The Guardian is reporting that, under a Trump Administration, NASA should never look back, only forward to outer space. That is, no more climate monitoring for NASA:
Donald Trump is poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by Nasa as part of a crackdown on “politicized science”, his senior adviser [Bob Walker] on issues relating to the space agency has said.
Nasa’s Earth science division is set to be stripped of funding in favor of exploration of deep space, with the president-elect having set a goal during the campaign to explore the entire solar system by the end of the century.This would mean the elimination of Nasa’s world-renowned research into temperature, ice, clouds and other climate phenomena. Nasa’s network of satellites provide a wealth of information on climate change, with the Earth science division’s budget set to grow to $2bn next year. By comparison, space exploration has been scaled back somewhat, with a proposed budget of $2.8bn in 2017.
Some sort of bureaucratic reshuffling to satisfy someone’s lust for orderliness? Nope:
Walker, however, claimed that doubt over the role of human activity in climate change “is a view shared by half the climatologists in the world. We need good science to tell us what the reality is and science could do that if politicians didn’t interfere with it.”
However, research published on Skeptical Inquirer has indicated that it’s somewhere in the realm of 97% concur, 3% do not. I expect Planetary Report is not going to be happy about this, although their Casey Dreier has been bracing for it.
