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Fifty top NASA experts, including astronauts, scientists, and engineers, have issued a letter demanding that NASA stop making global warming claims in press releases and websites.

A new consensus: Fifty top NASA experts, including astronauts, scientists, and engineers, have issued a letter demanding that NASA stop making global warming claims in press releases and websites.

We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.

The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.

The individuals who signed this letter comprise a who’s-who from NASA’s science and space exploration work over the past fifty years. Their willingness to sign such a letter cannot be dismissed lightly.

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On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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11 comments

  • jwing

    I took my son to meet astronaut Charlie Duke this past Thursday as he made a rare guest appearance and speech for our Rapid City, SD Easter prayer breakfast. We were albe to meet Mr. Duke and get his autograph but I am much happier to know that his signature is attached to the letter requesting NASA to cease and desist in making bogus, unscientific AGW claims. Sadly, Armstrong and Aldrin were not signatories although it put a smile on my face to see Mike Collins had signed.

  • Joe2

    Since I do not usually say this sort of thing, on this we are in complete agreement.

  • Craig Beasley

    The management at NASAWatch is having palpitations and handwaving frantically to deny the validity of this, by the way. I don’t normally dish on other blogs like this, but it is a very telling thing when a letter like this causes panic as it is currently doing.

  • wade

    start the worry ….oh let’s say……..a thousand years. this is All a natural cycle of our planet. these conditions have only been used as a political tool for Fear Factor response of the masses.

  • John

    Eh. Those are almost all astronauts and engineers. Super smart, competent people, no doubt, but having a NASA badge doesn’t necessarily make you an expert in climatology.

    It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or 50) to figure out anthropogenic climate change. It takes a climate scientist.

  • jwing

    Sadly John…it truly doesn’t take a climate scientist to determine if AGM is real. What is should take is an objective scientist without a political adgenda or grant seeking motives. I’ve personally know a NOAA scientist as my next-door neighbor; he was a walking/talking rhetoric machine without the objectivity to see all sides (i.e. refuting empirical data). All he saw was the emperor’s beautiful golden-threaded wardrobe because that’s all he really wanted to see. You see John, that’s not the scietific method; it’s propaganda dressed up with PHD’s and hockey stick graphs.

  • Craig Beasley

    Dear John,

    Scientists are supposed to use the scientific method, and fellow scientists in other fields are not at all unaccustomed to taking more immature sciences to task when they stray from using that method. That is the case here, where the scientists and engineers are accomplished and have been resposible for much rigor in their carreers. In this case, this whole episode is comparable to brain surgeons rightly criticizing phrenologists…

    Some of these astronauts, by the way, were scientists before their time as spacefarers, and then returned to research and teaching in their fields when they left the corps. In the case of Dr. Schmitt, he was specifically employed on Apollo to ensure serious scientific study was applied to what was being seen as a rapidly truncated program of missions.

    The mania over this letter is really over-the-top, and the ACC folks need to step back and get some perspective. But they won’t.

  • John

    That could be. But it’s funny—I think someone arguing from a viewpoint diametrically opposed to some of those expressed here would use almost the exact same language in their argument, with just some of the subjects switched around. “Denailists,” ignoring data, misguided, motivated by money, etc.

    Frankly, neither of them are very valid arguments. Your neighbor, who was maybe not a good scientist, is not himself evidence for the legitimacy of climate science. In my line of work, I’ve met quite a few NOAA scientists, and most of them really do seem to care about good science, and they seemed like good, honest people. And that’s not evidence for climate change either. But now we both have anecdotes that ostensibly support the positions we came to the table with.

    I’m suggesting that the data are subjective. It’s just that the broader discussion and the adamancy of all sides makes me think that most participants have gotten way better at talking out of their butts than really recognizing good or bad science. I mean, you may actually be a scientist, and this may be your thing. But I’m not, and it’s not.

    I agree with Craig Beasley in that I think there’s a tremendous lack of perspective and self-examination all around. (And I’m not trying to be snarky. I mean you, but I also very much mean me.)

  • jwing

    Science does not require of it perspective and self-examination. Honest data and empirical evidence are really all that should guide the scientific method. Sadly, the scientific method is not beig applied to climate change a.k.a. man-made global warming (AGW)); instead political idealogy, grant money, ego and hubris are the controlling principles that have allowed this hoax to continue. The adage, “follow the money is aprosos here as billions of dollars are in play for “green energy”, “reduced carbon footprints”, ethanol fuel additives, etc, etcetra.
    The truth is that the geological evidence shows many ice ages and warming periods in earth’s history that do not comport with changeing CO2 levels. Ocham’s Razor still holds unless empirical evidence shows otherwise. All I can say is that the great scientific minds, especially Gallileo, would be spinning in their graves at how such a modern western society can be so snookered by what amounts to anti-capitalist, marxist environmental ideology and methodology. Green is truly the new red.

  • John

    Oh, nuts—there was a typo there: I meant to write “I’m not suggesting that the data are subjective.”

    And, no, I guess science doesn’t require perspective and self-examination, but the humans who do science absolutely require it. Empirical data doesn’t arrive immaculately out of the ether. I think we’d agree that people are champions at deluding themselves (although we might be talking about different people), and the way our preconceptions shape our interpretation of the world is what deserves some reflection.

    I think you’re right about the follow the money thing, and that that’s been a big motivation for some people’s enthusiasm for the “green” movement. (I’m a little mixed up how that’s anti-capitalist, though.) But it’s silly to act like that doesn’t apply to the other side as well. There are plenty of people and organizations whose opposition to AGW comes far less from dissatisfaction with the science than it does from an understandable desire to keep making money the same way they’ve made money (and a lot of it) for a long time.

    The green movement is the insidious end to thousands of years of Western science, philosophy and civilization. The carbon economy is run by cackling sociopaths interested in lining their own pockets at the ruinous expense of the natural world. Or, you know, Occam’s Razor doesn’t apply here, because the simplest explanations rely on logical fallacies and cliches, and hopefully we’re too smart to let complicated issues be summed up by answers that fit on bumper stickers.

    What I’m saying is, I’d shit my pants if it turned out that one side or the other was completely right.

  • jwing

    What’s wrong with oil, gas and coal? What’s wrong with making money in the process of extracting, refining and delivering these 100% natural, organic and efficient sources of energy as they can and are capable of being envrionmentally friendly and safe with the proper technologies? While I don’t recommend defecating in your undergarments, may I recommend depends because, yes, very often in reality, one side of an arguement is completely correct and the other side is bluffing. While there is nothing wrong with alternative energy development, it is not sustainable to throw the baby out with the bath water before these technologies are viable. Notice I specifically wrote “viable” and not sustainable threw the use of massive government subsidies and tax breaks to polically connected bundelers and Democratic pary hacks. When alternative technologies are truly economically viable, the free market will be the first to invest and develop them.

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