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Politics Is Poisoning NASA's Ability To Do Science
An anonymous reader writes: Phil Plait just published an article about how politics is interfering with NASA's ability to perform vital scientific experiments. As expected when we heard that Ted Cruz would be made head of the committee in charge of NASA's funding, the Texas senator is pushing hard for NASA to stop studying Earth itself. Plait writes, "Over the years, NASA has had to beg and scrape to get the relatively small amount of money it gets—less than half a percent of the national budget—and still manages to do great things with it. Cruz is worried NASA's focus needs to be more on space exploration. Fine. Then give them enough money to do everything in their charter: Explore space, send humans there, and study our planet. Whether you think climate change is real or not—and it is— telling NASA they should turn a blind eye to the environment of our own planet is insanity." He concludes, "[T]he politics of funding a government agency is tying NASA in knots and critically endangering its ability to explore."
the EPA can worry about the environment, leave NASA to what NASA is supposed to do.
The EPA is a regulatory agency, not a science agency. It's not the EPA's job to conduct the research on earth. Their job is to write rules and regulations.
On the other hand, it is well within the purpose of NASA and NOAA in particular to conduct various studies of things on earth. There should be no interference with scientific inquiry, just because the results might or might not be politically inconvenient.
I think the whole notion that humans are causing climate change is farcical, overblown, and possibly a fabrication, and yet I still say don't f*ck with NASA. They should continue their research. They should be given more funding to administer judiciously ---- that is, additional funds should be spent on materials and staff actually performing research and additional equipment, with demonstration of justification, not on more bureaucrats or raises/financial incentives for bureaucrats.
On the other hand.... the scope of NASA is pretty broad and specifically includes Aeronautics in the name. Let's not forget that Earth itself is one of the most accessible planets in space for exploration, and NASA can and should conduct scientific studies on earth that can be useful in understanding natural phenomena in general, and it may very well relate to observations of other planets, so that the study of earth can aid in investigating any planet(s).
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Have you tried reading National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which spells out the firs eight objectives of NASA? The first is "The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space".
Cruz is originally from Alberta so his interest in tar sands and polluting the world is pretty natural to him.
current flagrant uses such as watering for ornamental plants or car-wash businesses.
An insignificant amount of water is used by car washes. 85% of water consumed in California is used for agriculture, where it is heavily subsidized, and the biggest use there is irrigation of pasture for cattle. If you want to conserve water, you don't ban car washes, you ban hamburgers.
The first A in NASA stands for Aeronautics. If you're going to do aeronautics you need to know about the medium you are flying through. In the 1958 act that created NASA the first objective is: "Expansion of human knowledge of the Earth, the atmosphere and space". Also artificial satellites are now an integral part of studying the Earth. I think it's kind of hard for NASA to not be involved to some extent in all of the things you list.
The first objective in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Act is: "Expansion of human knowledge of the Earth, the atmosphere and space." Seems to me that's what they're doing.
AFAIK what he's pointing out is that NASA was chartered to explore space
Oh, yeah?
The National Aeronautics and Space Act
SUBCHAPTER I--SHORT TITLE, DECLARATION OF POLICY, AND DEFINITIONS
Sec. 20102. Congressional declaration of policy and purpose
(d) Objectives of Aeronautical and Space Activities.--The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:
(1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
No, the left just know how to read, so they know that the first objective of NASA is " The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space."
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ogc/about/space_act1.html#POLICY
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Hey, Climate Change zealot. The predictions of the zealots have been uniformly wrong. Their models are wrong. They don't match observations. That is the definition of science.
The problem with that study is that it focuses on the HPV vaccine, where the conservative based objections revolve around the believe that giving the vaccine is akin to tacit approval of teenage sex (not dissimilar to the conservative objection to safe sex campaigns).
It is not an anti-science view, in that they believe that the vaccine does, in fact, prevent HPV transmission, and they do not believe in totally debunked theories such as the MMR/autism link. It does not appear that the survey attempted to break out the resistance to, say the MMR vaccine, which is clearly based on junk/psuedo science stoked by the Lancet article, versus Guardacil, where the resistance is based on moral objections.
I think one of the biggest problems that our modern democracies face is the confusion between science and morality. These are orthogonal bases but more and more they are being conflated into a single dimension where pro-science == moral and anti-science == immoral. There are lots of people who are anti-evolution, anti-climate change, yet perfectly good and decent people, and there are lots of people who are big supporters of all fields of scientific endeavors who are complete a$$holes. And they both have things to say, and in a democracy, get to have a voice in our joint decisionmaking process called politics. To paraphrase Churchill, it sucks but it's better than the alternative.