Bill Nye Wants Your Help

Review by Bill Doughty

Nye reflects on the "overview effect" in his mind-opening "Everything All at Once," (Rodale, 2017). He offers a cool perspective on how we can help heal the world. That perspective comes from space, from inside the human psyche and the down-to-earth reality of the greatest threat facing our planet.

Nye is another critical thinker who calls for a Green New Deal for current and future generations: infrastructure and support for renewable energy, clean water and internet connectivity. Last month he formally endorsed the idea at SXSW.

"Everything All at Once" is a good Earth Day read with some strong Navy ties and with a fascinating insight on how his father survived as a prisoner of war in WWII.

Bill Nye's mom, Lt. Jacquie Jenkins, served in WWII.

In remarks at the Reason Rally in Washington D.C. in the late spring of 2016 he reminds us what the Second World War generation achieved:

"To those who think we can't get renewable sources in place quickly enough, I give you this response ... Both my parents were in World War II; their ashes are interred across the river from here (the Lincoln Memorial) in the Arlington National Cemetery. My father survived nearly 4 years as a prisoner of war captured from Wake Island. My mother was recruited by the U.S. Navy to work deciphering the Nazi Enigma code. They were part of what came to be called the Greatest Generation, but they didn't set out to be great. They just played the hand they were dealt. In barely 5 years, their generation resolved a global conflict and started building a new, democratic, technologically advancing world. With and emphatic sense of purpose, they embraced progress."The current generation must employ critical thinking and our powers of reason just as they did. This time, the global challenge is climate change. We also must play the hand we have been dealt and get on with it. Together we can change the world."

Self-described nerd, Bill Nye, also offers pun-ishing humor throughout, balancing irony and serious reality. He writes with a light yet respectful touch, open to other voices, always seeking to understand.

Nye shows the power of strong parents instilling core values, including honesty, courage and commitment. He notes, "there are such things as inviolable truth and facts."

His father, Ned Nye, and his dad's fellow prisoners witnessed a sailor "beheaded with a sword in a weird reenactment of a 17th-century Edo ceremony, just to show the prisoners that their captors meant business." 

How did the prisoners deal with physical and mental abuse? He writes, "Every day these guys were subjected to beatings. Every day they were hungry. Every day they were exhausted. In summer, they worked in oppressive heat. In winter, they were chilled to the bone." The prisoners created a fake language they called "Tut" to communicate privately. 

The prisoners found pleasure in recognizing and highlighting the absurdity of their situation, including the actions of a swaggering martinet in their own ranks who tried to impress them by "peppering his sentences with the term 'disirregardless.'" Being able to self-reflect, shift perspective and find humor in any situation helped is dad survive as a POW. The nonword "disirregardless" became an "essential distraction" and part of Nye family lore that lives on to this day for Bill and his sister. When a pompous leader takes himself too seriously and loses humanity he can become the butt of a joke.

But Nye says the threats to our climate are no joking matter.

As far back as the nation's first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, Nye was motivated. "I was convinced that we were headed for trouble as a species," he writes, "unless we could start using our brains more rationally, and it shaped how I approach my own environmental impact and goals for the future."

Bill Nye (The Science Guy) talks about the LC-130 with its navigator, Air Force Maj. Amanda Coonradt, during a visit to Antarctica. (Photo by Katie Lange)

Nye reflects on the global commons, the fact that Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, Carl Sagan's warning of a "nuclear winter," the human impact to the planet as shown in Kentucky and Greenland, and the fact that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere moved beyond 400 parts per million in 2016.

He calls for shared action to address the dangers of global climate change. "To save the planet for us humans, we have to pay attention to our shared interests rather than stumble into chaos as unconnected, self-interested individuals. We have to harness both knowledge and responsibility," he advises.

"Everybody knows something you don't," he says. It's a profound and humbling concept. And it's a call for cooperation.

Finding answers in a collective consciousness, he says, helps us design practical solutions to face fear and confront challenges, including climate change.

"Instead of running around in circles, waving our arms – or, worse, going about our business in willful ignorance – we could get to work know. We could erect wind turbines off the east coast of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. We could install photovoltaic panels practically everywhere the Sun shines. We could heat and cool a lot of our dwellings, offices, and factories using geothermal sources. We'd create jobs, boost the economy, clean the air, and address climate change. If you really want to make America great (and the rest of the world, too), these are the main things you, I mean we, need to do. It sounds like an enormous undertaking, and it is, but we've seen again and again, the enormous ones begin with small perceptual shifts."

The blueprint for coming together to create and sustain a better world for children and grandchildren occurred in Europe and Asia/Pacific in the last century:

"World War II showed the terrifying possibility of global self-destruction; its aftermath inspired new institutions to promote constructive collaboration on a world-wide scale. Some of it appeared in the form of international treaties. Some of it appeared as networks of related science, technology, and environmental-research programs. The United Nations, despite its limits and shortcomings, provides a forum for international discussion and decision-making. Doctors Without Borders engages physicians from all over to provide medical services to those in need. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and Conservation International work to stop poaching and conserve threatened species. The Conference of Parties in Paris in 2015, known as COP21, produced the most meaningful international agreement yet on reducing greenhouse gases."

Even if progress is not linear or the horizon seems too far, "The longest journey begins with but a single step," Nye says.

How big a nerd is he? Bill Nye gets tied in knots in his excitement about knot-tying, and gives an interesting twist on the joys of physics. He speaks of the joys of the square knot, the square bow, two half-hitches, bowline, clove hitch and sheepshank, among others.

Bill Nye talks with 14-year-ole Joey Hudy about his Extreme Marshmallow Cannon at
a science fair held at the White House on Feb. 7, 2012 (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

This book is a treasure-trove for critical thinkers and nerds, with discussion on the scientific method, Occam's razor, entropy, anti-vaxxers, high school physics, electric vehicles, James Cameron, GMOs, the National Archives, and confirmation bias – "the tendency to confirm our our assumptions as valid and true."

Nye relates a wonderful story about a flight attendant and an unruly passenger; it's another call for shifting perspective and showing respect for one another. He reflects on what it was like working at Boeing, tells how he helped his parents quit smoking (using exploding cigarettes), writes about his grandfather fighting (on horseback) in the World War I, and challenges us to rediscover missions in space, including a possible journey to Europa and continued journeys to Mars.

Curiosity journeyed to Mars. Another more advanced rover is planned in the months ahead. (NASA)

With respect and awe, Nye writes about how the scientists at NASA created previous Mars rovers, especially Curiosity. NASA teams are working to send an "even more advanced rover, currently called Mars 2020. Both rovers are about the size and mass of a Chevrolet Spark automobile. So how are they going to do it?"

"If you have the naive confidence of a budding engineer, you might think, 'It can't be all that hard. We just have to slow down enough to roll or skid to a stop. We land airplanes all over the place every day. We landed all sorts of things on the Moon.. Surely we've got the basics of that figured out by now.' In other words, you'd start with the problem you know ... But it turns out that this business of setting down intact on the surface of Mars is some kinda crazy complicated. On Earth you have a lot of air to work with, and even the fastest fighter jets are dealing with much, much lower speeds. When the probe carrying the Curiosity rover approached Mars, it was moving at more than six times as fast as an F-35, with the throttle at the firewall – going all out. That's a lot of energy to dissipate."

Tackling problems starts with good design, ideals and values. That includes running a government. Nye shows reverence to the canon of our nation in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. Notably, these founding documents are in the Canon of the CNO's Professional Reading Program.

Our founders, he says, put us on a path toward a more perfect union. "Just as science doesn't claim to attain absolute truth, the Constitution does not claim to achieve the utopian ideal of government," Nye writes. "Fortunately, the founders embraced a never-ending search for better ideas and better solutions."

This review of "Everything All at Once" just scratches the surface of what is a fun, thoughtful and compelling read, especially for Earth Day. Highly recommended.



Bill Nye, left, executive director of The Planetary Society, and science educator, gets excited as the Chief of Naval Research Rear. Adm. Nevin Carr presents him with a powered by Naval Research pocket protector during the Navy Office of General Counsel Spring 2011 Conference. (Photo by John Williams)