here on Earth, when you�re a little over 60, we may be over 9 billion.�

Bill has a little problem with facts. You could fit seven billion people into the state of Texas and have a population density about one third that of Manhattan. Our Earth is huge and we are nowhere near to reaching the end of its resources. History has always shown that the higher standard of living, the fewer children parents will have. If overpopulation was an issue, our best solution would be to speed up the development of our natural energy resources including nuclear. Clean water and sanitation is crucial in the rural third world but implementing a cheap energy infrastructure makes these a very low-cost proposition instead of the limited attempts we are rolling out now. The rising tide floats all boats and cheap energy is that ocean. alt.energy just doesn't cut it...