His stay [at Cornell] included guest lectures in astronomy and human sexuality (not at the same time); an orbit around downtown Ithaca's Carl Sagan Planet Walk; lunch with prospective graduate students; and a public lecture March 8 titled "Everybody Talks About the Weather." Now Bill Nye's legion of admirers are left only with reruns of his Emmy Award-winning television show, "Bill Nye, The Science Guy" -- although he says he will return to the campus periodically.
Nye, a 1977 graduate of Cornell's Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, made his last trip to campus as a Cornell University Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 Professor March 6-11.
The weather, he told a packed crowd at Alice Statler Auditorium, is worth talking about. Take global warming. Few informed people would argue with the evidence of global climate change. But "warming" just doesn't sound, really, like a bad thing, he said, suggesting we should perhaps use different words.
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Climate change is not rocket science, he said. Last April -- four months before Hurricane Katrina -- he warned of the potential for a catastrophic 2005 hurricane season on TV news programs. "Am I a genius? No. I was just paying attention. And a lot of people aren't," he said.
