Bridenstine On Climate Change: Humans Cause It. NASA Studies It.
Trump’s new NASA head: Humans contributing in ‘major way’ to climate change, The Hill
“President Trump’s newly minted head of NASA said Thursday that climate change is happening and humans are contributing to it in a “major way.” Jim Bridenstine, a GOP congressman who was confirmed as the new administrator of NASA last month, made the comments while speaking to employees at his first town hall at NASA headquarters in Washington. “I don’t deny the consensus that the climate is changing, in fact I fully believe and know that the climate is changing. I also know that we human beings are contributing to it in a major way,” Bridenstine said.”
That NASA climate science program Trump axed? House lawmakers just moved to restore it, Science
“The House appropriations panel that oversees NASA unanimously approved an amendment to a 2019 spending bill that orders the space agency to set aside $10 million within its earth science budget for a “climate monitoring system” that studies “biogeochemical processes to better understand the major factors driving short and long term climate change.” That sounds almost identical to the work that NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) was doing before the Trump administration targeted the program, which was getting about $10 million annually, for elimination this year.”
I’m not sure what to make of this; the former Rep. denied AGW. And now he has learned how to read the science?
Shouldn’t examine those gift horses I suppose.
I think like most politician climate change deniers, they know deep down that they are wrong. And now that he is no longer a Congressman needing the votes of his “constituents” who are fed this tripe, he can drop the act.
That’s my hopeful reading of it, anyway. 🙂
If your reading is true, tho, any politician who acts like that automatically shows a lack of integrity; or, an integrity that’s for sale.
I wonder about that.
[Yes, I know this discussion is Civics 101].
On the one hand we want our representatives to be like us and vote the way we would vote, don’t we? He came from a red anti-AGW district. Shouldn’t he reflect those values?
On the other hand, we *also* count on our leaders to— well, to lead, which will put them in opposition, sometimes, to constituents.
I think I’d like to hear something a little more directly honest, something like: “Look! I’m responsible to my constituents when I’m in Congress, but now I’m not, and my own views are a bit different”.
>he is no longer a Congressman needing the votes of his “constituents”
I heard from someone that worked as a congressional assistant or intern, he said many congressmen (Bridenstine a senator) have conflicts of interest as he knew one from a tea party district. This congressman had electric car, solar panels at home, etc. but votes against any alternate energy policies because his tea party constituents would not favor that.
Getting back to issue of AGW or not, NASA should still provide spacecraft and continue to develop new technologies of earth sensing because Earth is very diverse compared to the other planets (practice sensing techniques close to home before doing the same millions of miles away). It also doesn’t cost that much compared to huge money pits. Unfortunately the new Administrator is far from non-partisan which causes a lot of political friction (many are suspicious of what Bridenstine’s true intentions are).
He might want to let Congress know.
I was just looking at the top ten newspapers of Oklahoma. Crickets… nothing .. some had articles about the vote .. but no recent articles since he became Administrator.. wonder if the print versions were different ..
Glad to hear of the turnaround. Now if only crazy Donald would turn around on, oh, everything.
Maybe I heard him wrong. I heard: ‘global warming is real’, ‘humans contribute to it’ I did NOT hear him say that it was solely due to humans.
Accepting an answer so framed would be an example of not painting someone into a corner.
The corrective policies informed by “contribute” and ’cause” are negligible in reality but huge to both parties. Put a different way, “unconditional surrender” isn’t necessary.
I’ve never seen or even heard of a study like that. How would you go about proving that global warming is entirely anthropogenic? I believe the observed warming is about 1 Kelvin in the past 75 years. Are you saying that would be zero if people hadn’t been around and burning things? How can we possibly know it wouldn’t have been 0.1 K of warming (or, for that matter 0.1 K of cooling)?
without global warming, Canada would still be under several thousand feet of ice……………. and there were only a few thousand stone age humans back then when the ice melted.
“Canada would still be under several thousand feet of ice.”
It isn’t?
A few thousand? Seriously?
I had to poke around a little, but it looks like the maximum thickness of the Laurentide ice sheet (the last one to cover Canada) was a bit over 3 km. That’s similar to the current, East Antarctic ice sheet, and we are talking about the ice sheet which gouged out the Great Lakes. But I’m not even going comment on the start of the Holocene and global warming.
I was refering to the number of stone age peoples.
Yup. Two miles of ice. Drive the Columbia icefields Parkway ( 150 miles netween Banff and Jaspar in Alberta ) and pay attention to the remnants of the glacial carving and classic U-valleys.
To KptKaint I will say that there is small basis for comparing the dynamic change during the Ice Ages with the current Anthropocene.
I mean’t only a few thousand stone age people .. science has proven the population base was bigger than a couple thousand.
70,000 years ago when the super volcano Toba erupted during an ice age human polpolation fell to maybe 1000 breeding pairs. The earth then fell into a colder and longer ice age. About the same time a red dwarf star, Scholtz’s Star grazed the solar system’s Ort cloud. If it had come closer we wouldn’t exist.
That is not conclusive has been my understanding. I am using wiki but the same thing is on several other sites.
“The Toba eruption has been linked to a genetic bottleneck in human evolution about 70,000 years ago,[28][29] which may have resulted from a severe reduction in the size of the total human population due to the effects of the eruption on the global climate.[30] According to the genetic bottleneck theory, between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, human populations sharply decreased to 3,000–10,000 surviving individuals.[31][32] It is supported by genetic evidence suggesting that today’s humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago.[33]
Proponents of the genetic bottleneck theory (including Robock) suggest that the Toba eruption resulted in a global ecological disaster, including destruction of vegetation along with severe drought in the tropical rainforest belt and in monsoonal regions. For example, a 10-year volcanic winter triggered by the eruption could have largely destroyed the food sources of humans and caused a severe reduction in population sizes.[34] Τhese environmental changes may have generated population bottlenecks in many species, including hominids;[35] this in turn may have accelerated differentiation from within the smaller human population. Therefore, the genetic differences among modern humans may reflect changes within the last 70,000 years, rather than gradual differentiation over hundreds of thousands of years.[36]
Other research has cast doubt on a link between Toba and a genetic bottleneck. For example, ancient stone tools in southern India were found above and below a thick layer of ash from the Toba eruption and were very similar across these layers, suggesting that the dust clouds from the eruption did not wipe out this local population.[37][38][39] Additional archaeological evidence from southern and northern India also suggests a lack of evidence for effects of the eruption on local populations, leading the authors of the study to conclude, “many forms of life survived the supereruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks”.[40] However, evidence from pollen analysis has suggested prolonged deforestation in South Asia, and some researchers have suggested that the Toba eruption may have forced humans to adopt new adaptive strategies, which may have permitted them to replace Neanderthals and “other archaic human species”.[41][42]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
By 24,000 humans were coming across and by 12000 the time we are talking about humans were all over north, central and south america.. more than a couple thousand.
Somebody remind rookie Bridenstine that in the Trump dictionary, ” Scaramucci ” is both a noun and a verb. Scaramucci the noun is the Trump news media guy who came to the White House from Goldman Sachs but lasted less than 10 days at his post. Scrarmucci as a verb is the action of having one’s head lopped off because you dare be disloyal to the Trump Manifesto talking points. By going against the Trump and GOP dogma that climate chage is not man caused and we can’t do anything about it if it were, he imperils his new job from Day One when he says climate change is real and humans are a big reason for it. Bidenstine could very well be Scaramuccied over this. Trump doesn’t really care about space flight because he has no orbiting hotels and you can’t play golf on the Moon ( yet). Alan Shephard’s one shot wonder in 1971 does not count.