This will be a top sticky post for a day or two, new stories will appear below this one.
At the Heartland Conference in Chicago this morning, four of the forty-nine signers of the March letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden (discussed at WUWT here, here, and here) appeared to discuss their reasons for signing that letter and to announce a second letter responding to NASA’s response.
The text of that letter is reproduced below:
May 11, 2012
The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr. NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001
Dear Charlie:
In our letter of March 28, 2012, we, the undersigned, respectfully requested that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites.
On April 11th, Dr. Waleed Abdalati responded, holding that: “As an agency, NASA does not draw conclusions and issue ‘claims’ about research findings.”
Eight days later, at a senate hearing, Dr. Abdalati, did just that, concluding that Sea-Level rise within the next 87 years projects within a range of 0.2 meters to 2 meters, with lower ranges less likely while “the highest values are based on warmest of the temperature scenarios commonly considered for the remainder of the 21st century.” Abdalati added: “The consequences of a 1 meter rise in sea level by the end of this century would be very significant in terms of human well-being and economics, and potentially global socio-political stability.”
The range and imprecision of this conclusion is astounding!
“Commonly considered?” Is this science by poll? If hard data points to a provable rise, it should be stated with its probability. Can you imagine one of your predecessors, Dr. Thomas Paine, declaring, “Our Apollo 11 Lunar Lander’s target is the Sea of Tranquility, but we may make final descent within a range that includes Crater Clavius”?
We are not trying to stifle discourse, but undisciplined commentary, lacking in precision, is wholly inappropriate when NASA’s name and reputation is attached.
This letter should end the discussion, as a protracted discourse on this topic is not in NASA’s interest, but a commitment from you to equal or exceed the agency’s reputation for careful reliance upon rigorous science and accurate data most certainly is!
Join us, please, in encouraging your colleagues to achieve the level of excellence the world has come to expect from America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration!
Waiting to do so is not an option!
[signed 41]
PS Waiting to send was not an option either –we have fewer signatures than the first, as not everyone was reachable and only one opted out.
/s/ Jack Barneburg, Jack – JSC, Space Shuttle Structures, Engineering Directorate, 34 years
/s/ Larry Bell – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Cargo Engineering, Crew Syst. Div. 32 years
/s/ Jerry C. Bostick – JSC, Director of Mission Support, 23 years
/s/ Dr. Phillip K. Chapman – JSC, Scientist – astronaut, 5 years
/s/ Michael F. Collins, JSC, Chief, Flight Design and Dynamics Div., MOD, 41 years
/s/ Dr. Kenneth Cox – JSC, Chief Flight Dynamics Div., Engr. Directorate, 40 years
/s/ Walter Cunningham – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 7, 8 years
/s/ Dr. Donald M. Curry – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Leading Edge, Thermal Protection Sys., Engr. Dir., 44 years
/s/ Leroy Day – Hdq. Deputy Director, Space Shuttle Program, 19 years
/s/Charles F. Deiterich – JSC, Mgr., Flight Operations Integration, MOD, 30 years
/s/ Dr. Harold Doiron – JSC, Chairman, Shuttle Pogo Prevention Panel, 16 years
/s/ Grace Germany – JSC, Program Analyst, 35 years
/s/ Richard Gordon – JSC, Astronaut, Gemini Xi, Apollo 12, 9 years
/s/ Gerald D. Griffin – JSC, Apollo Flight Director, and Director of Johnson Space Center, 22 years
/s/ Thomas M. Grubbs – JSC, Chief, Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Branch, 31 years
/s/ David W. Heath – JSC, Reentry Specialist, MOD, 30 years
/s/ Miguel A. Hernandez, Jr. PE – JSC, Flight crew training and operations, 14 years
/s/ Enoch Jones – JSC, Mgr. SE&I, Shuttle Program Office, 26 years
/s/ Dr. Joseph Kerwin – JSC, Astronaut, Skylab 2, Director of Space and Life Sciences, 22 years
/s/ Jack Knight – JSC, Chief, Advanced Operations and Development Div., MOD, 40 years
/s/ Dr. Christopher C. Kraft – JSC, Apollo Flight Director and Director of Johnson Space Center, 24 years
/s/ Paul C. Kramer – JSC, Ass’t. for Planning Aeroscience and Flight Mechanics Div., Egr. Dir., 34 years
/s/ Dr. Lubert Leger – JSC, Ass’t. Chief Materials Div., Engr. Directorate, 30 years
/s/ Dr. Humbolt C. Mandell – JSC, Mgr. Shuttle Program Control and Advance Programs, 40 years
/s/ Donald K. McCutchen – JSC, Project Engineer – Space Shuttle and ISS Program Offices, 33 years
/s/ Richard McFarland – ARC, Mgr. Tech development VMS & Motion Simulators, 28 years
/s/ Thomas L. (Tom) Moser – Hdq. Dep. Assoc. Admin. & Director, Space Station Program, 28 years
/s/ Dr. George Mueller – Hdq., Assoc. Adm., Office of Space Flight, 6 years
/s/ James Peacock – JSC, Apollo and Shuttle Program Office, 21 years
/s/ Alex Pope – JSC, Aerospace Engineer, Engr. Directorate, 44 years
/s/ Joseph E. Rogers – JSC, Chief, Structures and Dynamics Branch, Engr. Directorate,40 years
/s/ Bernard J. Rosenbaum – JSC, Chief Engineer, Propulsion and Power Div., Engr. Dir., 48 years
/s/ James R. Roundtree – JSC, Sim. Dev. Branch Chief, Systems Dev. Div., Mission Support Dir., 26 years
/s/ Dr. Harrison (Jack) Schmitt – JSC, Astronaut Apollo 17, 10 years
/s/ Kenneth Suit – JSC, Ass’t Mgr., Systems Integration, Space Shuttle, 37 years
/s/ Robert F. Thompson – JSC, Program Manager, Space Shuttle, 44 years
/s/ Frank Van Renesselaer – Hdq.– Dir. Expendable Equipment (Ext. Tank, Solid Boosters, & Shuttle Upper Stages), 20 years
/s/ James Visentine – JSC Materials Branch, Engr. Directorate, 30 years
/s/ Manfred (Dutch) von Ehrenfried – JSC, Flight Controller; Mercury, Gemini & Apollo, MOD, 10 years
/s/ Al Worden – JSC, Astronaut, Apollo 15, 9 years
/s/ Thomas (Tom) Wysmuller – ARC, GSFC, Hdq. – Meteorologist, 5 years
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If these letter signers disagree with the estimated sea level rise, perhaps they should do their own work, publish and then their views on sea level rise would also be included in the discussion, possibly reducing the uncertainty which they criticize.
metzomagic:
At May 23, 2012 at 5:48 am you assert:
No!
Ignoring the ludicrous suggestion “that we could melt 1/7 of the Greenland ice sheet (or more) by the end of this century”, the melt water would need to leave the land for it to add to sea level.
But the Greenland ice sheet is in a natural bowl. If 1/7 of it were to melt then it would stay entrained in the bowl and not add to sea level.
Richard
The biggest waste of NASA money is that spent on James Hansen’s salary!
If this letter’s “end the discussion” guidelines had been adopted, then James Hansen’s 1981 article “Climate impact of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide” would never have been published. Which we now appreciate, would have been a disastrously bad policy for science, for NASA, and for America.
Because that 1981 Hansen article has led to a “protracted discourse” of 608 subsequent citations (and counting), that includes data from pretty much every kind of spacecraft that NASA orbits.
The results of *that* kind of protracted scientific discourse have been, and will continue to be, immensely valuable. So why seek to suppress it? The letter offers no good reasons.
What we need is precisely what James Hansen and his fellow scientists are advocating: more data, better data, and new kinds of data, from a new generation of earth-observing NASA satellites.
Because this is the fastest surest path — the *ONLY* path — to find out, for sure, whether Hansen’s predictions are right or wrong.
sceptical says:
May 23, 2012 at 7:36 am
If these letter signers disagree with the estimated sea level rise
=======
You missed the point.
I found this the most telling statement in the letter:
“If hard data points to a provable rise, it should be stated with its probability.”
As simple as that. Scientific data is being presented in an unscientific fashion. What they are objecting to is politics disguised as science, which has and will tarnish the reputations of scientists worldwide, because it reduces them to the servants of politicians. If you can’t trust politicians to tell the truth, how can you trust their servants to be less dishonest?
What we are seeing is politicians giving scientists money for research that will generate votes for the politicians, rather than research that will benefit the population. Thus scientists are forced towards science for political reasons if they want to get funding.
NASA’s space program, and most certainly the moon program generated much of the technology we see around us today. At the height of its success the program was cancelled and the funds siphoned off to do climate research using NASA’s facilities.
Given what was accomplished in less than 10 years, While the US was fighting a war in Vietnam, had the program been allowed to continue, 40 years on there is every reason to expect the US would today have bases on the Moon and Mars. Instead, given US debt levels and trends, there is every reason to suspect that the US will never return a manned mission to the moon much less colonize Mars.
.2 meters to 2 meters. Oh, my aching. . . something. I can just see NASA administrators thinking how good it would be for their reputations and the agency funding to have something really big and relevant about the home planet in their portfolio like Hansen’s work. Unfortunately, it’s going to end up inflicting a gaping wound on their credibility as scientists.
LazyTeenager says:
May 23, 2012 at 6:26 am
Beats clucking around like a coward.
garymount says:
May 23, 2012 at 2:52 am
“Dave Worley says: May 22, 2012 at 5:29 pm
We need a base on the moon. A real one, not a virtual one.
— — —
If China sets up a base on the moon, would that fulfill your requirements?”
That will surely be a sad day for America.
I hope we can turn this around.
A fan of *MORE* discourse says – “What we need is precisely what James Hansen and his fellow scientists are advocating: more data, better data, and new kinds of data, from a new generation of earth-observing NASA satellites.”
Are you willing to pay for the extra cost of those next gen Earth Observing NA$A Toy$? The extra cost over what NA$A is supposed to be doing.
I am not! I am already paying the Taxes for our Family and the Taxes of two other Families.
PS: Unless you are paying at least $7,500 per year in Federal Taxes; then you ain’t paying your share. And if you are not, then you should not have a say in the spending of the extra Taxes collected from those of us who are.
Only fools can fail to grasp the significance of this, only con artists can pretend otherwise at this point. Unfortunately, we suffer from an abundance of both.
LazyTeenager says:
Cmon guys lets be realistic. These astronaut guys are “the right stuff”. They sit at the top a bomb made of several hundred tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen and say “no worries”. Someone gets Mhysterical and claims that cold o-rings leak and they say “no worries”.
If these guys say “no worries” I am going to bet its extremely dangerous.
———————————————————————
Buddy, this has to be the lamest thing I’ve ever read in my entire life. Surely you can do better.
Is it really the thrust of your argument to say that these people can’t be relied on because they have the courage, dedication, and integrity to risk their lives on their certainty of the science and engineering behind that bomb they ride?
Maybe climate scientists ought to take a page out of their book and show us what they’re made of for a change. I’m sick of Michael Manns and Peter Gleick. When did the plague of lice start? How come we haven’t disinfected yet?
Puhleeze.
🙄 🙄 🙄
Not everyone agrees with your policy, Darren. Not to mention, earth-observation is by a huge margin the cheapest class of NASA mission.
LazyTeenager says:
May 23, 2012 at 6:26 am
Cmon guys lets be realistic. These astronaut guys are “the right stuff”. They sit at the top a bomb made of several hundred tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen and say “no worries”. Someone gets hysterical and claims that cold o-rings leak and they say “no worries”.
If these guys say “no worries” I am going to bet its extremely dangerous.
I will (politely) remind you that it was the consensus-seeking NASA Administrators (NOT the astronauts nor NASA engineers!) who were under POLITICAL pressure to get that (politically-consensus-popular) teacher into space for the political-popular-consensus exposure and government-funding for NASA from other consensus-seeking politicians.
The most responsible engineers trying to delay the launch until temperatures warmed up WERE overridden in their concerns by “your” consensus-hungry” NASA administrators and company managers. Astronauts – the early astronauts were all test pilots and most also war-proven “aces” who faced real-world combat – are more fully capable of recognizing stress, risk, and rewards than you. Their lives depend on it. And notice that their opponents (who had to face those same stressed and threats under the same conditions) died in that same combat at a greater than 5:1 ratio. Today, almost all astronauts have Masters in Engineering, Science, or medicine; and many have post-doc experience as PhD’s, plus flight time and lab time and research time: Thus they are more qualified in their fields and in science in general than any so-called “climate science moralist” lapping up his government-funded money studying (preaching!) his religion of CAGW.
And, by the way, the “solutions” to your precious consensus-rewarding CAGW theory are guaranteed to destroy billions of people’s lives and murder millions of innocents through poverty, disease, and hunger … based solely on the “possible chance” of perhaps causing limited harm to who? Nobody.
Every one supposedly threatened by the 10 to 20 cm of sea level rise can be saved at almost no cost. If they live that long – if they are not killed by the CAGW “solutions” of disease, cold, hunger, poverty, despair and death you prefer.
lazyteenager
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/05/22/nasa-astronauts-announce-second-letter-to-nasa-at-heartland-conference/#comment-991813
Henry says
why don’t you stop being so lazy and bring us some proof from actual testing that you did yourself proving to me and yourself that earth is warming due to man’s presence?
http://www.letterdash.com/henryp/global-cooling-is-here
http://www.letterdash.com/HenryP/more-carbon-dioxide-is-ok-ok
A fan of *MORE* discourse says – “Darren Potter argues (in effect): “Ignorant discourse is far cheaper than informed discourse”
Neither discourse produces results, only more arguments. Hence one might as well be smart about it and not waste money just to have a so called informed argument that still results in nothing.
Unfortunately for Taxpayers, proponents of AGW want to have very expensive informed, yet pointless and needless arguments. (In effect) proponents of AGW want billions in funding to argue their faux belief that the Earth is flat.
Summary: Proponents of AGW don’t want to be smart about it.
The astronauts at Heartland, 22 May 2012. I humbly suggest this link is posted at the top.
http://www.livestream.com/heartlandinstitute/video?clipId=pla_5d8043c1-de6d-4fed-843b-fab526cfb605&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb
Hahahahahaha!! You are a genuine joke sceptical. Write a paper, get reviewed, publish and then it will… What? Be cited in a couple of decades as accurate science unlike the CAGW rubbish? Or immediately slimed as deniers as soon as the false scientists or troll reviwers falsely attack it? Why would these nobel scientists want to undergo the falsehoods immediately or have their names cleared in the future? They’ve said their piece, and by the way, it ain’t about the sea level! It’s about taking an advocacy stand on poor science or weak information.
These scientists have already proved themselves! PERIOD! Squirmy slimey muck raking weasels aren’t good enough to question their actions without serious proof. Remember? Incredible claims requires incredible proof? Something that CAGW alarmists seem to universally refuse to provide is serious proof? Oh, they’re good at serious claims, just not any followup; well, outside of notifying the media before publishing.
Back to “…estimated sea level rise…”; to what purpose does anybody have anything definitive to say about this? Every supposedly alarming estimate of future sea level rise is predicated on some fools model and then tacked onto the actual sea level rise. When challenged, the actual sea level rise is postulated into the future and given as the minimum rise. Well, yeah; duh!
Of course it is the minimum sea level rise and we all accept it! The sea has been rising since the last glacial advances stopped, the only question is how much?. When sea level STOPS rising, then mankind has a genuine problem looming. A problem whose history we’ve deciphered from sediments and archeology. It ain’t a pretty picture for mankind, not unless you are an unusually hairy short limbed/fingered person with an extra fatcell layer under your epidermis.
SandyInDerby:
At May 23, 2012 at 5:42 am you express interest in the Biblical Flood.
As you say, the matter is off-topic, so I am only giving you this brief response so you can do a web search to find out more. Thus, you get a response which shows you have not been ignored here but the thread is not disrupted by a religious debate that would contravene the blog rules.
Many cultures contain ‘flood’ stories because great floods have often happened. And in the past ‘the world’ of a tribe was the geographical extent of that tribe.
The story of Noah is a variant of part of the Babylonian saga of Gilgamesh. It was probably acquired by the Israelites during their first exile. The Scribes collated it as part of the Old Testament cannon because it was a cultural myth which provides an assurance of God’s future care for the World. (Biblical myths are stories which tell a ‘truth’ but are not always historically or physically true; e.g. the Bible says a guy from Bethlehem – not David – killed Goliath but the Bible also includes the myth of David vs Goliath ).
Floods, droughts, heat waves and cold periods have always occurred. Relating any cultural myth to any specific historical event is usually a ‘fool’s errand’.
Richard
hen says:
May 22, 2012 at 4:51 pm
amazing about those signatories, not one climate scientist! Do any of these people study climatology?
===============================================================
High school education is sufficient to debunk the global warming swindle.
NASA isn’t NASA anymore – it’s a tool of the AGWScienceFiction department. I’ll post the link here where I found that NASA was no longer teaching the direct heat from the Sun reaches the Earth’s surface, now it teaches that shortwave light heats land and oceans, impossible physics – when before it used to teach correctly that it was the invisible thermal infrared, direct from the Sun which we actually experience as heat and which actually heats us up, and the land and oceans.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/28/spencer-and-braswell-on-slashdot/#comment-711886
I’m really saddened that a whole generation has been indoctrinated with this fake fisics, that they no longer know the difference between light and heat and think the atmosphere around is empty space. This fictional world of the KT97 “Greenhouse Effect” energy budget is deliberately designed to sell the idea of carbon dioxide heating the Earth, it is full of nonsense made up fisics, it is missing the water cycle to create the sleight of hand that greenhouse gases warm the Earth.
Think deserts, in the real world it’s the Water Cycle which brings down temps, from around c67°C to the 15°C – the ‘greenhouse gas warming of 33°C’ claim of AGW is a sleight of hand which figure they get from the temp of the Earth with no atmosphere at all, -18°C to 15°C with atmosphere; water is the main ‘greenhouse gas’, it cools the Earth.
Do you know who came up with the ludicrous notion that oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide are ideal gases in this cartoon? [Without weight, volume and attraction – and so not subject to gravity and therefore ‘spontaneously diffusing into the atmosphere to mix thoroughly travelling at great speeds through empty space bouncing off other hard dot imaginary molecules’, and so carbon dioxide, which in the real world is heavier than air, ‘accumulating for hundreds and even thousands of years’ in this fictional empty space atmosphere so thoroughly mixed it can’t be separated out without work.]
None of those who belief this is real physics could ever have got a rocket onto the moon..
richardscourtney says:
May 23, 2012 at 12:53 pm
I think you confirm my thoughts, but I have seen the flooding of the Black Sea via the Med. put forward as a serious proposition, which doesn’t add up for me. The oldest known towns are about 10000 years old, meaning that people were sophisticated enough to record (even if initially orally) stories of the ending of the ice age and proper global warming. So these stories will be based in actual events, the problem occurs when we try to apply them to our pet theories.
Anyway I won’t divert the thread anymore.
Sandy.
Sun TV Canada with Ezra Levant has been showing a 1 hour piece on the Heartland conference. Two of the Nasa Astronauts were interviewed by Ezra along with a few other Global warming realists. Good piece of work by Sun TV.
re: Black Sea flood
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html
meanwhile, this is what is exercising the MSM:
23 May: Marketwatch: Heat-Related U.S. Deaths Projected to Rise 150,000 by Century’s End Due to Climate Change
NRDC’s “Killer Summer Heat” Report Estimates Heat Death in Top 40 Cities
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/heat-related-us-deaths-projected-to-rise-150000-by-centurys-end-due-to-climate-change-2012-05-23
RACookPE1978 says
I will (politely) remind you that it was the consensus-seeking NASA Administrators (NOT the astronauts nor NASA engineers!)
———–
Well looking at these guys qualifications and not knowing NASA’s organizational structure I would suspect these guys are the administrators you are throwing mud at.