Everybody and their cousin has already posted on this, so I won't spend a lot of time on it, but yesterday on NPR, NASA administrator Michael Griffin said some extraordinarily stupid things. To wit:
I'm aware that global warming exists. ... Whether that is a longterm concern or not, I can't say.
...
... I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown. And second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings -- where and when -- are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.
Ah, yes, who's to decide that rising sea levels, droughts, intense storms, water shortages, species migrations and extinctions, and the spread of disease are bad? What is "bad," really? Who decides? Who knows whether a climate that humanity has never encountered in its entire evolutionary history might not be better? Gosh, it's pure arrogance to attempt answer these questions, much less take action.
Who knew relativism was so popular at NASA?
Anyway, as James Hansen says, "It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change."
Contrast Griffin's comments to the results of a new study from ... NASA, which concludes that we are perilously close to a set of climate tipping points, and "only moderate additional climate forcing is likely to set in motion disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet and Arctic sea ice." That's just one of a number of new studies pointing the same direction. Apparently ...
... new research shows that models in the [IPCC] report underestimate some changes that are already under way. Sea ice is melting and sea level is rising faster than models had predicted, and one brake on warming, the uptake of CO2 by oceans, appears not to be working as well as scientists had thought.
Yes, but who's to say that intact major ice sheets are "optimal"? So arrogant!
‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science
Cast your vote for the best climate journalism
Comments
View as Flat
JMG Posted 5:49 am
31 May 2007
Ooops, I'm sorry, I know we're not supposed to note the astounding parallels between this time and another era of unreality where dissent was attacked as unpatriotic and the good soldier bureaucrats hid behind opaque language.
http://metaphorical.wordpress.com/2006/12/20/orwells-essa ...
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007 ...
Very well then, let's just stop being so shrill and let Herr Griffin and the gang keep obfuscating and emitting those clouds of ink while they carry out the final solution to climate question.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Delay And Deny Posted 6:10 am
31 May 2007
After having gotten up early in the morning for all the Apollo launches and then being disappointed by the bloated Space Shuttle, I am again inspired by the wise words of Michael Griffin.
It gives me hope that a top science administrator can speak the plain scientific truth.
A real person.
Not a committee forced to kowtow.
God Bless America!
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:26 am
31 May 2007
Claiming that it was warmer than temperature are now.
When there is no valid evidence that points towards the opposite.
According to the US National Academy of Sciences:
"None of the large-scale surface temperature reconstructions show medieval temperatures as warm as the last few decades of the 20th century."
http://www.climateofdenial.net/?q=node/3
And frankly, no it wasn't hotter.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/noitwasnthotter.png
Here's a bit testimony about the "hockey stick" sitation.
http://www.greyfalcon.net/hockey
And here's a couple of the discredited reports:
http://www.greyfalcon.net/hockey.png
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Andrew Dessler Posted 6:55 am
31 May 2007
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caniscandida Posted 6:56 am
31 May 2007
It is curious that "grist for the mill" is one of the uncertainly understood metaphors that he wishes we would expel.
As for Michael Griffin, I guess he was the same NASA administrator who was talking to the press a lot after the recent space shuttle disaster; and he struck me then as somebody who would say or do anything to survive. And perhaps that can be fit nicely into Hannah Arendt's category of "the banality of evil."
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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sunflower Posted 7:12 am
31 May 2007
If business controls the government then business controls NASA. Business has a choice. Either they can make a profit from the price of carbon, or they can profit from no price on carbon. Are we experiencing the seeds of a business civil war in Griffins, or is it just Griffins?
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frostica Posted 7:44 am
31 May 2007
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JMG Posted 8:11 am
31 May 2007
I think grist is wrong to characterize these comments as "stupid". While I am an environmental attorney and advocate
For every environmental attorney trying to help preserve some of that climate stability for a while longer, there's a battalion or two paid handsomely to explain why it's just not practical ...
It would help in understanding your position to know whether you one of the few or the many?
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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pcarbo Posted 8:16 am
31 May 2007
Imagine if we adopted the same attitude for everything in life: tuberculosis is natural, so there's no point doing anything about it; earthquakes are an act of God, so we shouldn't try to stop them from destroying our cities---even if we survive this one, a bigger one will eventually wreak havoc; I wasn't born smart enough, so no point studying for this math test, especially when Seinfeld is on!
There were naysayers at every time in human history, that this or that couldn't be done because it's too daunting or because we haven't done it before, or because we can't change the current course of events. Utter b-s!
You're right, frostica. Those comments were not stupid. They were perfectly rational. But it is also rational to be selfish and lazy.
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:20 am
31 May 2007
Yes it's changing, but not nearly this hot, or this fast in any time in the last 6 ice ages.
There is no "natural" explaination for the warming we are experiencing.
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sunflower Posted 8:41 am
31 May 2007
Climate change has happened in the past. It will happen again. Why worry?
Are these new talking points?
Embedded I smell the 'smart adaptable will benefit and evolve humanity'.
The final solution. It is bullspit.
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wiscidea Posted 9:20 am
31 May 2007
I do hope Mr. Griffin can display the same spirt of accepting God's will when the rabble pick up their pitch forks and storm the citadels of power. After all, "... which human beings -- where and when -- are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate [or political system or economic system or social order] that we have right here today, right now is the best climate [system or order] for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position..."
Forward!
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SustainableGreen Posted 11:35 am
31 May 2007
I read such things and realize the echelons of government have been turned on their heads and those who rise to the top are in fact incompetent--which does not prevent them from being evil and dangerous.
To extend the Orwell essay, which is actually timeless in its application, here in my opinion is one of the most frightening passages in all of literature:
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word `doublethink' involved the use of doublethink. -- George Orwell, "doublethink", from "1984"
We are in the gutter of public discourse.
Griffin is not stupid, but nearly so, and certainly a greatly tortured minor intellect. But he is also the product of a cookie cutter corporate oligarchy industry that values precisely that product.
Hell is much too good for all of us.
David
Sustainability For Life
Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!
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JohnCaley Posted 4:21 pm
31 May 2007
only those at the top ?
well well, the incompetency goes all the way, top to bottom
and no one is concerned, because they are all looking in the same mirror. Unaware is a better descriptor, blissfully unaware !
Mr. Griffin is actually correct even though he has no idea at all.
Record breaking "air temperatures" are common, but the records are only consistent with clear sky days, and recorded in seasons outside summer.
Please list all the air temperature records measured in the middle of summer.
Please post this years list of record breaking rainfalls/snowfalls
World wide results would be nice, thanks.
So prove to me the world has a CO2 emission problem.
The only problem with Mr Griffin is that he is totally unaware that the world's climate is not heading towards semi tropical paradise
The world is hurtling towards a Snowball Earth.
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frostica Posted 2:34 am
01 Jun 2007
My main point is that this entire movement to address climate change is a matter of preserving the status quo so that we can continue to enjoy the bounty that the earth currently provides us. I am selfish just like all humans, so I would like to see the environment preseved so that I, and my descendants, can continue to enjoy its wonders. I did not take Michael Griffin's comments as a suggestion that we should sit back and do nothing, but instead a recognition that there is a limit to what we humans can and should do to control our universe.
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Lives per gallon Posted 2:30 pm
01 Jun 2007
Thank you!!
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ffletcher Posted 2:38 pm
01 Jun 2007
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wackatalpidae Posted 4:08 pm
01 Jun 2007
There should be an independent climate monitoring department with it own satellites and stuff so they don't waste money on Mars and Jupiter. Who cares what the weather is like on Venus. Nobody is going there anytime soon.
Enough exploring other planets and deep oceans. Try exploring your back yard. Nothin' useful will be learned in space. Read a book. We know everything we need to know. Build a house, grow vegetables, and have babies. No more to life than that.
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Sam Wells Posted 6:30 am
02 Jun 2007
But least understood part of our planet is the ocean. While scientists continue kinding more alien-like residents of the great depths of the oceans, it seems that biodiversity density is much lowered - such as the near extinction of Bluefin Tuna. Researchers are just starting to figure out that our impact on the oceans could have related impacts on the atmosphere as well. The roles of upwelling, dead zones, and harmful algae blooms are not fully understood, and there is even some concern that polar ice-melt could have some very strange impacts that we had not anticipated.
Most ocean temperature data is taken at the surfave within 3 meters of the surface. Mean temp departures show very warm Atlantic sea surface temperatures in the ITCZ, which could assist in forming hurricanes. The extent to which this anomaly is related to Global Warming is not fully known. The secrets are several miles down in the ocean, mon. /sammie
Onward through the fog
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tico89 Posted 3:11 pm
02 Jun 2007
This is also totally irrelevant.
I wasn't aware that anyone was arguing that climate doesn't change naturally, or that there is such a thing as optimum climate. I thought all this fuss was about human-induced warming exceeding normal climate cycles. Isn't optimum climate what the earth decides, rather than what humans decide? Isn't the truly arrogant viewpoint to say that the earth is just going to have to put up with what humans fire at it?
Damn, I must have been on completely the wrong track.
If I share initials with 'Global Warming', is that a sign?
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:13 am
03 Jun 2007
ABC Only Quotes Scientists Displeased With NASA Chief's Global Warming Statement
http://newsbusters.org/node/13159
In the article, Blakemore and co-author Clayton Sandell chose not to interview anyone that agreed with Griffin's views, even as a press release was being distributed by "scientists from around the world who came to Griffin's support":
Said Dr. Walter Starck, an Australian marine scientist, "Griffin makes an important distinction between the scientific findings of climate change and dramatic predictions of catastrophic consequences accompanied by policy demands. The former can be evaluated by its evidence, but; the latter rest only on assertions and claims to authority. Alternate predictions of benefits from projected changes have been proposed with comparable authority and plausibility."
[...]
Another Australian, who testified before a Senate panel last year, Professor Robert Carter, observed, "My main reaction to Michael Griffin is to congratulate him on his clear-sightedness, not to mention his courage in speaking out on such a controversial topic."
Dr. Tim Ball, a Canadian climatologist, responded: "Griffin's statement is sensible because it allows time for the testing of the man-made global warming hypothesis to continue as it should."
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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wiscidea Posted 12:11 am
04 Jun 2007
"... which human beings -- where and when -- are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position..."
Why is it "arrogant" to decide that we should put a stop to actions that are adding to global climate instability, but NOT "arrogant" to believe it is okay for humans to dramatically alter Earth's climate, ecology, and biodiversity? I find it problematic that Dubbya, Bush administration stooges, and their followers are quick to get all philosophical, teary-eyed, and wise when it conveniently supports the aristocracy, but are not willing to engage in a full intellectual discussion of ALL of our actions and whether they are wise, appropriate, and just.
Forward!
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ac5p Posted 7:26 am
11 Jun 2007
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wiscidea Posted 7:34 am
11 Jun 2007
And if not scientists, who?
Forward!
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