Harrison Schmitt has had a varied career, including work as an astronaut for NASA and as a Republican member of the U.S. Senate from New Mexico from 1976-1982. His other political roles have included serving on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory board for President Reagan and the Ethics Commission for President H. W. Bush.
Currently, Schmitt is an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also on the advisory board for the Blue Origin, Blue Moon project and a Policy Advisor for the Heartland Institute.
Schmitt denies the occurrence of drastic climate change and maintains that there are benefits to rising CO2 levels. In “The Phony War Against CO2,” an opinion piece he co-authored with Rodney W. Nichols, it is stated that “a myth persists that is both unscientific and immoral to perpetuate: that the beneficial gas carbon dioxide ranks among hazardous pollutants. It does not.” While the article acknowledges that higher CO2 content will lead to higher temperatures, it also maintains that “increased CO2 levels over the next century will cause modest and beneficial warming…this will be an even larger benefit to agriculture than it is now.”
Schmitt also upholds the solar theory as the sole cause of global temperature change, rejecting the notion of human-based climate change. At the Science Writers 2018 conference, he stated that current scientific observations “do not show any evidence that human beings are causing [global warming].” Instead, he believes that “there is still very strong evidence” that “climate change is the function of solar cycles.”
To explain the current consensus on climate change Schmitt stated, in an interview with Alex Jones, that “the whole trend really began with the fall of the Soviet Union. Because the great champion of the opponents of liberty, namely communism, had to find some other place to go and they basically went into the environmental movement.”
Friends:
Rodney W. Nichols
Climate of Denial