Climate change

March 2018

Regarding the article in the January issue on self-censorship at NASA with respect to the global climate change debate [“Self-censorship/discipline at NASA”]. I expected to see some discussion of the political environment of past years, but only found a one-sided presentation.

The author seems to think that there is now an oppressive atmosphere at NASA where certain words are edited out of proposals to provide a better chance of funding due to the outlook of the Trump administration. Really? There were persecutions during the Obama administration against people who had reservations about the doctrine of man-made global climate change (including being labeled as “climate change deniers”).

In some instances, governmental entities promoted the idea of criminal charges against the “deniers.” Having to self-censor seems rather mild by comparison.

Most sincerely,
Pete Badzey
AIAA associate fellow
Huntington Beach, California

I just read your article “Self-censorship/discipline at NASA” and am surprised that you would buy into the “prevailing wisdom” of human-caused climate change/global warming.

A couple of decades ago, I did my own statistical analysis of global temperatures measured by satellite and balloon-borne radiosondes, obtaining a temperature rise of 0.1 degree Celsius per decade for the satellite data and zero degree for the radiosonde data (for the years 1978-1998).

The record since then has shown a “flat” temperature except for El Nino years. Over half a century ago, President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex. Today it’s the government agency-research complex” that we must worry about.

Robert C. Whitten
AIAA associate fellow
Cupertino, California
rwhitten@pacbell.net