NASA Earth Science Waiting For The Axe; No Comment From Shitler's Denialist Transition Team
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But with the election of Donald Trump, there was immediate concern — inside NASA and among the fans of its valued work on global warming — about the future of the agency’s earth-science program. Within hours of Trump’s acceptance speech on Nov. 9, an internal email from a senior official in the Earth Sciences division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center circulated within NASA acknowledging worry that “funding may now be exposed to severe reductions.” The last month is not apt to have eased that alarm.
Trump’s most visible advisor on space policy has been Bob Walker, a former House Science committee chairman who is now a space-policy lobbyist pressing to move “Earth-centric” and “heavily politicized” climate science out of NASA altogether. And Christopher Shank, who was chosen by Trump to lead the transition at NASA, is a seasoned strategist who has expressed strong skepticism about the severity of global warming.
Should Trump come to take a dim view of NASA’s research on climate change, he’s likely to have no shortage of support in Congress. The last few years have seen intensifying moves against the Obama administration’s investments in climate science in hearings led by the Texas Republicans Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Lamar S. Smith, whose views on NASA and climate parallel those of Walker — built around the notion that NASA needs to focus on outer space, not back on Earth.
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George W. Bush reversed course, and reduced resources for the program (his administration was eventually exposed for trying to suppress NASA research on global warming). Most recently, though, the division’s budget was greatly restored by Barack Obama. A core argument of Walker and congressional critics of NASA earth science, that budgets have ballooned and reduced resources for other NASA science programs, has no basis, said Arthur Charo, who has tracked NASA science budgets for the Standing Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space of the nongovernmental National Academy of Sciences.
He said a careful look at programs, adjusting for inflation, shows no evidence of such a pattern. “There is a mythology that earth science has undergone dramatic growth and that this growth has occurred at the expense of other divisions in the Science Mission Directorate,” he said. “Both assertions are false.” The Trump transition office declined requests for interviews and Walker did not reply to email messages.
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https://www.propublica.org/article/will-trump-scrap-nasas-climate-research-mission?utm_source=pardot&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter
