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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.
Space? This Bridenstine guy will probably turn out to be a Flat Earther as well.
Come on, editors. Wtf? How is that relevant or helpful to the conversation? Are the people posting really that partisan? What are the new administrator's goals for the agency? Does he have a vision that includes manned space missions? Is he going to burn the agency to the ground? I can't tell. All I know is the poster liked Obama and doesn't like Trump which probably shouldn't be in the summary at all.
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It's not because he believes in physical genders, it's because he thinks gay people are " sexually immoral," and has been known to allow his religion to trump his reason... publicly.
It's not a great attitude for the head of an organization that has 14,000 employees of all walks of life, and that is primarily science based.
Publicly admitting that he hates some of those 14,000 employees for religious reasons is going to wreck his ability to lead, and get the agency mired in distracting lawsuits.
I agree that this guy is very suboptimal but the summary isn't very fair either especially the unnecessary snark that "In further news, our rockets will now be coal powered, and gay people aren't allowed in space." There's a legitimate criticism about his views on climate change and that should be expanded, especially as a major part of NASA's Earth observing work is precisely to understand the global environment and how it is changing. But the summary doesn't mention the primary criticism of Bridenstine. Prior administrators have almost always had a combination of adminsitrative and scientific skills. For example Griffin had a background in physics and engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin, Lightfoot the current acting administrator is an engineer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Lightfoot_Jr., Bolden was himself an astronaut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bolden. Etc. Putting in someone whose primary qualifications are political rather than scientific is very suboptimal; NASA has suffered enough the last few years due to congressional politics and politics dictating goals rather than science and engineering. The SLS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System is a really good example of this. Putting in a head of NASA whose qualifications are political with no real experience is very bad, and that would be bad even if he weren't a climate change denier (which does admittedly make it worse but at this point given who is in charge of the EPA should be about expected for this administration).
He sponsored a bill opposing marriage equality, among other things. Two minutes of googling and you can find all his anti-LGBT, pro-invisible-man-in-the-sky bullshit. Plus his egregious lie about climate change.
Why do positions and beliefs like that have any bearing on his fitness to run NASA? Are we going to have 'morality police' roaming around, like in Iran, arresting people who don't prescribe to a specific set of beliefs? Should people who are not pro-gay be sent for re-education?
Putting someone with anti-science beliefs in charge of a science agency is like putting the Klan in charge of your Martin Luther King day barbeque. It's just a shitty idea.
Everyone at NASA should walk out in protest. Everyone at the EPA should walk out in protest. Everyone at NOAA should walk out in protest. Everyone at....
Sounds like the hopes of lot of modern crypto-conservatives. That money freed up by the disbanded agencies could build a lot of wall.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
WTF are we still in 1600? What is immoral about it? Does it harm someone? If your morality is based on maximizing the number of little Christians that are produced, like it was defined for a long time, to increase the power of this particular religion, I will argue that you are the moral disaster. There are already enough humans on Earth, we don't need you to have 15 children that will fight over the remaining resources of the Earth. Unprotected heterosexual sex is much less moral than gay sex or masturbation, if your moral compass is not fucked up by some ancien illogical customs.
The problem is that it is plain stupid to consider things people are born with "immoral". It is unfair, irrational and discrminatory and it's therefore a good indication of being totally incompetent in leading people that do science, which is all about rationality.
0x or or snor perron?!
Are we going to have 'morality police' roaming around, like in Iran, arresting people who don't prescribe to a specific set of beliefs?
Yes. If you don't stand up to them, then yes. That's exactly what you will have.
The NASA budget of 19.5B is 0.4% of the budget and adds $10 to the economy for every $1 spent. There are plenty of wasteful programs all across the federal government that spend more than NASA.
The guy is an idiot. Everyone knows climates are real.
Looks like Slashdot has gone from "News for Nerds" to yellowpress-style hit pieces.
they matter lots. You do know we use satellites to monitor climate change, right? You do realize he's in a position to control access to said satellites, right?
That's the trouble with corruption, it's a bit on the subtle side sometimes. I remember a story I read in my local paper about a real estate developer who wanted some land but couldn't get it because there were a bunch of endangered goats on it. So he bought the land near by, put up a short fence, and put some sheep on his land who just happened to have syphilis. Sheep jumped the fence, goats and sheep did what animals do (try not to think too much about it) and goats, who are apparently much more susceptible to the side effects of syphilis died. Goats gone, problem solved and he got his land.
It sounds crazy. It was all documented though since somebody was tracking the goats (they were endangered after all). So yeah, sometimes corruption isn't all that obvious.
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Conservative Christians don't consider "being gay" immoral, they consider gay sex, and in particular promiscuous gay sex, immoral. You aren't born having gay sex. Furthermore, they nature of their objection to gay sex has little to do with sexual orientation, and more with the fact that they believe that people ought to have sex only inside a heterosexual marriage; so they object to pre- and extramarital sex as much as they do to gay sex.
And the beliefs of conservative Christians contradict rationality... how? What rational argument can you make that extramarital sex is not immoral? I happen to disagree with the views of conservative Christians (I think some extramarital sex is moral), but that's a moral judgment, not a rational belief.
Furthermore, I think you are projecting your own behavioral patterns onto others. While it is certainly true that a progressive managers will frequently act with intolerance and hatred towards employees holding what they consider "immoral beliefs" (e.g., conservative, libertarian, Christian beliefs), the reverse isn't true. Christians generally believe that people can be saved and redeemed from their immoral actions through reasoned argument and teaching.
As a classically liberal gay man, I'd rather work for a Christian manager than for a progressive manager; progressive managers make your life a living hell if you don't agree with their party line.
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.
You are misrepresenting their position. They don't think that "being gay" is immoral, they think that people choose to have gay sex and they consider that choice to be immoral; in Christianity, morality is about the choices you make and the actions you take.
And they generally aren't saying that that choice should be made illegal, they are saying that it shouldn't be promoted or subsidized or encouraged by government.
almost two decades. That's if you want to accept there was any at all in the 90's with the computer models. All of that is up to debate and moce and more evidence has been released to show the data was fudged. (To be generous)
Second, NASA shouldn't be concerned in the least with "global warming" or "global cooling" or any other bullshit. NASA can't even put an astronaut in the space station. We have to pay the Russians for that. You think about that for a minute.
Third, without being political, google what the three things the previous president charged Charles Bolden, the head of NASA, to do. I'll give you a hint' none of the three were about space.
Charles Bolden, a retired United States Marines Corps major-general and former astronaut, said in an interview with al-Jazeera that Nasa was not only a space exploration agency but also an "Earth improvement agency".
Mr Bolden said: "When I became the Nasa administrator, he [Mr Obama] charged me with three things.
"One, he wanted me to help reinspire children to want to get into science and math; he wanted me to expand our international relationships; and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering."
NASA should not be politcial.
I think having good political and management qualifications is far more important than having scientific qualifications when leading large teams of scientists.
And a politician and manager is far more likely to be able get the scientists at NASA what they need than a scientist in a suit. That's because a politician and manager can listen to the people who work for them and communicate their needs to Congress. And he can do that without letting his own scientific biases and preferences influence his actions.
"Putting in someone whose primary qualifications are political rather than scientific is very suboptimal;"
That seems to be a logical assertion, but I'm not sure it's proved to be true.
Putting former astronauts and scientists in charge HASN'T seemed to have caused NASA to flourish, has it? Maybe because these individuals *didn't* understand the *politics* necessary to succeed in the intensely political atmosphere of Washington DC?
I mean, the NASA admin isn't designing space craft and piloting rockets: he or she is a BUREAUCRAT, begging other bureaucrats for money and other resources. Seems like a position where a politician might be more successful.
-Styopa
Take a look at this image. If someone says "the science is settled", then they are clearly NOT being scientific. At best you may have an idea, but to call it settled - when we're seeing the EXACT SAME THING repeating itself over 60 year cycles, is the antithesis of science.
Skepticism used to be the foundation of science; now it's badgered and attacked as "anti-science".
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
What you want at the helm of NASA is someone who is enthusiastic about the agency, who knows how to schmooze the right people (especially Congress – and yes, you can take this as a pun, presently), who can advertise NASA, who respects the input from the scientific community (he said he would do that), who does not get too much in the way of the inner workings but recognises when NASA screws up and helps set the ship right (yes, NASA screws up more than you think).
Being a scientist is most of the time not a good qualification in itself – those guys sit already one level down. Listening to and accepting advice from scientists (internal and external), on the other hand, is vital for that position. You also do not want a bean counter (if that's all they do), or someone who does not care.
Even if I don't agree with Bridenstine, he is definitely enthusiastic about the job and really wanted it. NASA administrator is not the jumping board to become the next president (or senator). Bridenstine is fairly young. Wanting to lead a 20+ billion USD agency that is full of people smarter than you is a bit nuts. But, because of that, it's also the #1 federal agency in terms of employee satisfaction, and it's still "cool".
NASA could have done a lot worse. This will be nothing like the EPA or CDC, for example. I would predict that NASA will mostly continue on its path (which is having to do too much with too little money to do it). Maybe it even helps that he comes from Congress. Congress holds the purse strings, and one of the worst problems of NASA, which needs to engage in long term projects, is the eternal budget uncertainty.
I'd give him a chance. Just imagine it would not be him but Rick Perry ...
Do your own thing. And overdo it!
they matter lots. You do know we use satellites to monitor climate change, right? You do realize he's in a position to control access to said satellites, right?
You claim he's anti-science, because he's skeptical of AGW. You do know that those same satellites basically show that any heating is much, much less than modeled, right? So why would he turn off access?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
That's true. For some stuff. But "climate science" is not part of it. Or, maybe, it is — and we simply ought to apply tar-and-feathers to the quacks professing to be "climate scientists".
All of the "peers" you are talking about are drawing their salaries from the governments. US alone spends four times more on "climate research" today, than we did in 1993.
Even if one of these guys does have the results you want, no peer will vouch for it, because such results will mean, 75% of them will need to look for new jobs. It is called conflict of interest — and it works the same way, whether the study's subject is "is pasta good for you" or "do we need to ban farting".
No, for it to be accepted as valid science, a discipline needs to not only explain the past, but also predict the future. Internet is full of failed predictions by these people (my personal favorite), but there aren't any successful ones...
Are you aware of any? Please, post pairs of links: one link in each pair going to a meaningful prediction, another — to it coming true (within, say, 20% of the predicted value, if quantifiable). To qualify, the linked-to articles must be a few years apart from each other.
Wow... So, medicine and climate are disciplines in the same standing with you? One could be more wrong than you are, but it is difficult...
What if I told you, "climate science" is not even falsifiable — by the some practitioners' own admissions?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Dr. Roy Spencer was a NASA scientist and worked at the University of Alabama Huntsville. No "global company" there. The satellite record is pretty straight-forward. Just because it doesn't fit with your concept doesn't mean it should be trashed; rather, we should continue looking for what is really happening, and try to understand why models often diverge from data. Look no further than my sig line, from Dr. Phil Jones, who lead the CRU Anglia, one of the biggest proponents of the IPCC models. The 1910-1940 warming was statistically the same as 1975-1998. Wouldn't that at least cause you a little pause to figure out how much of the heating we're seeing is natural, or even if it's real?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
True, but what that means is that other folks should always be looking for other theories that might better fit the data. Unfortunately, most of the folks on the other side seem to think that "unsettled" means "I can ignore this because it is inconvenient," which is not the same thing.
No, not at all. That's the strawman constructed and attacked. Go check out Watts Up With That, and you'll find 99.9% of the posters acknowledge some warming, but are skeptical that it is all man-made and it all comes from CO2. Rather, the appearance of trends as I linked tend to show a high likelihood that much of the warming is natural. So perhaps we need to re-think our priorities and budgetary allocations based upon data, rather than models that simply do not match the real world.
The problem is that their alternative explanations only fit the data over a very short period of time [skepticalscience.com], geologically speaking. These theories have been debunked repeatedly by trivial comparison with the actual data.
Actually, no. Not a single IPCC model accounts for the rise of temperature from 1890 to 1940, then the plunge from 1945 to 1975, let alone the general pause in the 2000s. However, there are models that correlate nicely with the past and also have predicted - more reliably than the IPCC models - the current 2000s. They come from geologists, though, not from climatologists. In fact, looking at past inter-glacial periods, we see a continual cyclic pattern of ever-increasing temperatures until the entire system "flips" into deep cooling. In other words - what we see today, is not unprecedented.
That said, there's a lot we don't know. It is possible (nay, almost certain) that we will eventually hit an equilibrium point at which more plants are growing, and the temperature change levels off.
When it levels off, that's when it starts falling. A few hundred million years says that's the way it happens. Typically glaciated over most of the Northern hemisphere, with occasional blips of warmth - like we have now.
The big unanswered questions are how many major cities will be underwater when it does, whether we will have enough arable land to feed the earth's population as temperatures and rain patterns shift, and whether the cost of reducing our greehouse gas emissions exceeds the cost of dealing with the effects of climate change over the long term. And *that* is where there is a lot of room for speculation, debate, etc.
Sea levels historically happened 4X faster than now, food production is skyrocketing, and there still isn't any real effect from increasing CO2.
Rather than sweat over something that has NOT been shown to be a cause of disaster (CO2 increases driving climate change), I fully agree with Bjorn Lomborg that we should look to spend our money on real, defined, understood problems.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!