GOP Spending Plan Hopes To Cut Climate Change Funding From NASA

Mother Jones:

This week, Reps. Bill Posey (R-Fla.), Sandy Adams (R-Fla.) and Rob Bishop (R-Utah) called for a budget that would "reprioritize NASA" by axing the funding for climate change research. The original cuts to the budget outlined yesterday would have cut $379 million from NASA's budget. These members want climate out of NASA's purview entirely, however. Funding climate research, said Adams in a statement, "undercuts one of NASA's primary and most important objectives of human spaceflight."

Read the whole story: Mother Jones

Comments

[Promotheus]

01:19 AM on 03/05/2011

Global warming is real. Science proves it. Get used to it and try to do something to help stop/reduce its damage.

[StephenBP]

07:21 AM on 02/19/2011

Climatologists predicted that natural CO2 levels would trail rising temperatures before ice cores confirmed this BECAUSE RISING TEMPERATURES RELEASE MORE CO2 FROM SOIL AND WATER. DUH. CO2 levels can be both a cause and effect of climate change!

The position of AGW deniers who point to laggin CO2 levels and say that this disproves that CO2 is a culprit is tantamount to a fire marshall reporting that, after investigating a fire, he determined that his brother in law could not have possibly have caused the house to burn down because the level of flames and heat was much higher half an hour after he set the sofa on fire.

So, the tiny minded petro vampires ignore the climatologists excellent predictions and turn them against them.

How freaking evil is that?

How.... Republican.....

How...... Koch......

[padrushka]

01:11 PM on 02/17/2011

"the good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it "
Neil deGrasse Tyson

[HekmagaJuximaxx]

09:30 PM on 02/16/2011

This is a preview of what would happen if say, a planet-smashing asteroid were on a collision course with earth. The first response would be to cut off funding to NASA so that they could not see where the rock was headed, while increasing funding to the military so that they could. They would then pack up all the politicians and military in an escape ship to Mars or whatever, leaving the rest of us to wonder what that bright light up in the sky is.

[mamacat]

08:36 PM on 02/16/2011

I was reading in Scientific American that although China is installing more alternative energy projects than is the US, they also burn more coal than Europe, Japan, and the US, combined. Pretty freaking scary.

[Benjamin Rosenfeld]

05:02 PM on 02/16/2011

"NASA's primary purpose is human space exploration and directing NASA funds to study global warming undermines our ability to maintain our competitive edge in human space flight," said Posey.

We have a competitive edge in human space flight? All we do is shuttle people back and forth between Earth and the ISS. We haven't even been to the moon in nearly 40 years.

[jatkins1]

01:15 PM on 02/19/2011

The US does have a competitive edge in human spaceflight...it's just that right now it's relatively small.

[dkrypt]

07:18 AM on 02/16/2011

Over the last 400,000 years, CO2 increases have followed (rather than preceded) increases in global temperatures. But I'm sure that will all change now that the U.N. says it will. I don't know about you, but for me, the U.N. is the go-to place for ethical, factually sound, unpoliticized science.

[Toddynho]

08:16 AM on 02/16/2011

It's not just the UN. But stick to your talking points. Makes identifying the fools easier.

[ClimateHawk]

08:29 AM on 02/16/2011

Over most of the past 400,000 years this is true.

And then humans show up.

Every day we use 85 million barrels of oil a day, 19 million tons of coal, and 300 billion cubic feet of natural gas.

What happens when we burn a fossil fuel? C + O2 = CO2.

We are dumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, and a reasonable question is whether this makes a difference or not.

Paleoclimatology can help answer the question, but our impact on the makeup of the atmosphere is really unprecedented.

The rear view mirror is a great help in driving, but we can't use it to see what's in front of us.

[SFTor]

04:41 PM on 02/16/2011

Nope, my misunderstanding. Those are Bob Reiss's words from the phone interview.

[AnthropologistAmongApes]

01:28 AM on 02/16/2011

This is little more than an attempt to stop data gathering and terrestrial observation to undercut the rapidly building evidence of ecological limit. Deniers and Dominionists of every stripe must preserve the meme that economic growth is infinite, and the planet has infinite capacities to adsorb harm. Is there a fuller illustration of mal-adaptive behavior and socio-pathology?

[Blow In]

04:46 PM on 02/16/2011

I liked your comment so much that I even looked up socio-path­ology.

[Forester]

01:19 AM on 02/16/2011

An no more pictures of polar bears!

[ClimateHawk]

01:12 AM on 02/16/2011

When I interviewed James Hansen I asked him to speculate on what the view outside his office window could look like in 40 years with doubled CO2. I'd been trying to think of a way to discuss the greenhouse effect in a way that would make sense to average readers. I wasn't asking for hard scientific studies. It wasn't an academic interview. It was a discussion with a kind and thoughtful man who answered the question. You can find the description in two of my books, most recently "The Coming Storm." I'd like to add that in my opinion the speculation about the West Side highway is in the process of coming true. I live near it, and like anyone else who does, I can tell you that the southbound lanes are more frequently underwater these days as the city suffers thru some violent weather....I'm a believer in what Hansen says. All best, bob

That's a quote from Bob Reiss

[ClimateHawk]

07:45 AM on 02/16/2011

And here's the quote from his book, "The Coming Storm", page 30.

"one of the reporters, visiting Hansen's office, would bring the scientist to his window ... and the reporter would ask the scientist whether, if was right, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere really doubled, anything down there would look different because of it by 2030."

In other words, let CO2 double and let 40 years elapse.

I know, this is different from the Salon account. Let's review the timeline.

1988: Bob Reiss has a conversati­on with James Hansen (says he took notes).

2000, 2001: Bob Reiss writes his book The Coming Storm

2001: Salon magazine interviews Bob Reiss over the phone, and he retells the story.

Which do you think is a more accurate account of the conversati­on, the book, or the telephone interview? What if a witness confirms the account that's in the book?

I'd say the book, since the author would have looked through his notes to write the book, but later discussed the conversati­on from memory with Salon.

[SFTor]

04:39 PM on 02/16/2011

This doesn't seem to be right.

Here is the quote from Suzy Hansen's article:

"While doing research 12 or 13 years ago, I met Jim Hansen, the scientist who in 1988 predicted the greenhouse effect before Congress. I went over to the window with him and looked out on Broadway in New York City and said, "If what you're saying about the greenhouse effect is true, is anything going to look different down there in 20 years?"

It was no phone interview. She was there.

[LMPE]

12:40 AM on 02/16/2011

As I always say, these people are an argument against evolution.

[ClimateHawk]

12:53 AM on 02/16/2011

Is there such a thing as a group Darwin Award?

[Channa]

08:17 AM on 02/16/2011

Darwin Awards are given after they have removed themselves from the gene pool. We can hope.

[realpolitic]

11:03 PM on 02/15/2011

Republican obviously want to de-fund any climate studies and satellites because real data and scientific findings are what they fear. All support the anthropogenic climate change consensus.  As more and more evidence comes in, they seem more and more like Neanderthals arguing against common sense and what we are seeing happen before our eyes.

[worker beenumbed]

08:51 PM on 02/15/2011

Most Repub Congressmen get oil money,but these bums are special

[worker beenumbed]

08:48 PM on 02/15/2011

they might be getting oil money.

[LeFlaneur]

07:57 PM on 02/15/2011

My Fellow Americans:

It's clear we have to cut spending. And the best way to cut spending is to de-fund anything that conflicts with my political ideology.

Thank you.

[worker beenumbed]

08:46 PM on 02/15/2011

The Repubs want to cut 475 million from IRS enforcement.Irs agents collect @30times more than they cost.My ideology demands that cheats get nailed.Do not cut enforcement money.