Posted on 06/06/2007 2:15:51 PM PDT by Constitutionalist Conservative
NASA administrator Michael Griffin made headlines last week when he told a National Public Radio interviewer he wasn't sure global warming was a problem. "All I can really do is apologize to all you guys ... I feel badly that I caused this amount of controversy over something like this," said Griffin.
The head of NASA told scientists and engineers that he regrets airing his personal views about global warming during a recent radio interview, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press.
NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in the closed-door meeting Monday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena that "unfortunately, this is an issue which has become far more political than technical and it would have been well for me to have stayed out of it."
"All I can really do is apologize to all you guys ... I feel badly that I caused this amount of controversy over something like this," he said.
Griffin made headlines last week when he told a National Public Radio interviewer he wasn't sure global warming was a problem.
"I have no doubt that ... a trend of global warming exists," Griffin said on NPR. "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."
The radio interview angered some climate scientists, who called his remarks ignorant.
An international panel this year predicted that uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions could drive up global temperatures and trigger heat waves, devastating droughts and super storms. Observations by NASA satellites show evidence of rapidly melting glaciers and shrinking of critical marine plant life due to warmer seas.
Griffin reiterated that NASA's job was to provide scientific data on global warming and leave it up to policy makers to decide what to do with it.
Griffin told JPL workers he tried to separate his opinions during the NPR interview, but that it got "lost in the shuffle."
"Doing media interviews is an art. Their goal is usually to generate controversy because it sells interviews and papers and my goal is usually to avoid controversy," he said.
I already posted the answer....Temperature has never been above freezing since we have been keeping track. Interestingly, this little bit of trivia was on the Washington Post weather page a couple of months ago.
Explains how NASA has been so spectacularly screwed up in recent years.....
Never? Oh, since we have been keeping track.
Well that’s BETTER!!!! SEE that you don’t do it again!
Now off to rehab with you!
That is how is seems to me as well. Makes me miss the Cold War. At least then the enemy was well defined.
My buddy just got his masters Hydrology from UT, (I think he is a surface guy though) and he is a global warning faithful. He tells me that all the scientist there understood “the truth” as he did.
HE MUST BE RE-EDUCATED
I make the statement because they think man made CO2 is causing global warming and I wanted to point out that it is absurd because of the numbers.
I honestly don't really care what is causing it, I know we are not and that we can not stop it. To force the world economy into a tailspin, not use the abundant coal we have, and implement socialism and confiscation of wealth for this is crazy.
But knocking down the argument that a 77ppm increase is in anyway a primary cause of "Global Warming" ought to be made with well established physical facts.
Prove that CO2 isn't a problem and all the Kyoto protocol crap gets tossed in the dumpster.
Thats one of the best posts I have read on FR.
How bout that?
Even NASA can’t put toothpaste back in the tube.....
“Thats one of the best posts I have read on FR.” ~ monday
Thank you. Here are a couple of items below that, in my opinion, go hand in hand with this thread, also.
June 11, 2007
Red Nation, Blue Nation
By Michael Barone
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/06/red_nation_blue_nation.html
Listening to the recent debates among the candidates, monitoring their Websites and reading the poll numbers, one gets the impression that the Republican and Democratic primary electorates are living in two different nations — or the same nation that faces two very different threats.
The Republicans want to protect us against Islamist terrorists. The Democrats want to protect us against climate change.
Each side believes the other’s fears are largely imaginary.
Rush Limbaugh regularly treats global warming theories as a “hoax.” A prominent political scientist dismisses Republican candidates’ appeals as sounding “like the day after Sept. 11.”
When asked about possible new attacks, Democratic candidates — with the exception of Hillary Clinton — talk about seeking international support and understanding.
Asked about climate change, Republican candidates — with the exception of John McCain — talk about getting more information.
Both threats are, in different ways, known unknowns.
We don’t know where the next Islamist attack will come — Fort Dix? JFK Airport? — or when. We don’t know the effects of warming temperatures, or at what rate they might become apparent. And we can’t be sure whether our efforts to parry either of these threats will be availing. We can try to track down loose nukes, shadow suspected terrorists, protect the very many vulnerable potential targets in our open society. But the terrorists only have to succeed once, and we must succeed every time.
Similarly, we don’t know to what extent a reduction in carbon emissions will reduce global warming. Some scientists tell us that there has been greater climate change in past history due to factors over which we have no control — such as solar cycles and shifting ocean currents.
In the 1930s, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin predicted that “the bomber will always get through.” We fear the terrorist will always get through, and we know the sun will.
The difference between the two parties’ constituencies reflects two different views of America and the world.
Those who see Islamist terrorists as the proximate threat see a world in which Americans are largely blameless. Rep. John Murtha [D -PA] may think that the recently foiled plot against JFK Airport was a response to American intervention in Iraq, but September 2001 came before March 2003.
What we are guilty of, in Republican voters’ view, is at worst a botched attempt to spread freedom and democracy in the world. And the people who would attack us are, in this view, truly evil. Negotiation, propitiation, appeasement, confessions of guilt — none of these will reduce the threat. Vigilance and going on offense will.
Those who see climate change as the proximate threat take another view, one that has evolved into a kind of secular religion. Debate on the science of climate change must be shut down — you must have faith.
We Americans have sinned, and we will be punished unless we repent and change our ways. We have been selfish, and we have failed to heed the advice of the more enlightened and sophisticated nations of the world. We must do penance by sacrificing some of our comforts (though not the gigantic houses and private jet travel of Al Gore or John Edwards). We must reduce carbon emissions by some tremendous percentage.
Left mostly unspoken is which of the two mechanisms to reduce emissions will be used: a carbon tax, which will impose significant costs on everyone and big costs on some (coal miners, steel manufacturers), or a cap-and-trade system, which can be gamed by sharp operators (it was central to the business model of Enron).
He who defines the issues tends to determine the outcome of the election.
When pollster Peter Hart asked a bipartisan focus group which candidate could best protect the nation, several people mentioned Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, one mentioned Barack Obama, and no one mentioned Hillary Clinton.
Evidently these people, unlike international elites, see the threat as Islamist terrorism and not climate change.
We know which seems more threatening to Republican and Democratic primary voters. But what about independents, who favored Republicans in 2002 and 2004 and Democrats in 2006? The answer may tell you which side wins in 2008.
*
NBC to Give Gore 75 Hours of Free Air Time (Unbelievable!!)
NewsMax ^ | June 6, 2007 http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/6/6/95837.shtml
Comment: “The Last Days of Earth” was amazing. The number one threat to end mankind existence is man made climate change. #2 was plague, #3 was nuclear war. We have to fight! A whole generation of children are being indoctrinated into this propaganda.
What are the motives? There’s $5 billion of federal money alloted to study climate change annually.
That’s just to buy scientists. This is an attack against capitalism and what liberals hate, the United States being an economic and military super power. They want all the nations to be equal. Then what? How can be “smart” people be so stupid? The United States saved the world from tyranny in WW I, the United States saved the world in WW II, the United States saved the world by defeating the USSR during the Cold War. How could the liberals not ask the question, “If the USA is forced to be equal like all other nations who will there be to save mankind from the “abyss of tyranny”? What nation? France? #45
bttt
Yeah, but why is he apologizing at all?
I've been posting Koestlers brilliant words about fanatics/socialists for years now on FR:
The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation. We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.
-Arthur Koestler-
Carolyn
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