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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."
I don't think we can single out NASA. And it's been going on for a while, it's just the ideological agendas change over time.
At least in the 1950s-1970s, when the Interstate Commerce Commission destroyed the rail system, airlines, and road haulage industries, they were responding to politicians terrified that prices rises would upset their constituents. Now it's politicians terrified that facts might upset their constituents. Different agenda, same stupidity.
It's almost enough to make you a libertarian. Almost. Enough. But that's substituting one system that barely works for something even more stupid.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
To be fair, the EPA doesn't have the direct ability to launch cutting edge climate and atmosphere monitoring satellites. There's a lot of atmosphere science to do, and NASA is in a good position to have the (orbit based) tools and the know how to do that. The EPA is in a good position to review the science and enforce legalisation appropriately.
It's turtles all the way down.
Explain anti vaxxers
Anti-vaxxers are spread pretty evenly across the political spectrum. In fact a study published in December 2014 found that conservative Republicans are very slightly more likely to hold anti-vax views than liberal Democrats. You can see the pretty graph here.