NASA Head Sorry For Global Warming Doubts

(CBS/AP)  The head of NASA told scientists and engineers that he regrets airing his personal views about global warming during a recent radio interview, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in the closed-door meeting Monday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena that "unfortunately, this is an issue which has become far more political than technical and it would have been well for me to have stayed out of it."

"All I can really do is apologize to all you guys ... I feel badly that I caused this amount of controversy over something like this," he said.

Griffin made headlines last week when he told a National Public Radio interviewer he wasn't sure global warming was a problem.

"I have no doubt that ... a trend of global warming exists," Griffin said on NPR. "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."

Griffin added: "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."

The radio interview angered some climate scientists, who called his remarks ignorant.

An international panel this year predicted that uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions could drive up global temperatures and trigger heat waves, devastating droughts and super storms. Observations by NASA satellites show evidence of rapidly melting glaciers and shrinking of critical marine plant life due to warmer seas.

Griffin reiterated that NASA's job was to provide scientific data on global warming and leave it up to policy makers to decide what to do with it.

Griffin told JPL workers he tried to separate his opinions during the NPR interview, but that it got "lost in the shuffle."

"Doing media interviews is an art. Their goal is usually to generate controversy because it sells interviews and papers and my goal is usually to avoid controversy," he said.

[rheola-2009]

Gaye5

Hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,

My name is Fred Singer. I am Professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and the founder and president of The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) in Fairfax, Virginia, a non-partisan, non-profit research group of independent scientists. We work without salaries and are not beholden to anyone or any organization. SEPP does not solicit support from either government or industry but relies on contributions from individuals and foundations.

We hold a skeptical view on the climate science that forms the basis of the National Assessment because we see no evidence to back its findings; climate model exercises are NOT evidence. Vice President Al Gore keeps referring to scientific skeptics as a "tiny minority outside the mainstream." This position is hard to maintain when more than 17,000 scientists have signed the Oregon Petition against the Kyoto Protocol because they see "no compelling evidence that humans are causing discernible climate change." etc, look it up for yourself...
Posted by Gaye5 at 08:31 AM : Jun 08, 2007

Surely you are joking, posting anything from this totally discredited fraud.

He also was employed by the tobacco industry to tell us all, that cigarettes were not responsible in any way for cancer.

You have blown any credibility you had by using his utterances.

[rheola-2009]

Gaye5

What really can be claimed is long term events that show a definitive trend.


Posted by rheola at 07:23 PM : Jun 07, 2007
+ report abuse

Take note Gaye

For example, the hammering Sydney and Newcastle are going through at present is a one off event,
I cannot imagine any clear thinking person who believes Global warming to be a problem, claiming this to be evidence of their beliefs.

However if a similar event happened in the relatively near future, then that could well begin to indicate a trend.

[gaye5]

bja8839, do you also live in Australia???

I am thrilled to see that there are other people on here who have also done more reading other than what the media pushes on us.....

National Assessment of the Potential Impact of Climate Change (NACC): Climate Change Impacts on the United States.

Hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,

My name is Fred Singer. I am Professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia and the founder and president of The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) in Fairfax, Virginia, a non-partisan, non-profit research group of independent scientists. We work without salaries and are not beholden to anyone or any organization. SEPP does not solicit support from either government or industry but relies on contributions from individuals and foundations.

We hold a skeptical view on the climate science that forms the basis of the National Assessment because we see no evidence to back its findings; climate model exercises are NOT evidence. Vice President Al Gore keeps referring to scientific skeptics as a "tiny minority outside the mainstream." This position is hard to maintain when more than 17,000 scientists have signed the Oregon Petition against the Kyoto Protocol because they see "no compelling evidence that humans are causing discernible climate change." etc, look it up for yourself...

[gaye5]

rheola, you said...it is so easy to pick one off events, and claim them as evidence.

Isn't this what some global warming people and scientists are doing..just that.. they take a model which they themselves have worked out and put it into the computer, and low and behold they come up with some data... The few qualified people that I have given are just as qualified as the ones you quote, they have telescopes and equipment to see what they are seeing.. so why are yours correct and the well qualified scientists that I quote are not, and just because space is limited here to give a mass of other info does not mean that what these men quote is a one off event... There are many scientists who think like this, yet some of the media wont print it... space does not permit me to give you the total other side, just look it up yourself as I did..
I am not saying that CO2's are not a problem, I am saying that there is a big possibility that there are also other factors which appear to come into play in all this, and if we dont look at all sides and only one then if there is an ongoing problem??? because of our stupidity and closed minds there is a possibility that we will cause the demise of the human race...we must look at ALL of the facts not just one...

[rheola-2009]

Gaye5

It is so easy to pick one off events, and claim them as evidence.

What really can be claimed is long term events that show a definitive trend.

[gaye5]

- Science Agogo: Global Warming Detected on Triton
There may not be much industrial pollution on Neptune's largest moon, but things are hotting up nonetheless. "At least since 1989, Triton has been undergoing a period of global warming," confirms astronomer James Elliot, professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Percentage-wise, it's a very large increase."
The simple fact is that throughout the ages the earth has swung wildly between a warm, wet, stable climate, to a cold, dry and windy one - long before the first fossil fuel was burned. The changes we are now witnessing are a walk in the park compared to the battering that our planet has taken in the past.

This is not a defense of the oil cartels or the Neo-Con wreckers, who would have every motivation to ignore global warming whether it is man-made or not.

Nor is it a blanket denial of the fact that the earth is getting very gradually hotter, but how do we reconcile global warming taking place at the farthest reaches of the solar system with the contention that it is caused by human activity? Have our exhaust fumes left earth's atmosphere and slipped through a black hole to Triton?

[gaye5]

It is strange to me that we are told that scientists all agree on global warming, when there are many scientists who dont agree with global warming, or that if we are warming that we are the sole cause..

How do we square the fact that almost every planet in our solar system is simultaneously undergoing temperature change and volatile weather patterns. Does this not suggest that global warming is a natural cycle as a result of the evolving nature of the sun? Can Al Gore fill me in on this one?

- Space.com: Global Warming on Pluto Puzzles Scientists
In what is largely a reversal of an August announcement, astronomers today said Pluto is undergoing global warming in its thin atmosphere even as it moves farther from the Sun on its long, odd-shaped orbit.

- Space.com: New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change
The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.
- Current Science & Technology Center: Global Warming on Mars?
A study of the ice caps on Mars may show that the red planet is experiencing a warming trend. If both Mars and Earth are experiencing global warming, then perhaps there is a larger phenomenon going on in the Solar System that is causing their global climates to change.

[gaye5]

I am repeating what someone wrote here because living in Australia it is so true...they said.

"The greenhouse industry and the media loves to announce weather records, especially 'hot' records (the hottest here, the driest there etc.), but become strangely silent when 'cold' records are broken (such as the coldest winter in 50 years this year in Russia). This morning (23 May 2001), Tasmania scored a record low temperature for May. Early this morning, Launceston Airport in northern Tasmania reached a minimum temperature of - 4.80C accompanied by a severe frost. According to
the Australian Bureau of Meteorology in Hobart, Tasmania, this is an all-time record low temperature for May. The previous record low for May was set on 31st May 1959 (the last day of autumn), with a temperature of -4.70 C."

[gaye5]

ghosttownsky you are so right, we must move to protect ourselves, but at the same time realise that if there is also other causes and we only listen to one cause, then we are not only stupid but we could be doomed..
Common sense tells me to listen to other scientists also, IF we are in fact in danger and it isnt just the normal flows of the earth, then this is tooo critical a situation to ignore.
We have to realise that it is only just in the 1970's, that some scientists were saying that we were at the beginning of another ice age... and I have heard that it is the same scientists who are now saying we have a global warming happening.

[gaye5]

rushlimpdrug... just because some scientists say that the ice caps are also melting on mars doesnt mean that it isnt true....

Michael Caplinger of Malin Space Science Systems. said...
Martian snow turns out to be rock hard. Worse, it is melting away at an alarming rate.

In fact, Mars may be in the midst of a period of profound climate change, according to a new study that shows dramatic year-to-year losses of snow at the south pole.

It is not yet clear, though, if the evidence of a single year's change represents a trend. But the study provides a surprising new view of the nature of the southern ice cap.
Mars Report: Snow is Hard, Dense and Disappearing
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 02:00 pm ET
06 December 2001
rushlimpdrug, Just look up 'Mars ice caps melting', but be careful as we dont want any info from non scientific places...