GOP Proposes $300 Million Cut To NASA's Earth Science Budget
We can't have them researching the effects of man-made climate change, after all.
Welcome to "Elections have consequences," chapter umpty-zillion. Today's story unfolds in the halls of Congress, where our budget overlords have served their billionaire masters well at the expense of the rest of us.
The victim: NASA's earth science budget, which is where funding comes from to research the effects of man-made climate change on the earth.
The New Yorker:
Last week, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, headed by Texas Republican Lamar Smith, approved a bill that would slash at least three hundred million dollars from NASA's earth-science budget. "Earth science, of course, includes climate science," Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat who is also on the committee, noted. (Smith said that the White House's NASA budget request favored the earth sciences "at the expense of the other science divisions and human and robotic space exploration.") Johnson tried to get the cuts eliminated from the bill, but her proposed amendment was rejected. Defunding NASA's earth-science program takes willed ignorance one giant leap further. It means that not only will climate studies be ignored; some potentially useful data won't even be collected.
The vote brought howls of protest from NASA itself and from wider earth-science circles. The agency's administrator, Charles Bolden, issued a statement saying that the bill "guts our Earth science program and threatens to set back generations worth of progress in better understanding our changing climate." In an opinion piece for the Washington Post, Marshall Shepherd, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Georgia and the former president of the American Meteorological Association, said that he could not sleep after hearing about the vote. "None of us has a 'vacation planet' we can go to for the weekend, so I argue that NASA's mission to study planet Earth should be a 'no-brainer,' " he wrote.
The vote on the NASA bill came just a week after the same House committee approved major funding cuts to the National Science Foundation's geosciences program, as well as cuts to Department of Energy programs that support research into new energy sources. As Michael Hiltzik, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, noted, the committee is "living down to our worst expectations."
I wouldn't object if they wanted to expand NASA's budget for more space exploration, but to cut the earth sciences piece of it to fund space exploration makes no damn sense. Of course, Republicans never make sense anyway.
Climate Change, earth science, GOP Budget 2016, Lamar Alexander, NASA
Winter Donation Drive
For 16 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit. We work 7 days a week, 16 hours a day for our labor of love, but with rising hosting and associated costs, we need your help! Could you donate $20 for 2020? Please consider a one time or recurring donation of whatever amount you can spare. It will be greatly appreciated and help us continue our mission of exposing the real FAKE NEWS!
Or mail checks to:
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Flipboard Email
More C&L Coverage
Ted Cruz Tells NASA Chief They Shouldn't Do Climate Science Research
And Charles Bolden pointed out the obvious -- which is never quite obvious enough for teabaggers.
By Susie Madrak
NASA Administrator Geeks Out On Mars Research, Space Exploration
Jim Bridenstine was a climate change denier before he became NASA administrator, but he still had some interesting things to say about NASA's research initiatives, particularly with regard to Mars exploration.
House Science Committee Hard At Work: More Hearings On Aliens Than Climate Change (Video)
Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, who refuses to acknowledge that climate change is caused in part by humans, took the aliens issue very seriously.
NASA Sends Robotic Mission To Moon
On Friday night, NASA launched the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) to the moon to conduct research on the lunar atmosphere and dust.
By Diane Sweet
Dirty Koch Money From Donor's Trust Funds 'Climate Hustle'
The term Climate Hustle should make you cringe and recoil in horror that glorifies the willful ignorance of proven science.
By LeftOfCenter
We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service (revised 3/17/2016) for information on our posting policy.