Reality Straight Up!

Thoughts & Observations of a Free Range Astrophysicist

Intentional Ignorance

Climate change deniers are trying to make NASA conveniently blind

There are a record breaking three Category 4 hurricanes and a new tropical depression in this August 30, 2015 image of the Pacific Ocean taken with NASA’s GOES-15 satellite. We depend on our ability to observe Earth from space. So why is Congress gutting the program?

This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.”


In the 1990s, NASA undertook an initiative called Mission to Planet Earth. The program would take the remote sensing techniques used to explore other planets and turn them on our home world. The plan virtually screamed “practical benefits.”

By any measure, NASA’s Earth science program has been an extraordinary success. It has revolutionized weather forecasts, agricultural predictions, resource management, and climate science. Return on investment is off the charts. But such a program has to be maintained. Quoting a 2007 report from the National Academy of Sciences, “The current capability to observe Earth from space is in jeopardy.” Without resources, that capability will be lost.

If we depend so much on NASA’s Earth Observatory, why is Congress slashing its budget?

So why is it that as of this writing, Congress is poised to slash as much as three-quarters of a billion dollars from the program and cripple a vital global perspective that we have come to depend on? The answer is disturbingly simple. Many in Congress, along with their well-heeled backers, would prefer that we not see what NASA’s data are showing us.

The crux of the issue is, of course, global warming. But one thing that you won’t often hear amid the hype on cable news is a calm, rational explanation of what global warming is and how it works.

Illustration of a planet's thermal balance from 21st Century Astronomy

The temperature of a terrestrial planet is determined by a balance between sunlight in and infrared radiated into space. Read a discussion of how it works from my textbook, 21st Century Astronomy.

The basic physics of global warming is easy enough for Astronomy 101.

Imagine a rock adrift in space. Energy arrives as visible sunlight, trying to heat things up. Energy leaves as thermal infrared radiation, trying to cool things down. At some temperature, the two will balance. Voilà! Now imagine the rock is wrapped in a blanket that lets sunlight in but makes it harder for infrared to get out. More energy is coming in than is leaving, so things heat up. Eventually, balance is restored, but at a new higher temperature.

The atmospheres of Venus, Earth, and Mars are just such blankets. Gases like carbon dioxide, water vapor, and methane are transparent to visible sunlight but block escaping infrared. The thin atmosphere of Mars only raises the temperature by about 9° F (5° C). The massive atmosphere of Venus heats the surface to a whopping 860° F (460° C), well above the melting point of lead!

Earth is the Goldilocks world. The so-called greenhouse effect raises Earth’s average temperature from 33° F (18° C) below the freezing point of water to 27° F (15° C) above the freezing point of water. Without the greenhouse effect, George Lucas wouldn’t have had to invent Ice Planet Hoth. He could have just used Ice Planet Earth instead!

Long before climate change became politicized, Astronomy 101 classes everywhere were doing this calculation. There was no controversy; it’s simple physics. “OK,” says the freshman business major taking the dreaded science course needed to graduate. “That means atmospheric carbon dioxide acts like a thermostat, right?”

“That’s right,” responds the professor, happy that somebody is paying attention.

“So,” our student continues, “if there were more carbon dioxide, Earth would be warmer, right?”

“Funny you should ask …”

If more energy comes in than leaves, Earth will get warmer.

Since 1750, humans have released over 300 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere. There is 44 percent more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere today than there was before the Industrial Revolution. Half of that increase has come since 1980.

CO2 levels are not permanently about 400 ppm

Before the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric CO2 levels were 280 parts per million. Since then, levels have gone up by 40%, and may now be permanently above 400ppm. (Figure from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.)

There is over 30 percent more atmospheric carbon dioxide than at any time in the last 800,000 years. And just as our student realized, when you crank up the thermostat, things will start to heat up.

There are about a half dozen ways to measure Earth’s thermal imbalance, and they all show that the planet is warming. Imagine Earth’s surface covered by 1-kilowatt heaters, one every 100 feet (30 meters) or so. The heaters run 24/7, year after year, decade after decade: That is global warming.

Climate change deniers ignore basic physics to serve their own political and financial interests.

Cable news will tell you there is scientific controversy about this, but they misrepresent the facts. When 97 percent of the research in a field agrees, that’s about as close to consensus as you are ever going to get, especially when there is a huge payday for disagreeing. Drexel University researchers found that between 2003 and 2010, $558 million from untraceable sources was funneled to climate change deniers.

The threat to NASA's budget from climate change deniers discussed in my Astronomy Magazine column.

This article on NASA vs the climate change deniers, as it appears in Astronomy Magazine.

Like organ grinders’ monkeys, deniers do what they do. But as for serious people, according to the Center for Naval Analyses’s Military Advisory Board — hardly a liberal cabal — “Climate change impacts are already accelerating instability … and are serving as catalysts for conflict.” Speaking for a bipartisan group of prestigious political, business, and academic leaders, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin summed it up well, calling climate change “the existential threat of our age.”

While the details are subtle, the basics of global warming are incontrovertible and easily understood. It is disingenuous and irresponsible to pretend otherwise. Politicizing climate change is like politicizing gravity. If you step off of a building, you fall and hurt yourself, regardless of your politics. Crippling NASA’s ability to observe Earth will not stop global warming; it will only leave us blind.


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Intentional Ignorance ^ Climate change deniers are trying to make NASA conveniently blind  © Dr. Jeff Hester
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  • Shaking the hand of someone you disagree with isn’t as much fun as shouting them down, but it is far more effective.


    When you live in small groups on the savanna, as our ancestors did for most of our evolutionary history, it pays to be suspicious of strangers. Other groups were competition. Strangers didn’t drop by for a cup of tea and a friendly chat about our emotional well being. We couldn’t afford to see a stranger as a real person at all.  It was an “us versus them” world. Fear and aggression were the only rational responses. People who did well in that world (AKA our ancestors, the people from whom we get our DNA), knew that the only safe thing was to beat strangers with a club first and ask questions later.

    Fear of “The Other” is hardwired, and talking about it doesn’t help.

    We may not live in small groups on the savanna any more, but our brains don’t know that. For better or worse we are stuck with our evolutionary baggage. Nothing is going to change that. When you encounter someone who your brain perceives as “other”– and by this I mean you personally, dear reader, as well as myself and every other human on the planet — all of that machinery jumps to life in milliseconds. Long before we are consciously aware of anything, our brains are screaming “Danger Will Robinson! Danger!”

    Call this tribalism. Call it racism. Call it in-group/out-group dynamics. Call it identity politics. Call it polarization. Call it whatever you like. It all comes down to the same thing. When we perceive someone as other our reactions are hard wired, preconscious, and impossible to turn off.

    Good intentions don’t matter. Get high and sing Kumbaya all night. Talk about it until the cows come home. Hold workshops. Post platitudes or scream about it on the internet. If you want to judge the effectiveness of those strategies all you have to do is pick up the paper. The louder the mob screams, the more ground they lose. We’ve tried those approaches. They make things worse, not better.

    Quoting Einstein’s famous parable, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

    There is only one solution: Humanize yourself by embracing the humanity of others.

    If you perceive someone as other you will respond to them as a threat. There’s nothing we can do about that. Or is there? Take a step back and the answer is obvious. We can’t change how we react to other, but we can change who we perceive as other.

    There is going on 70 years of really fascinating sociological, psychological, political and even neurological research that all supports the same conclusion: If you know and respect someone, it’s hard not to care about them. Break bread together, laugh together, talk deeply, listen, show respect (even when it’s difficult), build bridges, find common purpose and work arm in arm.

    I could dig into that research, but mercifully for you I won’t. Instead I am going to share an uplifting and illustrative story of what effective anti-racism really looks like.

    How did a Black musician change the hearts of hundreds of Klansmen?

    Daryl Davis is a Black blues and jazz musician with a very strange hobby. He goes to events like KKK rallies not to shout or protest, but to listen, shake hands, talk, and befriend. Literally hundreds of the Klan members who Daryl Davis has become friends with have renounced the Klan. He has a large collection of their robes, including the robe of a man who, when they met, was the Grand Wizard himself.

    Read that last sentence again. Then if you honestly care about fighting racism you owe it to yourself to invest 18 minutes and listen to Daryl Davis’s story in his own words.

    This is not your Woke friend’s Anti-Racism.

    It feels good to gang up and shout at people. The difference between the shouters and the shoutees makes it really easy to tell who is “us” and who is “them.” Our brains love that. The dopamine flows like a river.

    But that is not what Daryl Davis did. There was no shouting about racism. Terms like “White privilege” and “White fragility” were never used. Daryl Davis never complained about microaggressions or political correctness. DEI workshops were not part of the program. Mr. Davis did not wear his feelings on his sleeve. Quite the contrary, Daryl Davis listened even to open hatred and tried to understand where it was coming from. There was no talk of victims and oppressors. There were no social media attacks or calls for deplatforming. There was no virtue signaling about Wokeness.

    Instead, Daryl Davis treated those who were predisposed to hate him with dignity and respect. He listened. He questioned. He befriended. He humanized himself by seeing and acknowledging the humanity of others, including those with whom he deeply disagreed. In the process he did what few have ever accomplished. Daryl Davis changed the hearts of hundreds of the most committed racists in the nation.

    This is what real, effective anti-racism looks like. And as Davis mentions at the end of his talk, if he can do it, so can we.

  • What do record fire seasons in the West, record hurricane seasons in the Atlantic, record winter storms in the South and the hottest years in history have to do with each other? Everything.

    This article originally appeared in the December 2019 issue of my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.

  • You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. Yes, schools are desperately important to kids. No, COVID-19 doesn’t care, and COVID is making the rules right now. Attempts to open schools this fall will fail of their own accord. The relevant question is how to meet the needs of children, families and the community in the face of that reality.

  • Currently new cases of COVID-19 in Arizona are doubling every 7 days. ICU beds in the state are already full. The rest of the country isn’t that far behind us. You do the math.

  • Now is not the time for scientists to be circumspect and silent. We are on the short end of a battle over whether truth even matters. If scientists do not stand up for what is real, who will?

  • The morning cyclist in my neighborhood may not be standing in the Michigan Statehouse carrying a gun and demanding her right to spread contagion far and wide, but she may as well be.

  • You know those nice charts and graphs that make it look like we are over the hump of COVID-19 and that things are about to get better? Those predictions are dead wrong, with an unfortunate emphasis on “dead.”

  • Imagine three gregarious scientists, each with the gift of the gab, all coping with stay-at-home orders. Of course we started a livestream/podcast talk show! What else would we do? Welcome to the kickoff episode of Scientists Stuck Inside.

  • Even after COVID-19 kills hundreds of thousands in the U.S. over the coming weeks, we will still be almost as vulnerable to the pandemic as we are today. We’d all love to “get back to normal” after that, but the price could be a second wave, worse than the first. Some see us facing either economic Depression or allowing vast numbers of preventable deaths, but that is a fool’s choice. There are better options if we have the will to find them.

  • There is a lot of information about COVID-19 out there, much of it misleading. When looking at the future, start with what the science really says.

  • If someone can’t tell you how they would know that they are wrong, they don’t have a clue whether they are right.

    This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.

  • Once seemingly incomprehensible, the origin of life no longer seems such a mystery. Most of what once appeared as roadblocks are turning out to be superhighways.

    This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.

Over his 30 year career as an internationally known astrophysicist, Dr. Jeff Hester was a key member of the team that repaired the Hubble Space Telescope. With one foot always on the frontiers of knowledge, he has been mentor, coach, team leader, award-winning teacher, administrator and speaker, to name a few of the hats he has worn. His Hubble image, the Pillars of Creation, was chosen by Time Magazine as among the 100 most influential photographs in history.
©Dr. Jeff Hester LLC, 5301 S. Superstition Mountain Dr., Suite 104 #171, Gold Canyon, AZ 85118