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#1 2018-05-18 07:40:27
- EdwardHeisler
- Member
- Registered: 2017-09-20
- Posts: 357
NASA’s Jim Bridenstine Agrees Humans Responsible for Climate Change!
NASA’s Jim Bridenstine Agrees Humans Are Responsible for Climate Change
By Eric Niiler
05.17.18
It's no secret that the Trump administration has filled cabinet positions and other senior staff jobs with people who reject or ignore established climate science. On Monday, for example, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington that he’s “not going to get into the climate debate.” He also said he could not endorse climate research by one of his own agencies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose satellites, aircraft flights, and ocean buoys support scientists' consensus that humans are behind rising carbon dioxide levels and the resulting impacts of climate change such as sea level rise and changing weather patterns.
But today, something unusual happened. NASA’s brand new administrator, Jim Bridenstine, laid down a pretty big marker in agreement with established climate science. And if Bridenstine’s position on climate change has shifted toward the scientific mainstream, he may find himself staking out a lonely position among his former Republican colleagues in Congress.
“I don’t deny the consensus, I believe fully in climate change and that we human beings are contributing to it in a major way,” Bridenstine told NASA workers during a televised town hall from headquarters in Washington. He said that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and “we are putting it into the atmosphere in volumes we haven’t seen before. We are responsible for it.”
In contrast, at a climate hearing this week, Republican members of the House Science Committee said that the Earth is not warming (it is), that rocks falling into the ocean are causing sea level rise (they aren’t), and that the Antarctic ice sheet is growing bigger (it’s not).
While there were no audible gasps in the room at NASA headquarters (at least that the microphones picked up), there were a few smiles and raised eyebrows. That’s because Bridenstine’s own position on climate change had been somewhat up in the air. He was only sworn into office three weeks ago after a bruising confirmation battle in the Senate that lasted nearly a year. Democrats opposed Bridenstine based on his previous statements on the issue of the human contribution to climate change.
One of those statements came during his remarks on the House floor in 2013, when Bridenstine was a Republican congressman from Oklahoma. The Earth’s temperature had not risen for 10 years, he said, and President Obama should apologize to Oklahomans for wasting money to study global warming instead of destructive tornadoes. Left unsaid was that scientists have linked climate change with an increased frequency of more destructive storms, hurricanes, and drought events.
Then, in November 2017, during a Senate hearing on his nomination, Bridenstine said that humans contributed to climate change, but that he didn’t know by how much.
Perhaps Bridenstine’s thinking has evolved, or he’s realized he’s now heading an agency with an Earth science budget of more than $1.9 billion (of NASA’s nearly $20 billion). NASA officials did cancel a small $10 million carbon budget monitoring program last week that was responsible for checking sources and sinks of carbon emission around the globe. However, Congress reversed a White House decision to nix four climate-related space observing missions and stuck them back in the budget.
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#2 2018-05-18 21:09:36
- Void
- Member
- Registered: 2011-12-29
- Posts: 7,910
Re: NASA’s Jim Bridenstine Agrees Humans Responsible for Climate Change!
Just to keep this in perspective:
Humans altered the climate 1000 years ago in South America:
https://phys.org/news/2018-05-criticall … rests.html
Quote:
The forests date back to the period when dinosaurs roamed. The iconic monkey puzzle tree, or Parana pine, has grown in the region for thousands of years. Its nuts were one of the most important food sources for ancient communities, attracted game for hunting when nuts were ripe. They were also a valuable source of timber, fuel and resin, and became an integral part of southern Jê cosmology. Communities still call themselves "people of the Araucaria", and hold festivals to celebrate the forests.
And the Mammoth Steppe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth_steppe
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio … nsequences
https://phys.org/news/2014-02-dna-revea … s-die.html
Quote:
Although large areas were covered in ice 18,000 to 25,000 years ago, there were also ice-free areas in this Arctic region hosting the so-called mammoth steppe. On the cold, dry tundra, there were plenty of mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, steppe bison, horse and musk ox.
Most of these large mammal species, however, died out or disappeared from here about 10,000 years ago. Was it due to climate change, changes in the food base, some kind of disease, or had humans become such efficient hunters that they simply killed them off? The questions are many. In a quest for answers, a large number of researchers from a range of countries conducted a joint survey of vegetation composition, which is what mammoths and other large animals ate. One of the scientists involved is Lund University geology professor Per Möller.
While it is possible that the human contribution to the conifer forestation of the Mammoth Steppe was not the major factor, I am very willing to suppose that it was the tipping factor.
......
Deciduous Forests reportedly cool the Earth. Snow covered land without forest, such as polar and temperate grasslands will cool the Earth. Even summer grasslands especially when dried out will cool the Earth.
All of the above on average reflect light back into space more than do conifer evergreen forests.
Conifer evergreen forests warm the Earth.
If you have ever noticed, a snow storm will turn conifer trees partially white for a bit of time, but the winds and sun will generally expose the dark green to the winter sunlight.
Grasslands covered with snow will tend to reflect the sunlight into space.
......
http://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/
Quote:
Revive & Restore plays a role in this story, introducing George Church to the extraordinary Russian scientist Sergey Zimov, who has started a project in northern Siberia called “Pleistocene Park,” which is using wild grazing animals to generate climate-stabilizing grasslands. Zimov wants to add mammoths to the mix. We also connected George with specialists in Asian elephant diseases, and as a result his lab is working on curing a previously untreatable viral disease that is killing many young elephants.
George Church is apparently quite a notable person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_M._Church
Mr. Zimov impresses me as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Zimov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park
They both apparently believe that the Pleistocene mega fauna served a purpose in preserving the Mammoth Steppe. Causing grasslands to dominate instead of conifer forests, and marshy mossy acid tundra. They would have done this by destroying the trees, fertilizing the grasses, and packing down the snow by stepping it down.
I add my own theories, that the winds would have blown much harder over a relatively treeless grassland, and would have tended to blow the dry snow into drifts which would accumulate in certain places, perhaps lower elevations, leaving much of the upper grasslands almost bare of snow, and allowing the permafrost to penetrate deeply into the ground, discouraging the growth of tree saplings as well.
The lower areas might have been wetlands, when the snow drifts melted.
.....
I do not deny the possibility of greenhouse gasses also making a contribution. However, I do not consider them to be the only significant factor in the last 10,000 to 1000 to 0 years.
Very likely human alterations of vegetation and megafauna have collectively been warming the Earth for at least 10,000 years.
.....
While I am willing to discuss a greenhouse gas contribution, I will not tolerate an agenda by the verbal human sector to featherbed themselves bureaucratic jobs programs and then extracting wealth like parasites from well functioning productive business.
If you stay away from the agenda of the Verbal and Violent Blank Slate people, then I will consider that we can discuss these issues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blank_Slate
If you support the parasitic agenda of the old world peoples trying to eat the new world peoples, then we will have problems ever coming to a common purpose.
No Eating the Children!
Done
Last edited by Void (2018-05-18 21:44:32)
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#3 2018-05-19 09:22:24
- SpaceNut
- Administrator
- From: New Hampshire
- Registered: 2004-07-22
- Posts: 29,436
Re: NASA’s Jim Bridenstine Agrees Humans Responsible for Climate Change!
It does appear that Bridenstien played his cards close to the vest in playing the sheep in wolf clothing on the issue going along with constituents now until in a seat of power, to morph into a believer....
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#4 2018-05-19 13:03:38
- EdwardHeisler
- Member
- Registered: 2017-09-20
- Posts: 357
Re: NASA’s Jim Bridenstine Agrees Humans Responsible for Climate Change!
It does appear that Bridenstien played his cards close to the vest in playing the sheep in wolf clothing on the issue going along with constituents now until in a seat of power, to morph into a believer....
So Bridenstine deceived and lied to Oklahoma right-wing Republicans in order to advance his career. I think you're right. Just what NASA needs …. a skilled b.s. flip flopping politician. First he's for going to the Moon, now he's for going to Mars …. but look out …. he's really going after Uranus!
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#5 2018-05-19 19:00:05
- kbd512
- Administrator
- Registered: 2015-01-02
- Posts: 7,938
Re: NASA’s Jim Bridenstine Agrees Humans Responsible for Climate Change!
EdwardHeisler,
Would you rather that someone who was completely opposed to your religion masquerading as science was in charge of NASA?
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