You Don't Mess with the Obama

Last month, I read with interest this piece in the Orlando Sentinel, detailing how the then-current head of NASA basically told Obama's people to shut the fuck up, telling the head of the transition team she was "not qualified" to speak of what NASA was doing. One of the administration's priorities is to cut NASA funding, including some of Griffin's pet projects, including a return to the moon.

Wise, wise strategy.

I don't think ideology should be a bigger consideration than competency in government service. I haven't really read anything that calls his competency in running NASA into doubt, but he gone.

Another comment Griffin made on NPR back in 2007 got him into some hot water as well. In an interview with Steve Inskeep he said,

I have no doubt that global -- that a trend of global warming exists. 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."

I don't find this comment horribly offensive. He gets the basic facts right, and comes to a different, yet still reasonable, conclusion than most.

I think we've all been in situations where you chafe from having to explain your position to a person who is completely unqualified to accurately judge its merits. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for a rocket scientist. That's why there should be a buffer of bullshit artists between the accountants and the engineers. This was his job, and he failed to provide a compelling reason for continuing some of NASAs projects because he felt it was beneath him to do so. So in that sense, he wasn't competent. Anybody who has headed a project can tell you he failed miserably. I feel for the guy, I really do, but you can't successfully run an agency like NASA like the political climate is still what it was in 1957.

Calling the person holding your checkbook an idiot is not a good way to win the argument. It's one of those unfortunate facts of life that all the things so obvious to you are not self-evident to everyone else. Gotta learn to deal with that.

He's a brilliant mind, so I hope he lands somewhere where he can do the most good.

Global warming, a word.

Click the picture for a larger size, or click here for the source.

One of the things Carl Sagan taught me was that some of the earlier astronauts, gazing upon the earth from their capsules, were amazed by how thin the atmosphere looked. Until I really thought about it, I always thought of it as some vast, tall layer of air that extends for miles and miles and miles above you before finally petering away, not, as what one of those astronauts described it, as an onion peel.

In reality, the troposphere--air--, ends at about 7 miles. The air is thin enough at 2 miles that you start to get a little loopy from the lack of oxygen, and the air pressure at 3 miles is only one tenth what it is at sea level. Nevertheless, 75% of Earth's atmospheric gases are found within this 7 mile boundary, with the remaining 25% between 7 miles and 75 miles above sea level.

Seven miles:


Or, a little lower than the cruising altitude of a trans-pacific airliner.

Every climatologist has his or her own pet theory for what climate change will mean for us as a species, with varying degrees of wars and famines and blights. But very few cannot agree with the data; that the amount of atmospheric carbon has risen 35% since the industrial revolution, and demand for energy is increasing. And nobody really knows what this will mean for the climate now, let alone after 20 more years of throwing the stuff in ever increasing amounts into the atmosphere.

We've only been at this pollution business in earnest for about 150 years. In that time the human population has grown from about 1 billion to over 6, and in the same amount of time we've gone from producing under 200 megatons of carbon from fossil fuels per year to over 6500.

And nobody knows what the consequences of this are.

My position, my entire position, in regards to climate change, to wit:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide retains heat.

Very minute temperature changes affect ecosystems in unpredictable ways to varying degrees.


There exists a positive correlation between global temperatures and carbon emissions.

Demand is increasing for fossil fuels.


Nobody knows what global climate change will mean. Probably pretty bad until a new equilibrium develops. Worst case: I am killed in a resource war. Second worst case: I die of starvation. Third worst case: I die of dehydration. Best case: I am sitting on beachfront property and its the Central and South Americans, the Europeans, the Kansans, the Asians and the Africans dying in the wars and famines and droughts.


People figured this stuff out in the 70s, but elected Reagan and Bush in the 1980s, and Bush again in the double-aughts, to prove something about the Vietnam war.


Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda again, Afghanistan, al-Qaeda again, al-Qaeda yet again, then Iraq again, with more al-Qaeda to follow.


How about we get some wind turbines?