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Hey Bill Nye, “Are You For or Against Fracking?” | Big Think.

Big Think | November 15, 2025



Hey Bill Nye, “Are You For or Against Fracking?”
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So let’s talk about fracking. In today’s edition of #tuesdayswithbill, the Science Guy answers Susan’s question about hydraulic fracturing and green energy. Fracking isn’t a bad idea in theory, says Nye, but it can’t be allowed to go unregulated. The Science Guy runs through a personal anecdote about fracking before noting that new technological advances have opened the door to irresponsible practices with severe environmental and public health consequences. While it would be great to replace things like fracking with renewable energy, we’re, at the moment, hampered in several ways, the most notable being battery limitations. That said, it doesn’t mean our potential green energy future isn’t one to get excited about.
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BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUY:
Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life. In Seattle Nye began to combine his love of science with his flair for comedy, when he won the Steve Martin look-alike contest and developed dual careers as an engineer by day and a stand-up comic by night. Nye then quit his day engineering day job and made the transition to a night job as a comedy writer and performer on Seattle’s home-grown ensemble comedy show “Almost Live.” This is where “Bill Nye the Science Guy®” was born. The show appeared before Saturday Night Live and later on Comedy Central, originating at KING-TV, Seattle’s NBC affiliate. While working on the Science Guy show, Nye won seven national Emmy Awards for writing, performing, and producing. The show won 18 Emmys in five years. In between creating the shows, he wrote five children’s books about science, including his latest title, “Bill Nye’s Great Big Book of Tiny Germs.” Nye is the host of three currently-running television series. “The 100 Greatest Discoveries” airs on the Science Channel. “The Eyes of Nye” airs on PBS stations across the country. Bill’s latest project is hosting a show on Planet Green called “Stuff Happens.” It’s about environmentally responsible choices that consumers can make as they go about their day and their shopping. Also, you’ll see Nye in his good-natured rivalry with his neighbor Ed Begley. They compete to see who can save the most energy and produce the smallest carbon footprint. Nye has 4,000 watts of solar power and a solar-boosted hot water system. There’s also the low water use garden and underground watering system. It’s fun for him; he’s an engineer with an energy conservation hobby. Nye is currently the Executive Director of The Planetary Society, the world’s largest space interest organization.BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUY
Bill Nye, scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor, is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science entertaining and accessible is something Bill has been doing most of his life……

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TRANSCRIPT:
Susan: Hi Bill. My name is Susan, aka primordial soup, and I have a question about fracking. Are you for it or against it and why? And on the subject of energies what’s the holdup with the green energies? Is it that there’s not enough investment money, not enough profits, not enough public interest, other, all of the above? Thank you for answering my question.

Bill Nye: Are you primal or primordial? If it’s a primordial soup I love you. So let’s talk about fracking. I left Boeing because they wanted me to work on the 767 airplane, which wasn’t going to fly for 15 years. And when you’re a young guy that just seems like a really long time. So I took a job as an engineer in a shipyard at the place where they skim oil slicks. They made, at that time, the best or the most popular oil slick skimming boat. And then that led to a job for me in the oil field. I worked in the oil patch for a while where they frack. Now my uncle, my beloved mother’s younger brother really was this guy. He was a geologist, graduated from Johns Hopkins and he got a job with — then he was in the Army during the Korean War as an engineer….

To read the transcript, please go to. https://bigthink.com/videos/views-on-fracking-and-green-energy

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Comments

This post currently has 29 comments.

  5. @TheHealthyCanadian

    November 15, 2025 at 10:35 pm

    CO2 is as critical to life as oxygen and nitrogen. No life would exist without this natural gas that comprises only .04% of our atmosphere. NOTHING WOULD BE GREEN WITHOUT CO2! Never trust a man wearing a bow-tie.

  7. @Roughneckjarhead

    November 15, 2025 at 10:35 pm

    This whole argument is so fucking stupid. I was in the "patch" as Bill puts it for 15 years. This guy is faking the funk. It's not a "tool push" it's a "tool pusher". Also, short radius wells have nothing to do with it. The average directional well takes 1,500 feet to build a curve, not 10. Also irrelevant. Fracking is so accurate today that there is no fucking way you can contaminate the water table, which is cased and cemented off at 200 ft, with frack cracks, which are at least 10-15,000 feet down. I'm sick of this argument.

  10. @TWISTEDGiraff3

    November 15, 2025 at 10:35 pm

    Even if y’all don’t think fracking is bad at a base level, it’s still bad for the environment to burn oil and we’re trying to move away from that. As he mentions we need better batteries for the renewable energy to be stored, and I guarantee you we would develop those faster if we actually needed them which would happen if we properly taxed carbon emissions

  12. @nonope7359

    November 15, 2025 at 10:35 pm

    Love how modern liberals constantly show they never separated from their 1700s decadent aristocratic roots. One of the "left"'s biggest heroes is a guy who worked for the military industrial complex and the oil industry. But he's the guy to listen to about "ethical fracking" LOL

  13. @luving689

    November 15, 2025 at 10:35 pm

    Omg 😱 she said fracking! Primal animalistic instinct action it sounds like this should be on late night HBO!!! 😂😂😂 holy crap made me laugh so hard. He loved blowing 😂😂😂😂

  15. @Fabian_S

    November 15, 2025 at 10:35 pm

    Hey guys, does somebody know what they call the idea for the energy storage technology with the piston and the water? Would love to learn more about it.

  17. @phukmylife

    November 15, 2025 at 10:35 pm

    He is literally my idol I want to meet him even more than I want to meet Justin Bieber I would faint. i’ve been watching him forever and I’ve been loving him forever he explains things so everybody can understand the same exact way I try to teach good job Bill Nye thank you for being my idol 🙌🏼🙆🏼‍♀️

  19. @Berniewahlbrinck

    November 15, 2025 at 10:35 pm

    Nye is a brilliant speaker, mixing scientific information with irony.
    Consider what he says at 6.00:
    "The sun doesn't shine all the time. We have – you're probably familiar with it – a phenomenon called night."
    What’s so brilliant here?
    1. He is so deadpan when he says it.
    2. He says “you're probably [!] familiar with it” in parenthesis without batting an eye
    3. The contrast between “phenomenon” (a sophisticated word) and “night” (a very common experience)
    4. Climactic structure leading up to the last word “night”
    5. He stresses “night” in a very subtle way, as if it was a term many people don't know, thus resolving the irony in "probably"

  28. @wjerame

    November 15, 2025 at 10:35 pm

    Theres no such thing as green energy. Its a political talking point. Wind would destroy the environment, does destroy it, as far as solar we would need to mine all the worlds lithium and use all the rest of the oil on the planet in order to make enough solar to replace what we have now. Humanity will change the Earth its not something we can stop. Until we can reach a point of mining other planets and asteroids and such theres no good way to produce the 23000TW hrs of energy we use each year without effecting the environment.

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