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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.
Sig not found.
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).
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.
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 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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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.
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
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!
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!