Shocking everyone, the Republicans in charge of Science, Space, and Technology don't really approve of Science and are lukewarm about that whole Space and Technology thingy. And they sent a letter to the chairs of the Super Committee to prove it.
Here is the letter from the Republicans on the House Science, Space, and Technology committee, in an annoying PDF format that does not allow for copy and paste.
Follow below the Orange Squiggle of Power to hear from the letter.
Republicans hate energy efficiency. So that's what they cut from Department of Energy.
Page 1: They want to reduce the budget for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renawable Energy by 1/3: $600M of $1.8B. The dread phrase "picking winners and losers" appears. Naturally, they also want to do away with outreach and education.
Page 2: The entire Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy budget gets a zero.
And of course loan guarantees must die.
Page 4: Direct quote so that no one can accuse me of misrepresenting their position. Pardon any typos.
The vast majority of this funding is directed toward advancing carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) efforts. This nearly exclusive emphasis on a technology that will not be deployed in the absence of cap and trade or similar mandatory carbon constraints - a prospect that was rejected by Congress - is unwise. We believe the United States must develop domestic energy resources to improve America's energy security. Accordingly, we recommend restoring DOE's Fossil Energy program to its prior focus on fundamental R&D to advance oil and gas exploration and production technologies and enable near-term environmental improvements, such as increasing power plant efficiency and research on non-greenhouse gas related pollution abatement technology
They are talking about a $444M budget for the DOE Office of Fossil Energy. They want the US Government to subsidize exploration and production technology development for the largest, most profitable group of companies in the United States, and do nothing at all about greenhouse gases.
Page 5: NASA Human space flight (Exploration program): Cuts of $300M compared to FY11. Essentially this means no HSF for years.
Page 6: Cancel the OCO-2 NASA mission. Which is, per NASA:
OCO-2 is designed to provide space-based global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) with the precision and resolution needed to identify and characterize the processes that regulate this important greenhouse gas. With its three high-resolution grating spectrometers, data collected by OCO-2 could be combined with meteorological observations and ground-based CO2 measurement to help characterize CO2 sources and sinks on regional scales at monthly intervals for 2 years.
Of course we have no need to know where CO2 comes from and where it goes.
Page 7: National Science Foundation.
Guess what? They (Mostly) like the NSF! Except for one part:
Further, as part of the Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) program that crosses all NSF directorates ... SNIP... the FY12 budget request is $998.1M ... SNIP ... Further, we are strongly opposed to the 144.5 percent ($63M) budget request increase ... SNIP ... to Climate Change Technology Program and the 33 percent ($106M) ... SNIP ... for the US Global Change Research Program. We support further reductions to current spending for both of these programs. Further, we recommend elimination of the $10M Climate Change Education program ...
Page 9: No support for NOAA's proposed Climate Service, even though it is proposed as budget neutral.
Page 10: EPA. Again, the arrogance requires a direct quote.
Due to EPA's disturbing pattern of regulating based on insufficient or faulty scientific evidence, we feel that it is unnecessary to continue to fund EPA's research at existing levels until reforms are undertaken.
The. mind. boggles. This isn't the pot calling the kettle black-bottomed. This is a veritable running sewer complaining about the dirt in a class 100,000 clean room. And if they are truly making decision based on bad science, funding better research would help, not hurt.
Page 11: National Institute of Standards and Technologies
At last, something they don't attack. But no climate change stuff, either. Hmmmmmmmm.
Page 12: Homeland Security. They want MORE money here. Oooh I'm surprised.
So, folks, let's review. The Republicans on the SST Committee want to cut three things: Human Space Flight (because Obama changed what Bush did), and anything relating to climate change (because why worry about that?), and of course the evil EPA.
They want to increase funding that is a direct subsidy of the oil and gas industries.
Anyone see a pattern here?
Maybe you can see it here?