Science is not a popularity contest. Scientific truth is not determined by a popular vote or by the fame of those who make an assertion. A ‘consensus’ is when people have conceded agreement about something most of them don’t actually fully believe.
So in that respect, it’s no more important that Apollo astronauts dispute the ‘consensus’ view of climate change than the bogus claim of ’97 percent of scientists’. But in other important respects, it’s a very telling statistic.
There are only 12 men who have walked on the moon, and only 4 are still living. Selected from the best of the best at the time, with impeccable reputations, why would any of them speak out and risk being called names like deniers of “basic physics”. Yet three of the four have: Harrison Schmitt, Charles Duke, Buzz Aldrin. (Plus others like Australian born Phil Chapman (support crew, Apollo 14) and Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7).
Climate alarmists love to invoke the name of NASA to try and justify their absurd catastrophism. “NASA put a man on the Moon”, runs the argument. “Why wouldn’t you believe them?”
It’d be merely churlish to point out that NASA also blew up two space shuttles. More pertinent is the fact that the climate tub-thumping unit, GISS, is only a very small part of the NASA bureaucracy. Assigning them the same gravitas as the Apollo program is as ridiculous as taking seriously the moon-hoax conspiracies of “a former NASA worker” who turns out to have been a low-level services contractor.
Or, perhaps, treating the ‘Very Special’ Nobel Peace Prize with the same respect as the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Maybe because they hate watching as the good name of NASA gets subverted into a pagan weather changing cult?
…The NASA space program was once one of mankind’s greatest scientific and engineering achievements. In 2012 49 former NASA staff including astronauts, directors of shuttle programs, flight operations, and spacecraft maintenance, wrote to NASA warning that GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) was risking NASA’s reputation by making unproven remarks and ignoring empirical evidence.
More importantly, one of the astronauts is a respected scientist, as opposed to an activist with a Communications degree. Guess which opinion the legacy media will rely on?
Harrison [Schmitt] has been a vocal skeptic now for at least nine years. So far the ABC has not asked him why, or anything at all on the topic. But then, he’s only a PhD in Geology, what would he know? If he had a degree in international relations and journalism, or law, he could tell us what the climate is going to do all the time.
“…I’m a geologist [says Schmitt]. I know the Earth is not nearly as fragile as we tend to think it is. It has gone through climate change, it is going through climate change at the present time. The only question is, is there any evidence that human beings are causing that change?…
As Michael Crichton points out in his ‘cli-fi’ thriller, State of Fear, climate scientists routinely pass off reconstructions and models as ‘evidence’. Extremely provisional theories are passed off as ‘settled science’.
Right now, in my profession, there is no evidence. There are models. But models of very, very complex natural systems are often wrong. The observations that we make as geologists, and observational climatologists, do not show any evidence that human beings are causing this. Now, there is a whole bunch of unknowns…So that’s the only skepticism I have: What is the cause of climate change?
“Normally, we have always assumed up until the Industrial Revolution that climate change is a function of the solar cycles — and indeed, there is still very strong evidence that’s the case.”
Crichton also argues that the current funding model of science has turned it into just another state bureaucracy, slavish as any other to the policy demands of government. Schmitt agrees.
“I, as a scientist, expect to have people question orthodoxy. And we always used to do that. Now, unfortunately, funding by governments, particularly the United States government, is biasing science toward what the government wants to hear.
“That’s a very dangerous thing that’s happening in science today, and it’s not just in climate.”
joannenova.com.au/2018/10/three-out-of-four-living-astronauts-who-walked-on-moon-are-skeptics-men-the-abc-wont-interview/
There is no reason to heed Schmitt’s opinion as an Apollo astronaut more than anyone else’s. But there is every reason to pay attention to the uncomfortable questions he raises about the current state of science and how it is being distorted by politics and money.