There’s a lot of propaganda passed off as science, endless parades of pseudoscience and just plain fake science-y truthiness, on TV. The quality or lack thereof always reminds me of the MtV clip above. Crappy science is on because, apparently, there is viewer demand for crappy, fake science-y truthiness just like there’s demand for MtV to air reality TV featuring vapid characters. I’m not talking about cheesy sci-fi movies or series, this awful fare is on cable channels with official sounding science-y and historical names. Soap operas loosly centered on chasing ghosts or cornering bigfoot regularly stains our screens and minds. One could be forgiven for mistaking those shows for a sci-fi series.

Like so many lousy cable shows, the protagonists, bravely hunting down X-files phenomena — playing it their own way! by their rules! no matter what those stupid elite scientists say! — never quite land their elusive quarries. Maybe next week they’ll finally get it! What a shock, huh? But there’s some good stuff, too.

This week, Joe Romm at Climate Progress writes about some Emmy nominated science programs:

“COSMOS: A SpaceTime Odyssey,” is the Fox network’s gorgeous, high-tech update of the classic PBS series, with the redoubtable Neil deGrasse Tyson in the narrator role made famous by Carl Sagan. It is one of the strongest defenses of science and the scientific method ever to appear on network TV — and Tyson was not shy in speaking out about the reality of climate science.“Years Of Living Dangerously” is the first documentary series devoted to climate change ever to appear on a major network or premium cable. Its 9 episodes were produced by the legendary storytellers and filmmakers James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jerry Weintraub — together with three former 60 Minutes producers who already have 18 Emmys between them.