Congressman Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), at a hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation November 1, 2017, in the confirmation proceedings after his nomination to become Administrator of NASA. Photo credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky
Seven months ago I wrote about why Congressman Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), nominated to be the new administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, was well qualified and, in a saner world, should have been confirmed quickly.
Yesterday, at last, the well-deserved confirmation finally happened—albeit along strict party lines—after the vote had been delayed for months. Democrats opposed him because—well, because they’re Democrats, and he wasn’t nominated by Hillary Clinton. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) had spoken against Bridenstine on the grounds that NASA shouldn’t be managed by a “politician.” Perhaps the Senator forgot that, as Plato pointed out, human beings are political in essence, which is why one way of referring to human beings is as homo politicus, and that NASA is an agency of the federal government, an inherently political entity.
Climate alarmists the world over were upset by his nomination—and are now upset by his confirmation—because he doesn’t bow and scrape before the high priests of global warming. Instead, he has intrepidly done what, as every product of our utterly politics-free government schools knows, no self-respecting scientist would ever do: ask questions, challenge assumptions, and demand empirical evidence, not just model projections.
Perennial climate alarmist Dana Nuccitelli quoted Bridenstine as having “reeled off this string of climate myths on the House floor in 2013”:
… global temperatures stopped rising 10 years ago. Global temperature changes, when they exist, correlate with Sun output and ocean cycles. During the Medieval Warm Period from 800 to 1300 A.D. … temperatures were warmer than today.
But as I pointed out back in September, every one of those claims is either patently or arguably true. There was no statistically significant increase in global average temperature
and I could cite more. Bridenstine’s claim in 2013 was well justified by the data—and remains so today.
Does global temperature correlate with Sun and ocean cycles? In August 2016 Kenneth Richard listed 35 scientific publications that confirmed that ocean cycles and the Sun were the main climate drivers. Later that year, and updated in March of 2017, two climate scientists and a statistician published a paper concluding that after controlling for solar, volcanic, and El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability, “there is no ‘record setting’ warming to be concerned about. In fact, there is no Natural Factor Adjusted Warming at all.”
In terms of both his education (master’s in business administration, same as three past NASA administrators) and his career (former Navy Reserve pilot, former executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium, current member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, and an avid backer of space exploration—NASA’s chief mission), Bridenstine is equally well qualified as many past administrators to lead NASA, and better than some.
We wish him well.
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