50 Former Astronauts and Scientists Denounce NASA Stance on Global Warming

PolicyMic

A group of nearly 50 very prominent NASA scientists and astronauts has issued a public letter to current NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Jr., requesting that NASA stop supporting unsubstantiated claims of manmade global warming.
The letter reads in part:

"We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled."

The letter goes on to say: "The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements."

Co-signers of the letter include Dr. Christopher C. Kraft, former Director of Johnson Space Center for 24 years and the man responsible for saving the crew of Apollo 13, along with several Apollo astronauts and scientists. The “tens of thousands of other scientists” to which the letter refers can be found at the site petitionproject.org. Presently the petition has over 31,000 signatures of scientists, of which over 9,000 are PhDs. Several other prominent climate scientists who reject the concept of manmade global warming or its consequences are also listed within Wikipedia.

This comes on the heels of a Wall Street Journal report that explains how some urban planning commissions are preventing the construction of single family homes in favor of ultra-dense housing complexes that pack more than 30 families into a square acre of space over fears of global warming. Yale University professor Karen Seto, who was interviewed on the subject as an attendee of the Planet Under Pressure 2012 conference in London stated, “We certainly don’t want them [ordinary people] strolling about the entire countryside. We want them to save land for nature by living closely [together].”

Given that the UN’s Agenda 21 has the goal of essentially reducing global standards of living in order to prevent manmade climate change, the warning by these NASA scientists over unsettled science should give everyone pause. The Climategate emails revealed that the computer models used by the CRU, NASA and other institutions which support the reduction of living standards to abate global warming, are based in large part on proxy data which has been manipulated to support the theory of manmade global warming in a very unscrupulous manner by the scientists involved.

NASA Study Acknowledges Solar Cycle, Not Man, Responsible for Past Warming

Daily Tech

Report indicates

Past studies have shown that sunspot numbers
correspond to warming or cooling trends. The
twentieth century has featured heightened activity,
indicating a warming trend.  (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

solar cycle has been impacting Earth since the Industrial Revolution
Some researchers believe that the

/article12804.htm" title="Experimental Link Found Between Sun and Climate">solar cycle influences global climate changes.  They attribute recent warming trends to cyclic variation.  Skeptics, though, argue that there's little hard evidence of a solar hand in recent climate changes.

Now, a new research report from a surprising source may help to lay this skepticism to rest.  A study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth's climate.  The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution.

Solar activity has shown a major spike
in the twentieth century, corresponding
to global warming. This cyclic variation
was acknowledged by a recent NASA study,
which reviewed a great deal of past
climate data.  (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Past research has shown that the sun goes through eleven year cycles.  At the cycle's peak, solar activity occurring near sunspots is particularly intense, basking the Earth in solar heat.  According to Robert Cahalan, a climatologist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, "Right now, we are in between major ice ages, in a period that has been called the Holocene."

Thomas Woods, solar scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder concludes, "The fluctuations in the solar cycle impacts Earth's global temperature by about 0.1 degree Celsius, slightly hotter during solar maximum and cooler during solar minimum.  The sun is currently at its minimum, and the next solar maximum is expected in 2012."

According to the study, during periods of solar quiet, 1,361 watts per square meter of solar energy reaches Earth's outermost atmosphere.  Periods of more intense activity brought 1.4 watts per square meter (0.1 percent) more energy.

While the NASA study acknowledged the sun's influence on warming and cooling patterns, it then went badly off the tracks.  Ignoring its own evidence, it returned to an argument that man had replaced the sun as the cause current warming patterns.  Like many studies, this conclusion was based less on hard data and more on questionable correlations and inaccurate modeling techniques.

The inconvertible fact, here is that even NASA's own study acknowledges that solar variation has caused climate change in the past.  And even the study's members, mostly ardent supports of AGW theory, acknowledge that the sun may play a significant role in future climate changes.

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