lol. astronaut safety is not a back-burner issue. If anything it's way too much of a front-burner issue. The risk aversion inside the agency is so out of control it is seriously hampering the engineering. My humble opinion. EDIT: Here, I'll totally derail the thread. Link to a letter that basically sums up why NASA is dangerously close to becoming irrelevent from a taxpayer and technical standpoint.
That's not necessarily the case. For starters, the climate has changed over those thousands of years of development, and people have adapted. Granted, it has changed more slowly than is projected due to the human component, but humans also far more equipped to adapt than we were 5000 years ago. Also, the focus is always on the problems of climate change - flooding, etc. However, part of his point seems to be that we're assuming that today's climate is "ideal" for humans, but what if that's not the case? Remember - global warming does not mean the entire globe would warm. Some areas would cool, some would warm. What if the Siberian areas or the African desert became more inhabitable? Is that a bad thing? He's speaking from a theoretical framework and looking at all options - we need more of that instead of just saying what's politically popular. There is still an open debate both on the impacts of global warming and the remedies and solutions. You're not going to get reasonable solutions if one side based on fundamentally sound principles is shouted down. We've already seen what happens when politics latches onto a single idea and forgets about all others - the looming disaster that is ethanol. I'd prefer we don't go down a similar path with the environment. More discussion is always better. And no, unlike the "global warming isn't happening" argument, it's not uneducated by any stretch of the imagination.
Major, as you point out, it all hinges on the pace of the climate change. If it happens slowly (over centuries) who's to say the effect on balance wouldn't be positive for humans. And if that's what Griffin believes he should say that and scientists can debate the empirical evidence pro and con. But that's not what he said. And the real world effect of what he said is to get reasonable people like MadMax, to think that if the head of NASA doesn't seem to be too worked up about global warming then it's probably not a big deal. And this indecisiveness leads to inaction, which is exactly what the White House and they're allies in the energy industry want.
A little levity The president's speech to the United States Global Leadership Council today was no exception. In fact, it generated enough hot air to create its own microclimate -- of obfuscation, double-speak and rank insincerity. For those of you who prefer your political messages in plain English, here is a translation of some of his choice remarks. BUSH: In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change and opened new possibilities for confronting it. TRANSLATION: In recent years, my refusal to acknowledge the reality and seriousness of global warming has turned me into a laughing-stock and contributed to my record low poll numbers. So now I have to look like I'm interested. BUSH: The United States takes this issue seriously. TRANSLATION: Al Gore takes this issue seriously, his movie was a big hit, and it's causing me no end of grief. BUSH: The new initiative I am outlining today will contribute to the important dialogue that will take place in Germany next week. TRANSLATION: The new initiative I am outlining today will put the brakes on the much more robust proposal the Germans are putting forward at the G8. As long as the dialogue continues, we won't have to abide by any binding decisions. BUSH: By the end of next year, America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases. TRANSLATION: By the end of next year, I'll be weeks away from the end of my presidency and then this can be someone else's problem. BUSH: To develop this goal, the United States will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce the most greenhouse gasses, including nations with rapidly growing economies like India and China. TRANSLATION: We're going to look as busy as we can without actually doing anything. BUSH: Each country would establish midterm management targets and programs that reflect their own mix of energy sources and future energy needs. TRANSLATION: Nobody will actually be obliged to take any painful decisions. BUSH: Over the past six years, my administration has spent, along with the Congress, more than $12 billion in research on clean energy technology. TRANSLATION: But we've spent a lot more molly-coddling my buddies in the oil and gas industries. Not to mention Iraq... BUSH: We're the world's leader when it comes to figuring out new ways to power our economy and be good stewards of the environment. TRANSLATION: But we're also the world's leader in allowing our political decisions to be determined by the power of energy industry lobbyists. BUSH: America makes a compact with developing nations. We give aid, and in return they agree to implement democratic reforms, to fight corruption, to invest in their people -- particularly in health and education -- and to promote economic freedom. TRANSLATION: We reserve the right to tell them what to do, while continuing to act however we please. BUSH: We're spending a lot of money on clean, safe nuclear power. TRANSLATION: The nuclear power industry has Dick Cheney's ear, and mine too. BUSH: We are a compassionate nation. TRANSLATION: Until the bombing begins. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-gumbel/bush-translated_b_50184.html
Here's how NASA's top climate change scientist reacted when he heard Griffin's statement- His comments elicited disbelief from Jim Hansen, NASA's top climate change scientist. "I nearly fell off my chair (when I heard the comments)," he said during an interview on NPR's Day to Day. "It's remarkably uninformed about the status of our understanding (of climate change)," he added. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10577080
The problem I see with Griffin's statement regarding what is the ideal climate is analogous to looking at the situation as the sulfur and methane respirating organisms that dominated the Earth prior to oxygen becoming prevalent. Microscopic algea made the Earth an oxygen environment but in doing so they killed off most of the non oxygen respirating organisms because oxygen is toxic to them. Oxygen is a much more potent for metabolism than sulfur or methane and if life hadn't evolved the ability to metabolize it life on Earth might not have evolved beyond the flatworm stage yet from the standpoint of the poor sulfur respirating organism it was disaster. So who knows maybe a signifigantly warmer Earth might lead to even higher lifeforms than we have now. The problem though is that we humans at the moment have built up a millenia of culture, population distribution, economies and even technologies based upon a fairly narrow temperature range and existing geography. So sure humanity could survive a warmer world and maybe parts of it might be great but we are talking about massive displacements of people, along with disruptions of the economies and cultures across the World. So yes maybe Siberia and the Yukon might be more hospitable but then other places would be less. Consider all of the controversy we have now with immigration under our present climate. How is the world going to deal with even greater shifts? So philosophically yes things could be better but at what cost? It seems foolish to me to shrug your shoulders and believe in a nebulous future rather than trying to address problems that you know exist now.
I'm sorry to call you out MadMax but I think that's a copout. Sure we're not climate experts but most of us are well educated and rational people. Just because experts disagree doesn't mean that we can't listen to the evidence and the arguments and come to our own conclusions. At the sametime when it comes to global warming we're to a point were there is almost universal consensus. If you note Griffin isn't denying Global Warming.
I'm sorry but i have to agree with MadMax, we cannot KNOW what happens. The scientists also do not KNOW what will happen. To be 100% SURE what our influence on global warming is we need a Blanco(a world identical to our world without humans). The problem is that we cannot be sure what will happen. To many factors can influence the world and the environment. It is impossible to say for 100% sure what is causing the warm weather. It could be a normal fluctuation, it could be enhanced by us, it could be caused only by us. We cannot KNOW for sure. When you do research in biology there are always a lot of factors that can influence an outcome. and it can make a conclusion logical even though another factor was a bigger influence on the result. I wil give an hypothetical example. With my current research i look at Tick densities in different areas. For example if we look at two different areas. one has a lot of human activity on it and one does not. In the area with a lot of human activity we find more ticks (a significant difference). the obvious conclusion is that human activity increase the tick densities. However the other factors that can influence this result is: different vegetation, collecting done on different days, different weather etc. so the most obvious conclusion does not have to be the real reason. It is difficult of specialist to draw conclusions, so for the common man it is even more diffcult. That being said, I do not want to take a chance. This is to importent to be wrong about. We should do whatever we can to limit our influence on the environment and global warming.
There is no "one" climate that has always existed. You need to change your argument to amount of greenhouse gasses emmitted by humans. And that gets to the NASA chief's point. He is saying there isn't a climate that we can claim is the right one and that is the best for the world.
Its true we don't know anything 100% but that doesn't mean that we can't form an informed opinion by studying an issue and applying your own rationality to it. Further for something like global warming where you have probably more than 90% of climate scientists agreeing that it is occurring and that human activity is a major factor in it. Given that there is always a chance they are wrong the odds are in favor that they are right. Rational thought would go with that likelyhood.
i'm not going to pretend i have a better grasp on this than the experts who suggest that global warming is happening and is man-made. i'm not going to pretend i have a better grasp on this than the experts who suggest that global warming is happening but our impacts are minimal, if real at all. you can call that a cop-out all you want. i don't have anymore knowledge or information than the rest of them to "choose a side." where are you getting the 90% number???
I think what he's saying is what many people believe. That though there is a trend towards warming going on over the last 30 or so years, is it a a shift in weather as we've seen over and over throughout time and not something that man has contributed to or can even control in any way. I truly haven't researched the issue very much, but it seems to me many people are making conclusions while using a very limited sample. There was warmer periods pre WWII and then cooler periods from then the 1970's when people were stating that people were destroying the world due to Global Cooling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling Now though because we've been in warmer times since the late 1970's its back to the Global Warming scenario.
perhaps i missed it, but i didnt see him say anything about human responsibility for global warming - just that there is scientific evidence that the earth is heating up. the degree to which humans are responsible is another issue.
i agree that there is a consensus that the earth is heating up, but there is alot of disagreement among scientists as to how much influence humans have vs. the sun itself, which is proven to be heating up, producing more solar flares and giving off more radiation. where does this 90% figure come from? - not to call you out, but i have a hard time believing that 90% of climate scientists agree that human activity is a major factor in global warming.
It wasn't in the article at the top of the thread. I heard the interview when it aired, that's how I knew. Here's the quote- I'm aware that global warming exists. I understand that the bulk of scientific evidence accumulated supports the claim that we've had about a one degree centigrade rise in temperature over the last century to within an accuracy of 20 percent. I'm also aware of recent findings that appear to have nailed down — pretty well nailed down the conclusion that much of that is manmade. Whether that is a longterm concern or not, I can't say. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10571499
