Sen. Cruz Complains When NASA Does What Congress Told It To Do

1. A review of Cruz’s donor list explains why he takes this position. And no, he probably never read NASA’s enabling legislation–too much like work.

2. He’s running for president, and coming out against climate studies that NASA helps complete plays well with his electorate and donors. Who knows what the man really thinks?

   1. Does it matter what the man really thinks? What matters is how he shapes policy and how he votes. And that is also shaped largely by his electorate and donors.

3. “This is not the public law you’re looking for…” (waves hand)

4. This seems a bit ambiguous and potentially conflicting with NOAA’s charter. According to Wikipedia, 5 fundamental activities of NOAA are:
   – Monitoring and observing Earth systems with instruments and data collection networks.
   – Understanding and describing Earth systems through research and analysis of that data.
   – Assessing and predicting the changes of these systems over time.
   – Engaging, advising, and informing the public and partner organizations with important information.
   – Managing resources for the betterment of society, economy and environment.
   Seems that NASA’s mission is to expand human knowledge but NOAA is to actually do something with that knowledge.

   1. “NASA’s mission is to expand human knowledge but NOAA is to actually do something with that knowledge”

      As an example studying sprites would be a NASA activity. If it is eventually found that sprites affect weather then NOAA would start collecting and analyzing data on sprites.

      1. There are a good number of satellites operated by NASA which are primarily focused on climate or weather-related atmospheric sciences. http://science.nasa.gov/ear… I don’t see it as a problem, but NASA’s missions certainly overlap with NOAA’s fundamental activities.

   2. You hit a key point. I’ve heard many an in house NASA discussion about how some things we do should be NOAA instead, all of which whither into mumbling and incoherence at mention NOAA would take that mandates funding and projects with them. Rebadging employees anyone? Thats about it, in a zero sum game that the budget is. I suspect Sen. Cruz would not want the work on Earth science done at all, by NASA, NOAA or anyone.

      1. I can verify that Numbers Guy speaks the truth. It’s unfortunate but that’s how the world works. If the study of the Earth were a cash business for Texas, Cruz might well change his name to Hawking and keep plowing forward under the banner of science. I’m not sure why he really takes the stands he takes, ignorance or opportunism (probably a little of both), but that’s what he believes is his job. He’s just playing his part, but as Luke said “calling it your job don’t make it right boss!”

5. Nice job Bolden. I would have also mentioned the NASA charter, but he made the right response.

6. While I do believe that NASA has a role to play in Earth Science I think it is perfectly valid to question how much a role it should play.

   I don’t think Cruz and Gardner were saying that all of Earth Science should be cut out of NASA. I think their point was that it has been over prioritized by the current administration.

   Is studying the Earth and the climate from space part of NASA’s mission? Yes, but it shouldn’t be its main focus and it shouldn’t be receiving disproportionate increases that take away from human and robotic space exploration. NASA is not the “Global Warming and Climate Change Administration” or NOAA.

   1. Nice take! Hopefully you don’t get picked on by the high school debate class, most of whom seem to join blogs (or what ever this format is). Seems scoring points has become more important than actually trying to see the big picture on both sides and then learning from it. While it’s clear that Cruz has his agenda’s, it doesn’t mean his proposed actions are %100 wrong, regardless of his possibly flawed and/or personal reasons.

      1. Hopefully you don’t get picked on by the high school debate class, most of whom seem to join blogs (or what ever this format is)

         You are paracticing the classic fallacy:
         Attacking the Person – Also known as Argumentum ad Hominem (argument against the man), this is quite a common occurrence in debates and refers to a person who substitutes a rebuttal with a personal insult.

         1. I apologize if someone took that as a personal attack, but your reply illustrates what I’m saying. You dropped the “Argumentum ad Hominem” reference (incorrectly as I was not engaging in a rebuttal, but agreeing with Joe), without addressing the real issue that Joe brought up and I was commenting on, that nothing is ever black and white. In the short time I’ve been on here I have seen a lot of tangential points argued seemingly to be right, rather than have a discussion. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it.

            1. See above

               I have been in the past rightfully chastised by our estimable hosts more than once. Not for personal attacks, but for over-the-top hostility to certain political wings and to certain dictatorial governments, diverging from the goal of space-related talk.
               In fact, I lost my direct posting rights. As the ’70s TV show, “Baretta” theme song said, “Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.” Thats why I appear to post a day late and a dollar short.
               I like a site where civility rules.
               As Lyndon Johnson said, “Don’t spit in the soup, we all have to eat.”

            2. Appreciate the points. While I didn’t mean for anyone to take my general criticism of the “debate guy” approach as personal, if it offends someone then there is probably something wrong with it and I apologize. (Segway back to space) If you saw the hearing on Tuesday, an example of “debate guy” showed up in the form of congressman Forbes. He picks at Ms. Shotwell because SpaceX buys aluminum out of country and therefore by California law, the Falcon can’t be called American made. Just a technicality to put her on the spot that added nothing to the real discussion. While I am not necessarily an Elon believer, that kind of approach seems designed to score points of the “gotcha” type, which is the sort of thing I was referring to in my original post. BTW, sorry about the spelling mishap on your name. 🙂

            3. “Gotcha” is what politicians use as a primary weapon. Committee meetings are just for show, hoping to feed soundbites to the media. Real business is done out of view, and unfortunately, what occurs there is not for our interests, but for theirs and their sponsors.

            4. Right on target. That session was staged to set the groundwork for the real agenda. My thought is that the language regarding RD180 may or may not get modified for the near term, although for some in the room, that’s the goal. The fires will be stoked to increase the timeline pressures so that the objection to government giving money to the private company’s will gradually get pushed to the background in favor of expediency for national securities sake. BE4 seems to be a bit of a smoke screen. All new architecture, using a fuel that even top level ULA engineers say is “not the way to go”, built by a company that hasn’t produced a working engine, partnered with a company that doesn’t build engines. What could possibly go wrong? And BTW, requires an all new launch vehicle. I think there will be a push for speeding up the AR1 with government money. Air Force will fight tooth and nail until they get a top line increase and then will be all smiles. Possibly they might attempt to even things out by getting Elon some money to get more Falcon Heavy launches in quickly, thereby speeding up the certification process. Just a thought.

      2. Knock off the personal attacks.

         1. I apologize if someone took that as a personal attack, but Yale Simpkin’s reply illustrates exactly what I’m saying. He dropped the the debate 101 “Argumentum ad Hominem” reference (incorrectly as I was not engaging in a rebuttal, but agreeing with Joe), without addressing the real issue that Joe brought up and I was commenting on, that nothing is ever black and white.

            1. Putting a “p” in my name is a underhanded as one can get! ;-p
               However, to your point, I was not addressing Joe’s or your points. I was simply doing a drive-by nanny-run.
               <soapbox>I have posted and modded many sites over many years and I see the corrosive effects of vituperative personal attacks. I tend to get rancorous myself so I try to manage it in myself,not always successfully.
               I just think it makes it a friendly place if we don’t get mean-spirited.</soapbox>

7. Too bad it always turns into a debate between the reds and the blues. One side says Cruz has personal/political agendas. True. Either he isn’t capable of understanding the current environmental concerns or he is deliberately ignoring them, and frankly I’m not sure which is more disturbing of a man who wants to lead this country. On the other side we have people taking a portion of a sentence from the NASA charter, blowing it out of proportion, and building a distorted view of what is truly expected of NASA. Again, either you’ve read the entire charter and still don’t get the full spirit and intent of it, or you are deliberately miss-representing the relative importance of that one aspect of the charter (which was apparently added at a later date, supposedly politically driven) to support personal/political agendas. That’s a pretty slippery slope as I could take the statement “The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space. …”,and use it to hi-jack nearly any politically driven agenda project under the sun. Frankly, if certain people are that reckless, I’m not sure I want them on my side of the debate (I’m on the scientific community side).

   1. The sentence in the NASA charter (its not a particularly long document) is what gives NASA the charter – the mission – under law – to pursue its various Earth science activities. You and Cruz can argue all you want but the law is the law – unless you change it. Good luck with that.

      1. If I remember correctly Cruz himself said that nobody questions the value of NASA doing Earth Science but that it was being over prioritized by the current administration. Given the statements I have heard Cruz make I see no evidence that he wants to shut down Earth Science.

         1. Given the statements Cruz has made and his political positions on matters of science, it’s no surprise that he finds Earth Science over prioritized

8. BTW, I love Charlie Bolden, but don’t agree he covered himself in glory with the “KSC underwater” drop. Sounded a bit like a desperate dramatization because he didn’t have something better to drop on the reporters. The sad thing is looking back, he knows he could have come up with a dozen other very good reasons for his position. You know the feeling; “I should have said…” But that’s the pressure he signed up for.

   1. Others would disagree with you:

      http://phys.org/news/2014-1…

9. Keith perhaps you should check the law first. The one you reference was created by Obama and the fully socialist controlled congress of 2010.

   The actual NASA founding document of 1958 is here:
   http://history.nasa.gov/spa…

   its version is as follows
   (1) The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;

   Did you see what the socialists and climate cultists added there? They added the phrase “of the earth and”.

   The fact that when the republicans get back in control they plan to reverse the perversions of NASA’s charter is just what they should do. Of course they will not try to change the charter until they control the white house as Obama has shown himself more then willing to frustrate the will of the people. So they will use the power of the purse to restore order until then.

   There has been no significant warming this century, no increase in extreme weather events, and an actual reduction in the rate of sea level rise. There is no justification for jacking up spending on earth science by 41% since 2009 while human space flight has dropped by about 7%. Earth science should be in NOAA who already own their own satellites. What other agency should be responsible for promoting commercialization of Human space flight than NASA. If they or their private partners don’t do it who will?

   Keith, why no comment on Bolden’s canard that spending on human space operations has gone down because commercial crew is so cheap. It is certainly true that Private space is the best hope for economic space progress, but this fig leaf to cover the transfer of resources is particularly laughable. If he cant think of a way to spend more money on COTS type activities that will help create economic space infrastructure, then he is the wrong man for the job.

   PS Some one should ask Bolden why with the steadily increasing CO2 fraction there have been no land falling Cat +3 Hurricanes in Florida in the six plus years he has been Obama’s water carrier. There has been an all time Hurricane drought but of course the NASA earth scientists don’t hold press conferences about findings that uncut the climate narrative and the media liars wouldn’t cover it if they did. Kick them out of their Govt jobs and use the money freed to accelerate space development

   1. Hate Obama much? Hate to burst your bubble but As for adding “Earth” to the NASA authorization act, contrary to what you and all the Obama haters have been trying to post, “Earth” was not added in 2010 but rather was added by the “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act, 1985,” Public Law 98-361, July 16, 1984, section 110(b) (98 Stat. 426). when Ronald Reagan was president with a Republican-controlled Senate.

      1. I’m sure Ronnie Reagan didn’t intend NASA to support assertions of AGW and the accompanying environmental activism we are experiencing . As Reagan famously stated 80% of pollution is caused by trees so let’s not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.’

         1. Reagan typically had little idea about the implications of things.

      2. Keith thanks for pointing out the website which shows when each charter amendment since 1958 has been made, very useful, adding it to my toolbox. I was in error to claim that political leftists in 2010 were behind the the addition of the earth amendment when that was one of the amendments passed in 1985. Overall the 1985 amendments have more good then bad with the addition of the promotion of commercial space objective.

         However, I am afraid my error does not justify your position in your original post. Cruz is entirely correct to observe and object to the transfer of resources from human space flight to global warming research in NASA spending. Requiring Cruz to support your interpretation that four words added back in 1985 before the general public had even heard of Global warming justifies a 41% increase in earth science and a 7% reduction human space flight since 2009 is quite a stretch.

         As you say, Hate Cruz much?

         1. Money shifts, and priorities shift when needs shift and problems appear and need action.

            and “Hate Cruz much?” Hell yes.

         2. Why don’t you read what Bolden said to explain all that and then you can apologize again for not doing enough research.

   2. What is there about the original phrase: “of phenomena in the atmosphere’ that does not apply to phenomena in the atmosphere?? The whole process of climate change study is the study of phenomena in the atmosphere!

   3. “the fully socialist controlled congress of 2010”? Was that the one in which Republicans picked up 64 seats in the House in the midterm elections? I guess then we can blame them for “the perversions of NASA’s charter.”

   4. Look at what that Fellow Traveller Pinko Reagan’s politicized lefty NASA Goddard Lab published in 1983: SHAMEFUL PERVERSION OF NASA’S ROLE!

      Publication Abstracts
      Hansen et al. 1983
      Hansen, J., G. Russell, D. Rind, P. Stone, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff, R. Ruedy, and L. Travis, 1983: Efficient three-dimensional global models for climate studies: Models I and II. M. Weather Rev., 111, 609-662, doi:10.1175/1520-0493(1983)111<0609:ETDGMF>2.0.CO;2.

      A global atmospheric model is developed with a computational efficiency which allows long-range climate experiments. The model solves the simultaneous equations for conservation of mass, energy and momentum, and the equation of state on a grid. Differencing schemes for the dynamics are based on work of Arakawa; the schemes do not need any viscosity for numerical stability, and can thus yield good results with coarse resolution. Radiation is computed with a semi-implicit spectral integration, including all significant atmospheric gases, aerosols and cloud particles. Cloud cover and vertical distribution are computed. Convection mixes moisture, heat and momentum, with buoyant air allowed to penetrate to a height determined by its buoyancy. Ground temperature calculations include diurnal variation and seasonal heat storage. Ground hydrology incorporates a water-holding capacity appropriate for the root zone of local vegetation. Snow depth is computed. Snow albedo includes effect of snow age and masking by vegetation. Surface fluxes are obtained from a drag-law formulation and parameterization of the Monin-Obukhov relations.

      The initial Model I is used for 60 climate sensitivity experiments with integration times from 3 months to 5 years. These experiments determine the dependence of model simulation on various physical assumptions and model parameters. Several modifications are incorporated to produce Model II, the greatest changes arising from more realistic parameterization of the effect of boundary layer stratification on surface fluxes and the addition of friction in the top stratospheric layer to minimize effects of wave reflection from the rigid model top. The model’s climate simulations are compared to observations and a brief study is made of effects of horizontal resolution. It is verified that the major features of global climate can be realistically simulated with a resolution as coarse as 1000 km, which requires an order of magnitude less computation time than used in most general circulation models.”

   5. please show me when the senate had 60 democratic seats in 2010.

10. This is the same putz who thinks it is perfectly fine to withhold funding from Homeland Security until the last minute because of some disagreement.

    Don’t look behind the curtain. There’s a mean little man hiding.

    1. Arguably, DHS is, like NASA, a Federal agency in urgent need of reform and re-focus.

    2. Sorry, the Authorization from 2010 is hardly the gold standard of why NASA was originated. Left-wing politics is rampant in that amended authorization. Go back to 1958 for what NASA’s core mission should be. And if you truly believe in commercial space, read this: http://www.cato.org/publica….

       1. Oops. You need to use Google a bit more. Adding “Earth” to the NASA authorization act, contrary to what all the Obama haters have been trying to post, was not added in 2010 but rather was added by the “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act, 1985,” Public Law 98-361, July 16, 1984, section 110(b) (98 Stat. 426). when Ronald Reagan was president with a Republican-controlled Senate.

          1. Yes, in 1985 the bureaucratic creep of NASA engulfed Earth
             sensing. That is the nature (and risk) of government agencies. And while
             it might be argued that it made sense then, by 2000, commercial sensing could
             have readily stepped in and started providing that data at a far lower
             cost. I pointed to the 1958 authorization as it is my opinion that this
             does represent the core of what NASA should be doing. And given the
             steady rise of commercial space, even that core needs to be re-evaluated as the
             sphere of influence likely needs to be altered. Certainly beyond LEO if
             NASA as an agency truly is to have a mission. And to be honest, you are
             the one who pointed to the 2010 act as “… the one that established NASA
             and provides its charter …”

             1. It says what it says.

       2. Here is a Reagan-era published NASA climate change paper. That pesky socialist lefty Reagan.
          http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/a…

          1. Military too, preparing for climate change to be able to maintain effective defensive abilities, how dare they. Will Senator Cruz tell them that shouldn’t be part of their core mission?

             1. Congress has already told the DoD to ignore climate change.

                http://io9.com/the-pentagon…

             2. Hmm from that language quoted in the article, those are specific programs (non-DoD) they aren’t supposed to implement. I don’t think it forces them to ignore climate change. They can still prepare, react. Also, I’m sure they can still do some of the things in those programs if they fall under their own objectives. The author’s take on it

                “In other words, don’t even THINK about initiating programs to prepare
                for the potential impacts of climate change, either in the United States
                or abroad.”

                makes it look like a threat, but I think that’s reading too much into it.

          2. I think he’d be perceived that way today given trends in his party.

             Interestingly the US Military is paying attention to the resource shifts accompanying climate change.

             http://www.nytimes.com/2014…

       3. In addition to Keith’s corrections of your factual errors, I have to wonder about the GOP obsession with the first versions of everything, as though they were somehow divinely inspired and it was heresy to update or correct them for changing times.

          Do you always eternally use the first version of every idea that pops into your head?

          1. “Do you always eternally use the first version of every idea that pops into your head?”

             Well, yes…

          2. Yes indeed: what did the founding fathers have to say about NASA’s charter?

11. I think that Senator Cruz is more querying the agency’s priorities rather than doing it at all. It is his view that NASA should be directing more of its resources at beyond LEO and other celestial bodies than Earth than it currently is.

    1. More resources how? By supporting SLS and Orion? May as well flush it!

       1. Remember that, as far as Congress knows and believes, SLS is a panacea that will lead to almost immediate missions to the Moon and other near-Earth destinations. If anyone has expressed scepticism to Congress’s about SLS’s relevance or utility they haven’t done so in public, as far as I know.

12. “were it not coming from Cruz and people wanting to make points in the presidential race” as is Cruz himself, of course. Don’t complain when your guy politicks and other people politick right back at him.

13. haha. But it is coming from Cruz and he himself is trying to make points in the presidential race. There’s a tone of apology in a lot of the ‘defend the anti-scientist’ comments here.

14. No, NASA is able to perform its stated missions now or at least it should be able to. All NASA needs is to learn to do business in a different way, not the way things were done in the old days,, the Apollo days. Those days are long passed, and those methods won’t work any more.

    1. Cost plus may be fine in wartime, or a crash program, or when dealing with total unknowns, but it bad in an era of limited resources.

15. In terms of the NASA mission, there is no question that NASA is the lead agency for all nonmilitary Earth observation from space; it is in the NASA charter. It is difficult to find any evidence that Mr. Cruz wants to “hand off” this research to other agencies. He has not proposed increasing the NOAA budget, for example. It seems more likely that Mr. Cruz does not want any agency to conduct research that might provide even more evidence that human activity is leading to global warming.

    1. “Handing off” the research to NOAA which has Marco Rubio for oversight would just be even more of a waste of CSPAN broadcast hours.

16. Almost everyone in the climate research business says existing data fully supports the existence of global warming and it is man-made, I have the feeling global warming is a problem already solved from the scientific point of view. It simply makes no sense to spend more money just to confirm something everyone knows to be correct. Either people are lying about the robustness of their conclusion, or they just want a free ride on the political bandwagon of climate change.

    1. What they are doing now isn’t about proving that it’s happening, it’s about understanding what is happening. How are ocean currents changing? What are the implications for rainfall patterns? Just how fast are greenland and antarctica melting? These are all vital questions, especially if little is done to actually stop the process. If we are going to insist on grabbing the steering wheel of this climate system, we had better get some idea of where exactly we are going.

    2. It’s not enough to that it’s occurring. Models need to be perfected. Feedback mechanisms need to be better understood. Rates and effects need to be better understood in order to make better prediction and to better prepare for both the fallout from ongoing changes and for any potential attempts to slow the changes and ameliorate the effects.

       1. That’s not what we heard in the news, all the hype is about global warming being real: 2014 is the hottest year, ice cap is melting, blah blah, not much else. Of course all that you mentioned are legitimate scientific question, and we already have NOAA dedicated to understand them, especially modeling, which is never NASA’s strength. Climate modeling is a dismal science, and I doubt much can be improved even if we 10 fold the current funding level. Assume we *can* predict precisely how and when will we be doomed, what can be gained from that? Politicians and general public probably will not believe it until the dooms day comes. Further, what these research can advice us other than what we already know? The best way to reduce greenhouse gas emission is to stop living in energy wasting suburban sprawl and move to cities close to work. Unless the we can increase energy price by a factor of 5 to 10, this will never happen. For a cancer patient, ignorance is much better.

          Talking to people working in meteorology, I feel they are a happy bunch who never worry about funding, there is alway plenty. Should we give more to the already rich at the cost of other sciences, that’s the question.

          1. NOAA and NASA and a number of other agencies, and NGOs and academia, and others work together, each with there own strengths.
             NOAA with deep sea probes, and USGS with water and ice, and NASA with remote sensing, etc for example. This is a global, mult-faceted issue affecting everything.

             BTW – here is an interesting story on meteorologists (who are not climate scientists) and climate change
             http://www.cjr.org/cover_st…

             1. I can be wrong but climatology used to be a branch of meteorology at university departments of meteorology. Nowadays they sometimes are called department of atmospherical sciences. They all study weather, the only difference is the timescale of interest. I just call all of them meteorologists, just like I would not differentiate cosmologists from astrophysicists.

             2. Meteorologists work with weather, Climatologists work with climate.

          2. “Unless the we can increase energy price by a factor of 5 to 10, this will never happen.”
             Not true. A TED Talk well worth a few minutes:

             https://www.youtube.com/wat…

             1. Lighter electric cars, energy efficient buildings…nothing new here, just a little rosier than anyone else, and the guy want to solve the energy problem in 40 years without even mentioning nuclear energy. Yep, he can cover the planet with solar panels, erect wind mills like lamp posts. Wait, should we cover the Pacific as well?

             2. Lighter electric cars, energy efficient buildings…nothing new here
                EXACTLY
                There is no need for anything magical or expensive. We know what will lower energy usage. And its being done.
                However, much of the GHG sources are outside of energy use (at least a third is not)
                And none of this has anything to do with understanding the dynamics of the global climate system, the study of which is a core responsibility of NASA, NOAA and others.

             3. “There is no need for anything magical or expensive.”

                I think you are wrong. The magical thing that is urgently needed is the will of the people to really do something about it, and that’s the most expensive part of the equation. NASA may help in terms of developing technology for lighter cars trains and airplanes, it can also help monitoring the earth. NASA is already doing all that and for a long time at the past funding level. What’s more are you guys asking for?

             4. Congressman Posey wants to eliminate all funding for climate change research at NASA, while not adding any funding for this research at other agencies. Is that what you are asking for as well? Or do you want to maintain the current funding level for NASA climate research?

             5. I have no opinion on whether the funding level should be kept as is, be reduced or increased. That has to be determined by the scientific merit of the research projects, not political climate. I don’t think congress intends to cut all climate research. I don’t like the phrase climate “change” research, just climate research is good enough to described most of the research activity, and even republicans can support that. If for some reason there is enough politicians wanting NASA to get rid of climate science altogether, fine with me. However, they must provide reasonable support to climate research through other channels such as NSF, NOAA and through defense budget, and I would like to see more cross disciplinary collaborations on the topic of atmospheric dynamics so that the fundings are open to physicists and mathematicians to apply.

             6. “just climate research is good enough to described most of the research activity, and even republicans can support that.”

                I appreciate the fact that you support it, but the majority of Republicans in Congress who adress the issue oppose NASA research on climate, or indeed any research that tends to show that the climate is changing. Mr. Posey for example says that NOAA and NSF have sufficiant funding in this field and therefore NASA funding for climate research should be eliminated. I have not heard him suggest that any climate research at other agencies should be increased.

                I am not aware of any barriers to basic atmospheric research by mathematicians and physicists except the limits in total available funding.

             7. There are no barriers to mathematicians and physicists doing atmospheric research. I’m willing to bet there are physicists and mathematicians doing such work right now.

             8. Water is the most important natural greenhouse gas but its presence in the atmosphere increases if ocean and air temperatures increase, so it acts to amplify antropogenic changes in CO2.

             9. Quite a few conservative survivalists are installing solar panels now that the cost has dropped by a factor of ten.

          3. “That’s not what we heard in the news, all the hype is about global warming being real: 2014 is the hottest year, ice cap is melting, blah blah, not much else.”

             That’s because most news is crap on this issue. The goal now is understanding global warming, not proving it.

             “Further, what these research can advice us other than what we already know?”

             Global warming isn’t just the earth getting warmer uniformly. It is a array of local changes, some of them quite counter-intuitive. Whether you can prepare for these changes, or whether you get blindsided, depends on whether you are willing to pay to do the research.

             1. We have seen bad weather, and some just get unlucky. Just look at people living in tornado country such as Kansas and Oklahoma, they don’t build their houses stronger but rather pay higher insurance. Your research may help insurance companies to better assess the risk, and thus should be paid by insurers.

                Heck I think you are doing a bit of fear mongering as most of your colleagues like to do to get more money. The fact is in the past half-century very little progress has been made in understanding turbulence, which is key to understand the dynamics of earth atmosphere. Computer simulations did improve significantly thanks to the Moore’s Law. However, without serious theoretical work, we can learn very little to answer the “how” question from simulations. However, climatologists today are not equipped with the right kind of knowledge and training to carry out the basic research on turbulence, and physicists and mathematicians working on such problems usually find it extremely hard to get funded. If the country is serious about making progress in understand the earth atmosphere, not just global warming, what we should do is to significantly boost funding of basic research, especially in math and physics. What we see is the contrary, physics students simply can’t find work and many brilliant ones have to seek employment on Wall Street. How sad.

             2. So are you writing to congress to propose increased Federal funding for physics and mathematics needed for basic atmospheric research?

             3. Again you’re conflating weather and climate.

             4. Please take a look at the context of this conversation.

          4. Meteorology and climatology aren’t exactly the same thing. It’s mistake to use them interchangeably. The same goes for meteorologists and climatologists.

             As to the rest of your claims, you might want to review what science is all about. It doesn’t stop once a certain level of understanding is achieved. Climate change has enough unknowns to merit NASA and NOAA working to understand it better.

             As for what good knowing more will do (according to your arguments, knowing more won’t prevent continued warming), no one knows. That’s the thing about science: we don’t always know what benefits will come from a given discovery.

    3. Existing data fully supports that there is an epidemic of child poverty in the US (22%). So we’re done. Job’s complete.
       No need to further study the issue. No need to delve in the dynamics of the issue, the causes, needed policies, whatever.
       No. When something is discovered thats when you BEGIN to ramp up your efforts, not taper them off.

       1. “When something is discovered thats when you BEGIN to ramp up your efforts, not taper them off.”

          The kind of effort SHOULD BE actions such as quit driving your car and stop eating beef. Can you do that? Handing out tax payer money to scientists who don’t need it is not effort, it is called stupidity.

          1. Let me repost this from a couple of inches above:

             https://www.youtube.com/wat…

          2. I just figured out what you are saying.
             You are confusing science with policy.
             NASA or NOAA or whatever discovers the process, but they DO NOT enact policy, they just inform policy.
             DOE or EPA or whatever enacts policy. And its up to NOAA or NASA to detect what if anything the policies are accomplishing.
             Totally different spheres of influence.

          3. If your argument that global warming is no ocurring is scientific, please provide the scientific evidence to support your point of view.

          4. Exactly which scientists are talking about that don’t need tax payer money?

             1. Haha, greed is not something I am talking about. I am talking about actual needs to do good and basic science. if your work only benefits insurance company and is primarily commercial application in nature, then you should not ask for public money.

             2. I wasn’t talking about greed either. As for research, private research is paid for with private dollars. Even then, some of the research makes it into the public domain.

                No matter the case, your statement makes no sense in the context of climate change research.

             3. I am willing to support climate research based purely on scientific merit, not on political agenda. I particularly despise those who ask more than what is actually needed. Any problem with that?

             4. There is no way to determine what is needed. In fact, I can’t think of a single scientific field where it’s possible to say, “We only need X dollars to completely understand this phenomenon or system.” It doesn’t work that way, especially as virtually all research raises more questions. There is very likely no endpoint where someone will say, “It’s no longer necessary to study the climate. We know everything we need to know.” But, hey: that’s just my experience from spending years doing research. Curiously, you have yet to quantify what is actually needed or to give criteria to determine what is needed.

17. Forget the charter. The real question should be, what SHOULD be NASA’s mission? Should it be political in nature? IE the religion of global warming? Should it be exploratory in nature? Should it be for the advancement of air and space science? And no, I don’t mean political actions such as climate change, I mean propulsion, moving through the atmosphere, moving through space. I mean, come on now. NASA was not set up to be an environmental political organization like the EPA. It was set up to advance air and space science of the military, and to advance our technology so we would be superior to other nations in the area of airplanes and rockets. Anyone saying it was set up to research climate change is a total liar and fool. That’s SUCH a stretch and so phony.

    I think climate science is important, I just think that 99.9999% of the climate “scientists” are political animals, and I just don’t trust what they have to say. Their systematic effort to root out all dissension against their church of global warming is like nothing we’ve seen before. It isn’t science. It’s politics. It’s creepy. It’s ultra weird and Orwellian. I’m totally disgusted and put off by modern climate science. It’s FAR too politicized to be believed. I’m so much more skeptical of the science because of the people who champion it. Al Gore. Obama. Every far left liberal I can think of. It’s because they have said the science is settled, which is an absolutely absurd thing to say or to assert, that I disbelieve the whole lot of them. That the left, and the radical environmental movement has put politicians at the front of this movement says all you need to know about it. If Republicans were asserting that some science was settled, which was SO FAR from settled, you would roll your eyes. I merely suggest the left open theirs. Global warming has become a political football. No real science is being done now. It’s all politics. It’s all radicalized. It can’t be believed. And…truly, the science is there to prove that the models don’t work. They’re not accurate. Which means the science is garbage.

    1. You cannot forget the charter. It determines what NASA does. If you do not like it then you need to change the public law that establishes and codifies the NASA charter.

    2. “I just don’t trust what they have to say. Their systematic effort to root out all dissension against their church of [ANTI-]global warming is like nothing we’ve seen before. It isn’t science. It’s politics. It’s creepy. It’s ultra weird and Orwellian. I’m totally disgusted and put off by modern [ANTI-]climate science. It’s FAR too politicized to be believed.“

       I agree except you somehow left off the word ANTI- before “global warming” and “climate science”. As a favor, I added them back.
       You of course were actually talking about the wacky far-right deniers and accidentally left out the qualifier.

    3. You misunderstand the very nature of science. In politics, media, and law, truth is decided and argued, so it is natural to assume that truth is whatever you believe.

       But science is different. The world is what it is, not what we might believe or wish it to be. Scientists do not decide the truth, they simply discover it. This requires an open mind, and the question of whether and how the climate is changing was discussed over many years. Observations from space have been critical in learning the answers as space provides the only perspective from which the entire planet can be continuously observed, and both the energy absorbed from the sun and the energy radiated into space can be precisely measured. The first is greater than the second, so the heat contained within the Earth as a system is increasing.

    4. I’m as sceptical as anyone about the politics of climate change. I think that there is a world full of more-or-less ignorant band-waggoners, in politics, journalism and science itself. I’m ticked off with the number of rubbish articles I’ve read, even in scientific publications, the facile assumptions (it’s hot this year because: GLOBAL WARMING, the climate is getting warming, it must be our fault).

       But…

       The science is there. The guilt liberals have unfortunately picked the right horse. Good explanations are hard to come by but there is an excellent summary of the science by the Royal Society, produced in 2010, which is about as plain and non-political as you can get. I highly recommend it.

    5. “The real question should be, what SHOULD be NASA’s mission? Should it be political in nature?”

       Exploitation, colonization, staking turf, and generally doing to the solar system as we’ve done here are political actions. Much moreso than climate.

       “[NASA] was set up to advance air and space science of the military,”

       The military gets a staggering amount of money to look after its own interests.

18. NASA should stick to science: Propose a theory and prove or disprove it with scientific testing. The problem is when the test results shows doubt it is condemned and the scientist is ridiculed (I have seen this), that isn’t science that’s an agenda. NASA should be taken to the wood shed for promoting what has become a political agenda of the left. NASA is playing a dangerous game, let the science go where the data takes you. The screeds that I am reading here proves to me how closed minded NASA has become to the truth which every scientist should be pursuing.

    1. Please provide evidence. Who was the scientist that was condemned and ridiculed? Real science is conducted in the open, not with rumor and innuendo. Are you suggesting thousands of precise measurements of atmospheric CO2 made over more than a century are all incorrect?

19. If there ever is an example of fighting over (financial) scraps, this is it. And another example of written laws and charters that are interpreted very differently among different people (politicians and various people on the forums).

    As far as climate research, I sure want to know of emerging science and data if California will get any more rain.

20. NASA received an extra $1Billion dollars in the 2009 stimulus.

    http://www.space.com/7622-n…

21. “Keith’s note: Perhaps if Sen. Cruz were to take the time to read the public law that originated in Congress – the one that established NASA and provides its charter – he’d understand why NASA does what it does.”
    – He can read?

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