Investor's Business Daily, June 8th, 2007
Climate Change: The NASA administrator who strayed from the true path on global warming has recanted his skepticism. Is the debate really over, or are those who question warming orthodoxy the ones being silenced?
In a moment of candor that must have had Al Gore grasping for the antacid, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin on May 30 told National Public Radio listeners he wasn't sure that global warming was really a problem or that man could or should do much about it.
"I have no doubt that ... a trend of global warming exists," he said. "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.
"First of all," Griffin continued, "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."
Al Gore doesn't think so as he ponders how the Nobel Prize might look next to his Oscar. But it seems some sort of intervention may have been performed on Griffin.
The Associated Press reports that at a closed-door meeting five days later at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Griffin offered a mea culpa of sorts to his colleagues, saying he regretted offering his personal views and that "unfortunately, this is an issue which has become more political than technical, and it would have been well for me to stay out of it."
How an administrator of an agency whose job is partly to provide scientific data and observations on earth's climate, and whose satellites provide greenies with evidence of melting glaciers, can "stay out of" the global warming brouhaha is beyond us. He's right, though, that the debate has become more political than scientific, which is why his NPR comments are so important. Dismissing his statements as his personal views is a cop-out.
Griffin was right when he noted that, "as millions of years of history have shown," the earth's climate has changed frequently without man's technological intervention and even without man's presence. Weather and climate are affected by many variables, not all of them understood. The earth warmed and cooled repeatedly long before the Industrial Revolution and the Ford Expedition.
We can see why Griffin would try to revise and extend his remarks. As we have pointed out, the high priests of global warming have indeed had a chilling effect, so to speak, on free scientific inquiry.
As Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, observed: "Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the current system."
Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who appeared in the British documentary, "The Great Global Warming Swindle," said: "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their funds disappear, their work derided and themselves labeled as industry stooges."
In 1633, Galileo Galilei was indicted by the church "for holding as true a false doctrine taught by many" and for "following the hypothesis of Copernicus" -- namely that the earth was not the immovable center of the universe and in fact moved around the sun.
Griffin correctly branded as false a doctrine held true by many. Being a scientist means never having to say you're sorry.
