Monday, May 21, 2012
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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