NASA's Bridenstine Validates Climate Change, Human Impact

NASA's new administrator, Jim Bridenstine, conceded Thursday that humans contribute to climate change "in a major way" — the strongest support for the scientific consensus of any Trump administration official, The Atlantic reported.

At a town hall at the agency's headquarters, Bridenstine declared "I don't deny that consensus that the climate is changing."

"In fact, I fully believe and know that the climate is changing," he said, The Atlantic reported. "I also know that we humans beings are contributing to it in a major way. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. We're putting it into the atmosphere in volumes that we haven't seen, and that greenhouse gas is warming the planet. That is absolutely happening, and we are responsible for it."

It is a position in sharp contrast to those offered by GOP members of the House Science Committee this week, who, according to Wired, said the Earth is not warming, that rocks falling into the ocean are causing sea level rise, and the Antarctic ice sheet is growing bigger.

"This goes to show Jim is a realist and pragmatist on climate — much as we had hoped when we looked to the confirmation hearing to hear the right answers," Phil Larson, a former adviser in the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy under former President Barack Obama and the assistant dean of the University of Colorado at Boulder's College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, told The Atlantic. "The answer he gave [Thursday] is the right answer.

"But what's even more important than right answers is how does that translate to NASA's earth-science portfolio?"

According to The Atlantic, Bridenstine went further than he did on the issue even as recently as his Senate confirmation hearing in November, when he was asked to what extent did he think humans are contributing to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

He replied then: "That is a question I do not have an answer to, but I do know that humans have absolutely contributed to global warming," The Atlantic reported.

And in 2013, he berated the Obama administration for spending money on global warming research rather than weather forecasting and warnings, and declared: "Global temperatures, when they exist, correlate with sun output and ocean cycles," The Atlantic reported.

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