Parameters: "How widespread within NASA is the conviction that human activity is responsible for climate change?"

Source: The Weekly Standard

Climate change is a hot topic issue.  Different people fall onto different ends of the spectrum on the 'causes' of climate change.  Climate skeptics have held onto the notion that a component attributable to the daily operations of humans on Earth does not figure prominently into the overall equation which represents 'cause.'   Whereas, people who believe in the component of climate change attributable to 'man made' are on the other end.  In between lie people with varying percentages of the two dispositions.



To address the question listed in the title of the article, Astrophysicist Dr. Michelle Thaller, who works for NASA was interviewed by Big Think produced a video interview titled "Does NASA have any climate change skeptics?" gave the following answer:

Michelle Thaller: Hi Jay. So your question is how widespread is it within NASA that scientists are convinced that human activity is responsible for climate change? And this is something that is important to say very, very clearly. I have known and worked with hundreds of earth scientists at many different locations in NASA, all of them, all of them believe that human activity is responsible for the current climate change that we see going so fast it's almost unprecedented. I want you to think about that.

One thing that I take really seriously and I'm very proud of is that NASA is not a political organization. We are scientists that work for the American people. We're funded by taxpayer's money. And what we do is we make measurements. We have many, many different satellites that are orbiting the earth right now they're looking at things like ice on the oceans and at the poles, they're looking for things like vegetation growth and the change of that, ocean level, is the ocean level rising? Yeah it turns out that it is. So we have many scientists all over the planet studying all of the different ramifications of climate change. We understand the causes. There actually is no scientific controversy about that. Humans are releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and this is warming our planet.

Now what scientists are researching currently, and they don't all agree about, is what are the most important components of driving climate change. Is it carbon dioxide? Could it be something else like methane? When methane gets released that's an even more powerful greenhouse gas. We don't agree on how quickly things like the ocean level will rise. People have different estimates for how quickly that will happen. So there still is scientific controversy about what the most important aspects of climate change are and how quickly it will go in the future, but there is no scientific disagreement within NASA that humans are causing climate change.

Now I started this off by saying that one of the things I'm very proud of is that NASA is not political. And what that means for me is that I cannot advocate for any specific solution to climate change. That's not my job. That's up to policymakers. People might suggest things like having more solar energy or cutting carbon emissions or things like that, but at NASA we really understand that's not us, that's up to the American people, our leaders and leaders around the world. What we do is provide the facts to everybody on the planet. All of our data is actually free to any government, any person, any scientist all over the world that wants to use it. So we all know what's causing climate change, we can't tell you what to do about it but we can say it's time to do something about it.

I particularly like the ending where Dr. Thaller states that her job is not to convince people of the human component (or any other for that matter) which contributes to climate change.  What is her job is to present the scientific data and let the chips fall where they may -- on the policy (and human) side.  Data speaks for itself.  The data shows an upward trend to the overall effects of global warming over the period.  That is what the data shows.



Regardless of where you lie on the spectrum, science should not be taken for granted.  Each of us should aspire to learn at the very least how science plays into our daily lives.  Further, we should be concerned when scientific data points in one direction while policy points in the other.  That is when the data should be presented again -- or we should revisit the data to remind ourselves of the future.  At the end of the day, each of us will show up to the poll or make our minds up regarding 'cause' and 'solutions' to grand issues facing life on Earth.  The best we can do is gather as much data on which to base our future decisions on.  Happy New Year!



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