Back in the United States, NASA’s newly confirmed administrator Jim Bridenstine affirmed the science of climate change Thursday, in a break from the Republican Party and from his own previous statements denying global warming. Speaking to NASA employees at a town hall meeting at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., the former Oklahoma Republican congressmember said his position on climate change has “evolved.” In 2013, Bridenstine demanded President Obama apologize for funding climate research, and falsely said from the House floor that global temperatures stopped rising early this century.

Jim Bridenstine: “I don’t deny the consensus that the climate is changing. In fact, I fully believe and know that the climate is changing. I also know that we, humans beings, are contributing to it in a major way.”