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Senate Confirms Climate Denier With No Scientific Credentials To Head NASA (nytimes.com)
On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Trump's NASA nominee Jim Bridenstine, seven and a half months after being nominated to lead the agency. "The Senate confirmed Mr. Bridenstine, an Oklahoma congressman, as the new NASA administrator in a stark partisan vote: 50 Republicans voting for him and 47 Democrats plus two independents against," reports The New York Times. "The vote lasted more than 45 minutes as Republicans waited for Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona to cast his lot." Slashdot reader PeopleAquarium writes about some of Bridenstine's anti-LGBT and non-scientific views: Bridenstine ran a planetarium once, and peddled a debunked argument made by climate change skeptics, claiming that global temperatures "stopped rising 10 years ago." He said "the people of Oklahoma are ready to accept" an apology from then-President Barack Obama for what Bridenstine called a "gross misallocation" of funds for climate change research instead of weather forecasting. In further news, our rockets will now be coal powered, and gay people aren't allowed in space.
During his confirmation hearing, he agreed that human activity “absolutely” contributed to climate change, but sparred with Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, over whether it was “a contributor” or the “primary cause.”
Scientists believe that it is extremely likely that most of the observed increase in global average surface temperature over the last half century was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together. In fact, some studies put the human contribution higher than 150%. That is, non-anthropogenic factors have had a net cooling effect. Human factors have caused all observed warming and also masked that cooling effect.
Mr. Bridenstine is promoting an extremely fringe position that isn't supported by the evidence. I'm not sure why we should celebrate that.
But homosexual sex *is* immoral and contrary to the natural law.
Wrong.
If you don't believe that then literally nothing is immoral
Logical fallacy. Instant fail. Thank you for playing.
(I believe this one is called "equivocation fallacy", but I never bothered memorizing their names).
including pedophilia, bestiality, and polygamy. You can't pick and choose.
Pedophilia is a mental disorder and has nothing to do with morality. Actual sexual exploitation of prepubescent children is child abuse.
The main arguments against bestiality are public health and that animals cannot give consent. However, if those concerns are proven not to apply, while I am personally disgusted by the practice, I don't give a rat's ass if you want to boink your pet platypus.
Polygamy is a legal construct, as it concerns marriage. It is by way legal in about 30% of sovereign states. If we stick to the subject of sexual conduct, polyamory is legal in most jurisdictions.
The very first item in the list of mandates from the original 1958 NASA act is:
The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:
(1) The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;
Beyond that, NASA is interested in predicting the atmosphere and habitability of distant planets. There are a few planets that we have access to and can study directly. None are so convenient as Earth, upon which we have (tens/hundreds of) thousands of sensors. Why should we render NASA blind to the one planet that we can readily study?
His American Space Renaissance Act is actually pretty awesome. Ideas like:
"the United States should maintain a continuous human presence in low Earth orbit and, to the extent practical and consistent with national security priorities, should utilize commercial capabilities for operations in low Earth orbit."
" to develop and publish standards and specifications necessary for on-orbit habitats to house NASA astronauts and science experiments in low Earth orbit. "
"NASA continue its commercial partnerships for resupply and crew movement to the ISS and future low Earth orbit platforms. "
"Expresses a sense of Congress that space debris is a growing threat to space access and that the United States does not currently have a plan for developing space debris remediation capabilities."
"Space Transportation Infrastructure Matching Grants – Updates the Space Transportation Infrastructure Matching Grants program and funds it by setting aside one half of one percent of funding in the Airport and Airway Trust Fund. "
"Recognizes that startup space companies are often limited in their ability to offer cash compensation to employees. For stock or option compensation, defers employee tax liability until liquidation."
"space-based weather data and services can help mitigate gaps in critical weather requirements, increase architecture resilience, and augment legacy government weather systems."
"Electromagnetic Spectrum – Expresses a sense of Congress that commercial launch providers require access to spectrum during launch. Requires NTIA and FCC to ensure access to frequencies and reduce the number of authorizations required per launch." - this was actually a issue on one of SpaceX's recent launches when they were denied broadcasting.
I could go on, but I think everyone will get the point. For a thought experiment, let's say that he is able to turn his bill into NASA's operating policy. It's a very coherent policy that could push the US and all of mankind upwards. Weather monitoring is mentioned several times, as is working with foreign governments. Personally, I think the ASPA has amazing potential. None of Trump's other appointees have ANYTHING like this already outlined.