Update: July 3, 2009: Another Moonwalker Dissents: NASA Astronaut Dr. Buzz Aldrin rejects global warming fears: 'The climate has been changing for billions of years'
Washington, DC – At the House global warming hearing on Capitol Hill Friday, former Vice President Al Gore once again compared skeptics of man-made climate fears to “people who still believe that the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona." Gore appears unaware that his several years old analogy has been challenged by one of the moonwalkers himself – Moonwalker and Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist Jack Schmitt – who recently declared he was a global warming skeptic.
"The 'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities," Schmitt, who flew on the Apollo 17 mission, said in 2008. (See: Astronaut Jack Schmitt Joins Skeptics & For Gore, a very inconvenient moonwalker.)
Gore was not asked during Friday's hearing how he can link climate skeptics to people who believed the moon landing was "staged" when one of the moonwalkers himself is a man-made global warming skeptic.
Schmitt is featured in the 2009 report: U. S. Senate Minority Report: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claim.
Below is Schmitt's full entry in the Senate's 700 Plus Scientist Report:
Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist and Moonwalker Jack Schmitt, formerly of the Norwegian Geological Survey and the U.S. Geological Survey, who flew on the Apollo 17 mission, has received numerous awards in his career including the Space Center Superior Achievement Award and the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. Schmitt, a member of the Geological Society of America, American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, rejected man-made climate change concerns in 2008. "The 'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. It has no place in the Society's activities," Schmitt wrote on November 17, 2008. "As a geologist, I love Earth observations. But it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a "consensus" that humans are causing global warming when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. 'Consensus,' as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science," Schmitt explained.
Related Links:
U. S. Senate Minority Report: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims
Report: Democrats Refuse to Allow Skeptic to Testify Alongside Gore At Congressional Hearing
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