We’ve got a couple little brushes with NASA through our side of the family. One is simply by happenstance. One of the pilots who had been in our squadron prior to my arrival there had been at Pax River as a test pilot, and then gotten selected for astronaut training.

As you can imagine, it was a big dang deal when he could come back to El Toro and visit the old squadron stomping grounds – everything just stopped and the head shed would get packed with gawkers. We had a real, live Marine Corps astronaut – man. And he really is the nicest guy.

He wound up retiring as a Marine Corps MajGen, veteran of four shuttle flights, and eventually, thanks to President Obama, head of NASA itself – Charles Bolden.

The second is far more personal. My Daddy had been SimuFlight’s G-2 recurrent training check flight instructor for a lot of the NASA crews years ago. While he hit it off with all the guys, Col. Steve Nagel became a lifelong friend. An Air Force veteran (which my USMC pilot father dogged him constantly about), and married to a fellow astronaut, Steve was so accomplished – four shuttle missions under his belt, including being pilot of the last successful Challenger mission.

He gave my dad and our Ebola the VIP tour of a lifetime through every nook, cranny and hangar of the Johnson Space Center when they got to spend a day with him.

Tremendous, tremendous fellow, who we lost long before his time to the ravages of melanoma. All too common with faces in cockpits unprotected from the sun for years at a time.

All the Right Stuff.

So…reading things like I did when Gen. Bolden helmed a sadly diminished NASA under an idealogue like Obama torqued me off.

The right-of-center crowd is having a field day with comments NASA’s intrepid administrator, Charles Bolden, made during a lengthy sit-down interview with Al Jazeera during his trip to Cairo, Egypt, last month.

Bolden told the Doha, Qatar-headquartered news channel this his “foremost” mission as the head of NASA is to improve relations with what he termed “dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science.”

If you remember the dust-up, REPUBLICANS (and the famously apolitical Neil Armstrong) POUNCED so quickly on that interview that the Obama administration had to issue a hasty, ineffective walk-back.

…The White House last week sought to clarify Bolden’s comment, saying Obama wanted NASA to engage with the world’s best scientists and engineers from countries like Russia and Japan, Israel and many Muslim-majority countries.

That failed to end the controversy.

Gibbs, at his daily news briefing, was asked why Bolden had made the comment.

“It’s an excellent question, and I don’t think — that was not his task, and that’s not the task of NASA,” Gibbs said.

Everything was appeasement with that guy.

NASA has had some wins since then and maybe getting a bit of the old mojo back. You could almost start to feel good and then?

Now, this really pains me.

Is NASA running a mental ward?! Kimberley R. Miner: 'I’m a NASA climate scientist. Here’s how I’m handling climate grief' – "I already have five scientist friends with severe, emergent health challenges'https://t.co/QlJV5UyoLd pic.twitter.com/4c56GcsyNG

— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) August 22, 2023

Is everything poisoned by these freaks?

Last September, before the rains came, my field team learnt that it was probably too late for half the blue oaks affected by California’s drought in the region in which we were working. Because of years of ongoing drought, many of the trees would not recover from the long-term water loss and would die. The next morning, I sat outside our science team meeting and cried.

A friend sat with me and explained that she had just recovered from an episode of extreme climate grief brought about by studying rapidly changing terrestrial ecosystems. She had started taking weekends off (many of us work seven days a week) and encouraged me to do so, as well. After we talked, I walked around the parking area for a while, listening to the birds and watching the midday light filter through the diverse trees in downtown Santa Barbara. I breathed the ocean air and grounded myself in the present, where the air was cool and the birds were singing.

Soon after that, I started taking weekends off to kayak near my home in Southern California and hike on the trails above Pasadena, and built a small bird garden on the porch of my apartment. I also started talking frankly to my colleagues about the emotional turmoil that is often sparked by working as a climate scientist today, and many others had similar stories. I am in my mid-thirties, working at NASA as a scientist, and I already have five scientist friends with severe, emergent health challenges. They are all affected by overwork, exhaustion and extreme stress. The only other thing they all have in common is that they study climate change.

CALL A WAAHMBULANCE and a therapist.

Another one of their “climate” scientists seems to have spent too much time navel gazing during the pandemic.

She’s not really doing social media at the moment because she’s busy writing a book due out this year. Let me guess – everyone fries oops – dies at the end.

I can hardly wait. I’m sure it’s all completely new and original stuff.

This next fascist Scientist™ works at NASA’s jet propulsion lab. I feel great about his stability.

Joe Biden must declare a climate emergency. And he must do so now
Biden had the last opportunity of any president to keep the world under 1.5C of heating. Instead he is squandering time we do not have

We’ve passed into a ferocious new phase of global heating with much worse to come. Biden must declare a climate emergency.

I’m terrified by what’s being done to our planet. I’m also fighting to stop it. You, too, should be afraid while also taking the strongest action you can take. There has never been a summer like this in recorded history: shocking ocean heat, deadly land heat, unprecedented fires and smoke, sea ice melting faster than we’ve ever seen or thought possible. I’ve dreaded this depth of Earth breakdown for almost two decades, and, like many of my colleagues, I’ve been trying to warn you. As hard as I could. Now it’s here.

And mark my words: it’s all still just getting started. So long as we burn fossil fuels, far, far worse is on the way; and I take zero satisfaction in knowing that this will be proven right, too, with a certainty as non-negotiable and merciless as the physics behind fossil-fueled global heating. Instead, I only feel fury at those in power, and bottomless grief for all that I love. We are losing Earth on our watch. The Amazon rainforest may already be past its tipping point. Coral reefs as we know them will be gone from our planet by mid-century, and possibly much earlier given this surge in sea-surface temperatures. These are cosmic losses. And as a father, I grieve for my children.

He’s fine – rock solid.

OMG

Space used to be “the final frontier,” remember? Where people wanted to go boldly and, if they couldn’t go, at least be part of the effort for getting there?

I do not want any part of any where these people are headed.

The sooner they and their ilk are permanently headed out of those buildings and off the government largesse, the better off we will all be.

Neurotics
Are
Strange
Animals