Is NASA Leading A Shift In Administration Climate Change Views?
Trump’s NASA Administrator: ‘No Reason’ to Dismiss U.N. Climate Report, The Atlantic
“Koren: The United Nations recently released a troubling new report on climate change that outlined some of the devastating effects the planet should expect to see in the coming years. You’ve said before that you believe rising temperatures can be attributed to human activity. But many of your fellow Republicans in Congress and the White House dismissed the news. Where do you stand on the report?
Bridenstine: I have no reason to dismiss the report at all. nasa is one agency on the planet that does more to inform the world on how the climate is changing than any other agency, and we’re going to continue to do that.
Koren: Do you see part of your role as administrator of nasa to discuss this with your fellow Republicans?
Bridenstine: My role is to deliver dispassionate science and allow policy makers to have these debates about it. Look, if I start engaging in what to do about the science that we receive, then it politicizes what nasa is all about, and we don’t want to do that. All we’re going to do is study the planet and make sure that all of that data and all of that science is made available to the public.”
Donald Trump: Climate ‘will change back again’, CNN
“President Donald Trump has said he doesn’t believe that climate change is a hoax — but added Sunday night that “it’ll change back again.” In the wake of a report from the global scientific authority on climate change warning that governments around the world must take “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” to avoid disastrous levels of global warming, Trump was asked for his views on climate change during an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes.” Trump replied: “I think something’s happening. Something’s changing and it’ll change back again. I don’t think it’s a hoax, I think there’s probably a difference. But I don’t know that it’s man-made.”
It’s looking more and more like I might have misjudged Bridenstine. I hope he continues to prove me wrong.
Bridenstine might not be taking a political stance on climate change, but my guess is that nothing coming out of NASA will sway the Republican Party since there is still a lot of money in “big oil” in the US.
In a word, no.
Bridenstine doesn’t want to appear as completely antiscience but Trump has a lot of support from the coal lobby and I don’t expect that to change.
Here in Florida the congressman representing the KSC area, Bill Posey, is on record multiple times as saying that the Ice Ages prove that climate change is natural and not affected by human activiy.
Good for Bridenstine. NASA needs to do its job to collect data, improve on that as much as possible with broader, different, and better data, and put that out for scientists and policy makers. NASA’s mission is a higher calling than politics (sure this can be argued but hopefully you know what I mean). He has embraced the role and seems to want to do the right thing. Thank goodness.
I don’t know if it’s shifting the administration. But more data is better. We’ll see what happens regarding stifling research and data gathering since that has come up before.
Trump had stated it was a hoax before. But not when he wanted to build a seawall at a golf course.
“Trump acknowledges climate change — at his golf course
The billionaire, who called global warming a hoax, warns of its dire effects in his company’s application to build a sea wall.”
“Donald Trump says he is “not a big believer in global warming.” He has called it “a total hoax,” “bullshit” and “pseudoscience.”
But he is also trying to build a sea wall designed to protect one of his golf courses from “global warming and its effects.”
The New York billionaire is applying for permission to erect a coastal protection works to prevent erosion at his seaside golf resort, Trump International Golf Links & Hotel Ireland, in County Clare.
A permit application for the wall, filed by Trump International Golf Links Ireland and reviewed by POLITICO, explicitly cites global warming and its consequences — increased erosion due to rising sea levels and extreme weather this century — as a chief justification for building the structure.”
https://www.politico.com/st…
A very lucid, simple, and safe message about global warming and the role of NASA. I am a happy scientist.