NASA, Climate Change, and a Horror Flick
I saw Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" the other day, and while not completely free from politics it does give a clear, down-to-earth overview of the global warming issues facing us. (pun intended) I've felt for a number of years that climate change is one of the two or three most important issues facing us as a people. It burns me up that the Bush administration is not only doing so little about it, but actually scaling back and obscuring the issue. It allows them to claim that the science is inconclusive and in doubt. It's not, really, but they're in no rush to go ahead and gather the data. Here are a few interesting articles:
If this country really dedicated itself to discovering and implementing alternate forms of energy, I think we'd see significant improvements in just a few years. It would also solve many problems related to oil, our dependence on it, and geopolitical problems related to it. Unfortunately, I don't see that really happening until the next administration at the very earliest.
1.20.08
- NASA Suffers Another Blow To Its Mission To Protect The Planet. From the Huffington Post (a liberal blog).
- NASA’s Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet. (NY Times) The article referred to in the blog entry above. It has detectable bias in its wording, but the facts are there.
- Nasa's climate science 'in moth-balls'. (BBC) A well written article that shows how NASA is scaling back its climate change research. It also points out that other scientific research is being scaled back in the effort to return astronauts to the moon.
- Earth dropped from NASA mission statement. (UPI) An article with fairly neutral language on the mission statement change.
- Global Warming on Trial. (LA Times) The Supreme Court agrees to hear a case in which the EPA claims it does not have authority to regulate Carbon Dioxide levels and the state of California claims that it does.
- Global Warming -- Signed, Sealed and Delivered. (LA Times) An author of a study of global warming literature defends his conclusions from the Wall Street Journal, whose editors based their challenge on internet articles and not peer reviewed data.
If this country really dedicated itself to discovering and implementing alternate forms of energy, I think we'd see significant improvements in just a few years. It would also solve many problems related to oil, our dependence on it, and geopolitical problems related to it. Unfortunately, I don't see that really happening until the next administration at the very earliest.
1.20.08