NASA spent over a billion dollars last year on climate change studies…which would you rather have? Pronouncements about death trains, expert testimony for climate vandals, failed predictions, failed models, and a questionable GISTEMP dataset, or a continued manned spaceflight program?
From my perspective, NASA GISS is a duplication of climate services already covered by NOAA/NCDC, and all we seem to get from it is climate activism arrests of the chief scientist, a coffee table book by his assistant, and a snarky condescending blog called RealClimate that one private citizen and some volunteers are currently beating the pants off of in public outreach. Further, the government spent over $8.7 billion across 16 Agencies and Departments throughout the federal government on these efforts in FY 2010 alone. Inside NASA, we have duplication of climate services not only at GISS in NYC, Goddard Spaceflight in Greenbelt, MD, but also at JPL Pasadena. There’s been all sorts of domestic military base closures in the recent years to save money, and NASA Goddard and GISS re-purposed itself after the Apollo program ended and their mission did too. It’s time to close this duplication of services dinosaur, it will be missed far less than a TV comedy series by the American public. If you feel the same way, tell your representatives. – Anthony
WASHINGTON – As House leaders examine ways to cut spending and address the ever growing budget deficits that have plagued Washington for years, U.S. Representatives Bill Posey (R-FL), Sandy Adams (R-FL) and Rob Bishop (R-UT) were joined by several other of their colleagues in calling for a reprioritization of NASA so human space flight remains the primary focus of the nation’s space agency as budget cuts are considered.
In their recent letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-KY) and Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee Chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA), Posey, Adams and Bishop state that while “moving forward under a constrained budget, it will be critical for the Appropriations Committee to produce legislation that is precise in its budget cuts. For years, Presidents and Congress have charged NASA with completing tasks that fall outside the scope of NASA’s primary mission.
“Our space program attracts and inspires the world’s greatest minds and gives our young people inspiration to excel in math and science. Human spaceflight, however, is not simply a matter of national prestige. Our nation’s ability to access space is a critical national security asset and plays an important role in our future economic competitiveness. Space is the ultimate high ground and nations such as China, Russia, and India are anxious to seize the mantle of space supremacy should we decide to cede it.”
“Limited resources force us to make important decisions with regard to the objectives of all federal departments and agencies, including NASA,” said Representative Bill Posey (R-FL). “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.”
“As NASA’s human spaceflight program hangs in the balance, it is imperative that we ask ourselves: What is the future of NASA? With the current administration unable or unwilling to outline a plan or stick to their original promises, it is time to refocus NASA’s mission towards space exploration,” said Representative Sandy Adams (R-FL). “That is why I am encouraging Chairmen Rogers and Wolf to reduce funding for climate change research, which undercuts one of NASA’s primary and most important objectives of human spaceflight.”
“It is counterintuitive to direct millions of dollars to NASA for duplicative climate change programs and at the same time cancel its manned space flight program- the purpose for which the agency was originally created. Far too many forget that at one time in our nation’s history we were losing the space race. With the creation of NASA, we emerged as leaders and have remained so ever since. If NASA’s manned space program disappears, our nation will once again experience a ‘Sputnik Moment.’ Our country will again watch from the sidelines as countries like Russia, China and India charge ahead as leaders in space exploration and missile defense,” said Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT).
In Fiscal Year 2010, NASA spent over 7.5% –over a billion dollars– of its budget on studying global warming/climate change. The bulk of the funds NASA received in the stimulus went toward climate change studies. Excessive growth of climate change research has not been limited to NASA. Overall, the government spent over $8.7 billion across 16 Agencies and Departments throughout the federal government on these efforts in FY 2010 alone. Global warming funding presents an opportunity to reduce spending without unduly impacting NASA’s core human spaceflight mission.
A copy of the letter can be viewed HERE.
h/t to WUWT reader Mr. Lynn
“ISS” is more like the International Spy Station. Since the ISS cost ca 80 billion and counting, it would never has been built and put into orbit unless it could be used by the military. This is probably the reason the US does not allow the super rich guys to visit their section.
Space is a vacuum. Why spend billions to explore a vacuum? The manned space program should be discontinued. Its only purpose was political.
No manned mission to Mars because once the space craft crosses the point of no return, any simple infection could become life-threatening and this would surely result in the death of the astronaut.
There is always the distinct possibitly that a meteor could hit the spacecraft and disable or destroy a critical system such as the fuel cell or computer. Or it it could punch a hole in the space craft resulting loss of the interior atmosphere which is required to keep the astronauts warm.
Your photo caption should read: Smokey and the Bandit.
It’s a miracle! What a breath of fresh air. Yes, give NASA a space flight mission or close it. If the federal government needs a climate change outreach, send the money to Anthony Watts.
Anthony writes: “NASA spent over a billion dollars last year on climate change studies…which would you rather have? Pronouncements about death trains, expert testimony for climate vandals, failed predictions, failed models, and a questionable GISTEMP dataset, or a continued manned spaceflight program?”
Anthony, you’ve argued against learning about the climate from unmanned space programs, but do you argue that we have something of value to learn from putting human beings in space? If so, what is that?
BTW, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is not in Virginia. It’s in Greenbelt Maryland. Next time you are in the DC area, I recommend a visit to see first hand what they do.
Smokey says:
February 9, 2011 at 8:08 pm
“The last Weblog Awards winner was announced in 2009: click”
“RealClimate never did have much of a following.”
Which makes me think that the “Steig-gate” kerfuffle was nothing more than the “team” trying to find a way to increase their pathetic web traffic.
As for NASA/NOAA etc., it would certainly save the taxpayers a lot of Climate Ca$h if they consolidated their efforts. For example, GISS should get out of the climate modeling business (let NCAR and/or GFDL do that), and focus instead on the satellite missions. And let NOAA/NCDC handle the “hottest year evah!” stuff since they are caretakers of the data. GISS should also close down their expen$ive New York City office and move their base of operation to Maryland, merging with the rest of the GSFC (of which they are a subsidiary).
Unfortunately, researchers at GISS, NOAA, EPA, NSF, DOE, academia etc. are so politically connected that it is very unlikely that they’ll lose any of their large budget increases slated for this year and next. After all, they have their six figure salaries and generous pension, holiday/vacation, and healthcare benefits to protect…
“Global warming funding presents an opportunity to reduce spending without unduly impacting NASA’s core human spaceflight mission.”
And what has the core human spaceflight mission become?
To kick out all the engineers and hire enviro-bureaucrats[not an easy word but spell-check will get it]?
To be dependent on old soviet designed rocket to get to ISS in time every time?
To sit around watching China taking the lead, with Japan, India and Chile following suit? Or is it to just see what happens when the Russian bear wakes from slumber if they ever get their heads out of their gutter filler.
EU, Canada, Australia and New Zeeland, don’t want to take the lead nor, apparently, become that very technologically advanced in the coming space age. If one is to believe it one of the reasons EU disregard a full blown space program is apparently due to climate change fears. And what has it gotten EU but more dependent on Russia, just like with natural gas.
So if US don’t want to recommit, reinvigorate, recharge, it’s space program (to get the rest of the crowd on board by, again, showing the way,) then there’s no country in the western world that has proper human manned space flight capabilities (except for fun rides for tourists), and so the whole of the western world–it’s golden era then, obviously, long past–is technologically dead or dying. The idea that the western worlds governments can get a cheap ride on what, eventually, the western world free market might be able spawn on their own is rather bleak (unless of course one sell to those who can afford it) when faced with the trillions of dollars the Chinese government are going to throw into their space tech market the coming decades.
So join NASA’s human space flight mission – there’s no better way see how everyone else makes it. :p
This is a domestic decision for the American taxpayers and not for the likes of myself to interfere, urge or condemn. But whatever you do, do it well and give your country the best chance it may have to advance itself. A bootstrap time for hard decisions and a clear vision to restore a nation of purpose and pride. As I see it the industrial giant of America is a sleep, and needs regenerating. Make your scientists and academics create the machinery, the products and invest in your people to that end. Make it work!
That said -Its o.k. if you pack a few like Lazy teenager and his cohorts into a spacecraft and send them off the planet to do some real work, this can only help in defeating the academic lethargy…oh and Gavin can live in his borehole !
Anthony,
is the traffic chart right? Based on what I see, it’s RealClimate that beats the pants off WUWT. Is the y-axis mistakenly inverted? It must be, because I can’t see how traffic would have fallen so much during Climategate.
Never mind, it’s traffic RANK, not volume. Sorry.
I believe NASA has come and gone. Events in history are on the move in America that I’m afraid are impossible to stop. This country is now catering to its lowest common denominator, an “idiocracy,” that the media promotes 24/7. History shows this, over and over again.
Slight correction – GSFC is in Greenbelt, MD.
On a more disturbing financial note – look at the history of NPOESS. The first program to trigger Nunn-McCurdy (congressional response to massive overruns). While I am all for weather systems and polar orbiting satellites (they have a huge impact on the safety of our military forces operating in harms way) the fact is the first mission under NPOESS is 20 times more expensive than comparable missions at NASA GSFC.
Yes, you read that right. We could have built 20 missions (flight and ground) for the waste and abuse on NPOESS. It is not the goals, it is the waste and abuse meeting the goals.
Agree, no one needs GISS – zero it out.
Point of order. The NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center is in Greenbelt, Maryland – not Virginia.
I’m deeply saddened and appalled by NASA’s decline and heartily support defunding any project that is not directly involved in space exploration. That’s why I think NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) needs to go away entirely to be replaced by SEA (Space Exploration Administration). Take away anthing that happens inside Earth’s atmosphere.
I’d rather have a continued manned spaceflight program. Next stop Mars!
It should be pointed out that in NASA’s original charter, its first objective was “The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”
So it could be argued that atmospheric (climate) science is certainly within NASA’s purview. However, the final objective (of eight) is, ” The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment.”
And this indeed is Anthony’s point: “From my perspective, NASA GISS is a duplication of climate services already covered by NOAA/NCDC. . .”
For reference, here’s the Policy and Purpose preamble of National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958:
From here: http://history.nasa.gov/spaceact.html
Note that almost all of the objectives pertain to activities in space, not on the Earth.
/Mr Lynn
As I write this, I’m looking out the window at a street-side display being set-up with the SpaceX vehicle inside. This is the actual test vehicle that has been in orbit. I spent a good 20 minutes in the freezing cold just staring at the thing. This fascinates me, not the hysteria about the 0.8 degrees C per decade rise in global temperatures.
Frank Wolf is my congressman, and I strongly urge people to contact him on this.
He’s a good man in most ways, and has a strong record on a variety of issues, one of which (unfortunately) has become a lot of support for programs in our district run by some of the most self-serving progressives possible, which he gets sucked into via his legitimate concerns for historic preservation.
“Preservation” efforts can often do as much harm as good, especially when they involve efforts by the wealthy to get a little personal pork, which we see quite a bit of here in the Virginia estate district outside of DC.
I’d much rather see NASA engaged in the SCIENCE that brought us not only manned space flight, but the programs which launched multi-year probes sending back amazing and vauable information–movies from the surface of Mars! and the like.
It would certainly encourage and reward those who take the trouble to grow in true science/engineering disciplines.
I’ve had enough with the computer-modelled fundraising propaganda. We can’t afford it, on SO many levels.
Re Lazy Teenager: ( a brief education of the political turmoil surrounding the end of Apollo)
The Apollo program cuts were made by the Democratic-led congress in the early/mid 1970’s. they canceled the last couple of scheduled moon missions and stopped all the future planning for deeper space missions for two reasons: one, the novelty had worn off and the program was no longer drawing the people’s interest (and thus did nothing for congress’ re-election chances), and two, they wished to expand the Great Society and War on Poverty programs started by Johnson, and the surplus funds to do so were taken from NASA and DoD (plus a good bit of deficit spending as the economy was crashing from the Vietnam War and first round of War on Poverty expenditures.) This led NASA to pull the manned program back to low-Earth orbits and develop a reusable orbiter. Politics as usual even mucked that up, as the best shuttle design concept was not the one chosen, while the one with factories placed in the most influential congressional districts was. The President at the beginning of this was Ford (a Republican) but the double down occurred during Carter (a Democrat). The Democrats controlled the legislature throughout.
On the main topic: NASA shouldn’t be doing Earth data analysis except to the extent required to assure spacecraft and sensor health, or to use for support of extraterrestrial analysis. The data should be freely available to whoever wants to do the analysis with one or more prime research teams selected for each data program. If no prime research team will step forward to be caretaker of the analysis, then the program to collect the data should be canceled. Unlike in Europe, the Government of the US has no copyright in government information: all government data BELONGS to the people (some withheld due to national security – mostly to prevent other nations from being able to thwart intelligence collection – other data illegally withheld to prevent politicians from being embarrassed=BAD). All that NASA or ANY other US Government agency does should be freely accessible to US citizens and on a pay as you go basis to others (they didn’t pay the taxes that generated the data after all). It goes beyond the science, but like in science everything should be held up to the light. Government and Science both stink when they choose to work behind barriers and hide information.
Wow, that was quite a soap box…sorry
Dr. Hansen, Al Gore, and their hangerons are a bunch of know-it-all snobs with Lt. John F. Kerry type awards and citations.
Keep it simple.
Certainly cut all the climate stuff out of NASA. Should have been done many years ago. NASA should focus much more on unmanned space exploration and much less on manned flight.
NASA lost its way due to the American war machine starting with Vietnam. The USA’s military budget (elephant in the room) cancels anything good that America could hope for in space. BTW I agree get NASA out of climate activism.
We need to establish a base on a lunar pole.
A telescope perhaps?
If we don’t someone else will…like China.
Eric says:
February 10, 2011 at 6:45 am
I’d rather have a continued manned spaceflight program. Next stop Mars!
I think that’s putting the cart way before the horse. Mars is a two year round trip with no slingshot recovery in the event of a failure.
The moon is three days, and we have safely recovered the crew of one severe failure already.
It’s doable, we have the technology. It’s the will that appears lacking.
Schadenfreude doesn’t quite capture my delight in anticipation of these proposals becoming realized fact. [self-snip]!!!!
writing from abroad, it would be a fine thing for NASA to return to its origins.
David Hume once said “The corruption of the best produces the worst”
However, I don’t see this as an irredeemable state of affairs.
It can be fascinating how the worst can be turned around and made the best again
WOW, when I was a kid, NASA was the ICON of America, now it’s tarnished. Obama needs to go, he is pathetic.