Bill Nye the Science Guy and AccuWeather Meteorologist Joe Bastardi Debate Global Warming

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," February 22, 2010. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

Watch "The O'Reilly Factor" weeknights at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET!

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Factor Follow-up" segment tonight: another global warming study debunked. In the journal Nature Geoscience, a study was printed that showed the oceans rising because of global warming. Well now the magazine says, sorry, the study was flawed. Just another in a long line of global warming problems, including the resignation last week of the U.N. global warming guy.

Joining us now from Los Angeles is Bill Nye the Science Guy, who believes in manmade global warming, and from State College Pennsylvania, AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi, who is skeptical. So Joe, give me your best shot. Why are you dubious about this global warming business?

JOE BASTARDI, ACCUWEATHER METEOROLOGIST: Well, first of all, let's take a look at what happened this winter, because there are a lot of people trying to now say that all the cold and the snow that we had was because of global warming. This was our forecast issued in July, and then I reissued it again in October. Notice the cold and snow in the mid-Atlantic states, snow down here in Texas, warm and dry up here, wet in California. Now, how did I come up with that? Was it global warming? No. We have an El Nino and a state of the ocean in the Pacific similar to the '60s and '70s when Bill O'Reilly was growing up and there was all that snow. The solar cycles are doing something that is reminiscent to colder times. And amazingly, amazingly, the very thing that John Holdren opined on last year, blasting soot into the high altitudes over top of the Arctic, actually happened naturally with volcanic activity last year, led to a lot of blocking over the poles this year.

O'REILLY: All right. So once again, you -- you have a meteorological explanation for what happened?

BASTARDI: Oh, yes.

O'REILLY: Now Bill, why do you believe -- and Joe doesn't believe in manmade global warming -- why do you believe in it?

BILL NYE, THE SCIENCE GUY: Well, the evidence is overwhelming. Do you agree, Joe, in 1750 the world's carbon dioxide was about 280 parts per million? Do you agree with that?

Click here to watch the debate!

BASTARDI: Bill, you don't want to go here. Do you know why? Because I'm going to show you the correlation.

NYE: Do you agree?

BASTARDI: Yes, I agree.

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: Wait, Joe. Wait. Let him make his point, Joe, and you can reply. Go ahead, Bill.

NYE: Do you agree that the planet Venus is warm because it has a lot of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere? And when I say warm, I mean warm enough to melt lead on its surface. Do you agree with that?

BASTARDI: I -- I don't believe we have the proper measurements of Venus from over 10 billion years ago, so I can't tell the relationship with the Earth.

O'REILLY: OK, go ahead.

NYE: I think you're throwing a red herring in there, so...

(CROSSTALK)

NYE: This is the carbon dioxide -- this is the carbon dioxide in 1750 in parts per million as represented by Fountain Pen Inc. This is it today. Even though it's a very, very small fraction, four hundredths of a percent, it's still quite noticeable, and it affects the world's climate.

About your explanation with -- with volcanoes, you know, this is a study done by the IPCC. This is a timeline, and it depicts volcanic activity. Well, one of the greatest revelations behind the casting, where they showed that there's a correlation between volcanic eruptions and the earth's cooling, because particulate matter gets high in the atmosphere. Well, it's only true of volcanoes near the equator. Mount St. Helens had hardly effect at all. You can see, when you extract the data on this trend, it's like the trend from this data, the world is getting warmer. It's continually getting warmer. And these data are so compelling that they overwhelm any effect it has -- that might have come from this winter.

O'REILLY: All right. Joe, you reply.

NYE: That's sort of nothing to do with it.

BASTARDI: That's simply not true, Bill. When you blast SO2 into the atmosphere over top of the Arctic, what happens is it absorbs sunlight, warms the stratosphere, which depresses the troposphere underneath and cools the troposphere. That can be documented from what happened back in 1912 if you went back and looked at the following winters. Look at this.

O'REILLY: Wait, wait, wait, Bill. Let Joe go. Let Joe…

BASTARDI: You want to bring up -- you want to bring up the CO2 argument. Why don't we just look at the sun spots back here, back in 1750, and notice that they've been coming up and along with it the temperatures. Basically, it comes down to this. If you look at the strength of correlation to warming, and this is courtesy of meteorologist Joe Deleo (ph) -- CO2 since 1895 -- you can see .43, the sun .57, the ocean .85. But since 1998, CO2 is going next to nothing because the earth's temperature is flat-lining, and CO2 is coming up.

So what you have to believe, folks, is this: that the sun, plus the ocean, plus the volcanic activity, plus natural reversal has less effect than the yearly human contribution, equal to the width of a hair on a one-kilometer bridge of a trace gas needed for life. So if you want to believe that, you can go ahead and believe that.

O'REILLY: All right, let Bill reply. Go ahead, Bill.

NYE: Actually, Joe, Mr. Bastardi, the last 10 years are the warmest decade on record.

BASTARDI: Sure, measuring with satellite.

NYE: ...was an especially warm year. 1998 was an especially warm year, as was 2006. Now, what's happened is you showed back in September on this program this graph. And it starts around here 2001, and the idea is that it shows the world cooling off. Well, actually, it's weighted because of the especially warm 1998. When you extract the data as the...

BASTARDI: Exactly right.

NYE: ...Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has, you see it go up and down, but the trend is up. Now what -- here's the question for you, Mr. O'Reilly or Mr. Bastardi. In whose best interest is this? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does these studies. They argue about it. That's what Climategate was about. The one guy calls the other guy an idiot. One guy calls his method no good. The other guy says his method is really good. But the world is getting warmer. Carbon dioxide is a very strong greenhouse gas. It has a very long residence time in the atmosphere. It is making the world warmer, along with methane and other human activities. In whose best interest is it to deny this stuff?

O'REILLY: All right. Let me give Joe the last word. Go.

BASTARDI: All right. All right, Bill. How are you -- how are you measuring -- when measuring temperatures since the satellite era began in the late '70s at the end of the last -- what we call the cold PDO. What I want to show you real quick, folks, is...

(CROSSTALK)

O'REILLY: Let him finish.

BASTARDI: ...the Pacific Decatur (ph) Oscillation. If we take a look at this right back here, we see that during the '70s here, you can see the TIME magazine from the late '70s, we were in a cold PDO. We've been warming it up. We are now turning colder. And the fact of the matter is that, if I'm right -- and this is the greatest debate, Bill Nye, the greatest lab experiment ever. If I'm right, the reversals will lead to a degree to a degree-and-a-half cooling. If you're right, they're not. But what are we worried about right now?

O'REILLY: OK.

BASTARDI: What we have to look at is 20 or 30 years.

O'REILLY: I'm worried about I have to go to a break. And I am making an appeal to the deity to come on this program and tell us, once and for all, what's going on.

Hey, gentlemen, that was fascinating. I would flunk courses in both of your classes. But I really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you for the good debate.

Content and Programming Copyright 2010 Fox News Network, Inc. Copyright 2010 Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.