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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."
If you care about our future, and especially if you live in a red state where these charlatans seem to originate, please stop voting for anti intellectual and anti science politicians. They are only doing what they perceive the electorate has sent them to Washington to do, which seems to be to put their heads in the sand and 'pray' for a 'savior'.
Neither side is pure here. I think NASA briefly said their mission was muslim outreach for example. Why would they do that? Does that have something to do with space?
Just politics.
And NASA has been staffed not just with scientists but wtih scientists that are big democrat supporters. So... guess what, the republicans are going to want to suppress them.
Same thing happened in NYC with tammany hall. Every time parties would switch, the new party would staff the city institutions with political appointees that supported that political party. Everything. Fire departments, police departments, park service, road workers, etc... just everything. Parties would switch and everyone in authority in the city would lose their job.
And that meant that in part the people that did things were often not competent because they weren't on the job that long. And also you'd get a lot of corruption because if lots of people lose their jobs when the parties switch everyone is more inclined to cheat or stuff ballot boxes.
This was ultimately dealt with to some extent by protecting certain institutions from being used that way.
But there is no such protection in Federal agencies. They get used all the time. You can't tell me that the EPA or the ATF or whatever are doing the same thing under a democrat that they'd be doing under a republican. You can't tell me that they're being run by the same sorts of people or under the same guidelines.
It swings back and forth because all these institutions are political footballs at this point.
So complain about it if you want but nothing is going to change unless that stops. And it needs to stop for BOTH sides. Not just the side you don't like. If one side can do it, then the other side can do it.
So think very carefully about what you're asking for and understand there are going to be consequences.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
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.
Aeronautics occur within the earths atmosphere. To not study it is completely insane. The EPA is a regulatory body. Noaa, Nasa do and should study the atmosphere.
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).
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".
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.
In short, nothing in science proves the earth is older than 10,000 year old. In only proves that it could be older and doesn't need the creation explanation. Or in other words, you cannot disprove that a supernatural being supernaturally created things with the appearance of a natural beginning simply for our understanding.
You fundamentally fail to understand science, "sumdumass". No hypothesis is ever proven right in science. It simply offers testable hypotheses that would falsify it, and then when such discoveries are made, survives the new information unchanged. When a hypothesis survives enough of these attempts, scientists will call it a theory, and start to believe it to be true.
The problem with the "God planted the dinosaur bones (and the light of the universe, and stratification in sediments, radioactive dating, and the tens of thousands of interlocking details that show us how long the earth has been around, etc., etc., etc.)" idea, is that it offers no falsifiable predictions. There is literally no fact that an adherent to one of these belief systems would accept as proof it is incorrect. All of these ideas stem from magical thinking, and so, in the immortal words of Wolfgang Pauli, they're not only not right, they're "not even wrong".
That is not science. And it is absurd to pretend as such.
(Alas, your attitude is quite common among the religious right and a tiny sprinkling of the kook left, which is a big reason why politics is doing such a disservice to science.)
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.
The nature of science is not to have all the answers, but to *look for* answers. The best science starts off with the attitude of Socrates: "I don't know". The precise problem with Ted Cruz, and other anti-science politicians like him, is that he knows the answer, and doesn't want scientists looking for it. If he really believed climate change was not real, he would want to INCREASE NASA's budget, to find out the truth. The most despicable thing, transparent in his actions, is that he KNOWS the truth, he is baldly LYING about it, and he cares more about his personal glorification than he cares about the future of the country.
Do you realize that many of those California counties with the lowest vaccination rates are solidly GOP, compare your map with this one.
In reality to settle it we'd need some serious cross tabs on questions that have never seemed to been asked together. However, I still remain confident that 80% is an gross exaggeration and I would win any bet on it.
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