Flashback: Another Moonwalker Defies Gore: NASA Astronaut Dr. Buzz Aldrin rejects global warming fears: ‘Climate has been changing for billions of years’

Moonwalkers Defy Gore's Claim That Climate Skeptics Are Akin To Those Who Believe Moon Landing was 'Staged'

By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotJuly 3, 2009 7:21 PM

Washington, DC – At a House global warming hearing on Capitol Hill on April 24, 2009, 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 ignorant that his several years old analogy has been refuted by two of NASA’s moonwalkers themselves — Moonwalker and Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist Jack Schmitt – who recently declared he was a global warming skeptic and now, Award-Winning NASA Astronaut and Moonwalker Dr. Buzz Aldrin.

Gore was not asked during his April 24, 2009 Congressional hearing how he can link climate skeptics to people who believed the moon landing was “staged” when two prominent moonwalkers themselves are man-made global warming skeptics. (Also see: Global temps ‘have plunged .74°F since Gore released ‘An Inconvenient Truth’)

NASA’s Dr. Aldrin — who earned a Doctorate of Science in Astronautics at MIT — declared he was skeptical of man-made climate fears in a July 3, 2009 UK Telegraph interview.

“I think the climate has been changing for billions of years,” Aldrin, the second person to walk on the Moon, said. On July 20, 1969, Aldrin and astronaut Neil Armstrong made their historic Apollo 11 moonwalk, becoming the first two humans to set foot on the Moon. According to his bio, “Aldrin has received three U.S. patents for his schematics of a modular space station, Starbooster reusable rockets, and multi-crew modules for space flight.” Aldrin was also decorated with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest American peacetime award and he has received numerous distinguished awards and medals from 23 other countries.

“If it’s warming now, it may cool off later. I’m not in favor of just taking short-term isolated situations and depleting our resources to keep our climate just the way it is today,” Aldrin explained.

“I’m not necessarily of the school that we are causing it all, I think the world is causing it,” Aldrin added.

Aldrin joins fellow moonwalker Schmitt, who flew on the Apollo 17 mission, in declaring their skepticism of man-made global warming fears.

“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.)

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.