Modern-day Republicans don’t care for science, or anything else that challenges authoritarian propaganda with plausible inferences built on observable facts. High on that list is environmental research, particularly climate science, where the findings might conceivably someday force global fossil fuel entities—and foreign oligarchs like Putin—to trim a few pennies off their earnings. So they’ve come up with a fairly sleazy scheme to starve climate science while pretending to give a crap about it. Step one is to cut it away from NASA, because that’s an organization with residual moon-shot credibility even in the most fevered wing nut swamps, and pretend NOAA will take up the slack:
At a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing yesterday, Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said he wants a “rebalancing” of NASA’s mission. The lawmaker told E&E News he wants the agency to reprioritize its mission because the Obama administration cut space exploration funds. Specifically, that could mean NASA’s work on climate change would go to another agency, with or without funding, or possibly would get cut.
Gosh, if only Lamar Smith had influence with some sort of funding agency, a body of legislators perhaps, one that could increase funding and thus offset the stingy, dastardly actions of the detested anti-NASA Obama … then step two, strangle climate science over at NOAA, will it will be less visible:
The administration is seeking a nearly 20 percent cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's budget, including to its satellite division, The Washington Post reported. That includes significant cuts to the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, which has produced research that disproved the notion of a global warming pause. NOAA's satellites provide invaluable data on climate change that are used by researchers throughout the world. The NOAA cuts target the Office of Ocean and Atmospheric Research, which conducts the bulk of the agency's climate research.
Not exactly rocket science, nor is it anything new. This is standard operating procedure for the anti-science wing. Bait, switch, and murder.