Walt Cunningham: Restore climate science integrity, please!

Apollo 7 astronaut Walter Cunningham knows a lot about science and the importance of getting it right. Walt has earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics. He has also completed all coursework for a doctorate in that discipline, but those studies were interrupted by other commitments before completing thesis requirements. In addition, he is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Advanced Management Program. Walt put his science and technology background into real action as a Marine Corps fighter pilot and Apollo Lunar Module pilot. He has logged more than 4,500 hours of flying time of including more than 3,400 in jet aircraft, and more than 263 hours in space.  Walt was called upon to further apply his mission training and flight experiences as Chief of NASA’s Skylab Branch of the Astronaut Office.
 
Col. Cunningham, like many other scientifically and technologically experienced space program professionals, is an outspoken critic of pseudo-scientific climate alarmist claims.
 
The biggest problems I see with the sorry state of “climate science,” as the public comes to know it through the media, are the alarmist claims, unsupported by data and history, being presented as facts. When these claims cannot be validated by empirical data, they attempt to justify them by equally dishonest claims of proof by “consensus”. These alarmist claims create unwarranted fear in order to promote their political and profiteering agendas, while establishing regulatory policies that kill business and grow government – all at a terrific cost to taxpayers and energy consumers.
 
Without the science to back up their wild forecasts and claims, and the overwhelming evidence for natural temperature variation, alarmists try to exploit this unwarranted fear by resorting to the precautionary argument: “We must do something just in case we are responsible, because the consequences are too terrible if we are to blame and do nothing.”
 
We developed a letter to NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden and obtained signatures from seven Apollo astronauts, several former Headquarters managers and Center directors, and 40 former management-level technical specialists. We asked that he restrain NASA from including unproven claims in public releases and on websites. Statements by NASA that man-made carbon dioxide was having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. It is clear that the science is NOT settled. The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is inconsistent with NASA’s history of conducting an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements. They should be emphasizing to the media that human-caused global warming is a hypothesis, not a scientific fact.
 
See more at: http://www.cfact.org/2013/08/07/walt-cunningham-restore-climate-science-integrity-please/#sthash.bZPhbq0U.dpuf

Climategate 2.0: New E-Mails Rock The Global Warming Debate - 11/23/2011
 
A new batch of 5,000 emails among scientists central to the assertion that humans are causing a global warming crisis were anonymously released to the public yesterday, igniting a new firestorm of controversy nearly two years to the day after similar emails ignited the Climategate scandal.
 
Three themes are emerging from the newly released emails: (1) prominent scientists central to the global warming debate are taking measures to conceal rather than disseminate underlying data and discussions; (2) these scientists view global warming as a political “cause” rather than a balanced scientific inquiry and (3) many of these scientists frankly admit to each other that much of the science is weak and dependent on deliberate manipulation of facts and data.