When I was growing up, scores of kids dreamed of being like Astronaut Walt Cunningham, who flew on Apollo 7 and was a recent guest on my radio show.
Ironically, on the very same day that I interviewed Mr. Cunningham on my radio show I went to a local eatery in Orlando, FL. And lo and behold – there was a signed Apollo era picture of Walt in his space suit with a fresh crew cut, taking on the space race full throttle.
It takes one back to a time when this man and his fellow astronauts were cherished by the American people as patriots and lauded by politicians as heroes. They operated on the theme, “Failure is not an option” (as you may remember from the movie Apollo 13). Back in the Apollo days, NASA was a non-political, can-do agency.
But on March 28th in a letter written and signed by forty-nine prominent Apollo era Astronauts, Engineers, and Scientists (including two men who walked on the moon); these men expressed their view that NASA has become a politicized agency and have signed a letter to protest NASA’s involvement in the global warming controversy.
Recently NASA’s Administrator, Major General Charles Bolden came out politically siding with the President on the issue of man-made global warming. With all respect to General Bolden, who was an astronaut himself, this seems more like a political play than anything else at a time of upcoming election.
Their letter of protest states, “The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”
These 49 astronauts and former NASA Employees are fighting to get the facts out. The list includes notables such as:
Dr. Harrison Schmitt – (Astronaut Apollo 17 and U.S. Senator, walked on the moon)
Brigadier General Charles Duke – (Astronaut, Apollo 16, walked on the moon)
Dr. Joseph Kerwin – (Astronaut, Skylab 2, Director of Space and Life Sciences)
Dr. Christopher C. Kraft – (Apollo Flight Director and Director of the Johnson Space Center)
Walt Cunningham, also one of the 49 who helped write the letter had this to say on my show last week; “I advise everybody to look at the data yourself, don’t believe the opinions of others and that includes me as well. You need to go look at the data and they can trace back with varying degrees of accuracy the carbon dioxide levels and the temperature levels dating back to several hundred thousand years. You can take a look and see there’s been times in the past when carbon dioxide levels here on earth have been as much as 20 times as high as it is now. When you look at the temperatures, the temperatures have a fairly consistent history going back to hundreds of thousands of years.”
What our American public needs to do is rise up and check the facts for themselves. Carbon dioxide levels move up and down historically in cycles over thousands of years, and this is taking into account the invention of such things as automobiles and factories.
This issue is something to keep a VERY close eye on. If we let our science be driven by politics we are in big trouble. Committing to a carbon tax (which is where this is headed) is in my opinion another big time power grab by the Federal Government.
The fragile state of our economy has enough burden as it is already shouldn’t have to deal with more unproven evidence that could hamper businesses. Especially at a time when people are much more concerned with finding a job then dealing with unproven theories.
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