Environmental, National

Trump to Scrap All NASA Climate Research


NEW YORK–(ENEWSPF)–November 23, 2016

By Pakalolo

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In breaking news from The Guardian, President Elect Donald Trump, according to his senior NASA advisor, will eliminate all climate change research within the agency because it is “politicized science”.

Bob Walker, a Trump senior advisor, stated that the Earth Science Division will be stripped of all funding and it’ mission will be transferred to other agencies within the Federal government.

Trump is a climate change denier despite his statement” on Tuesday where he said there is “some connectivity” between human actions and the climate”. If Trump is successful with destroying the critical research on our climate that provides the data sets that Climate scientists use to predict how the earth is responding to accelerating warming and what our responses will need to be, than we will be in for a world of hurt. Game over. Devastating. Insanity. A crime against humanity.

According to  Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in an interview with the Guardian, noting that” Nasa provides the scientific community with new instruments and techniques, the elimination of Earth sciences would be “a major setback if not devastating”. “It could put us back into the ‘dark ages’ of almost the pre-satellite era,” he said. It would be extremely short sighted.

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.

Bob Walker, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said there was no need for Nasa to do what he has previously described as “politically correct environmental monitoring”.

“We see Nasa in an exploration role, in deep space research,” Walker told the Guardian. “Earth-centric science is better placed at other agencies where it is their prime mission.

This follows the horrible news that fossil fuel interests will fill the EPA position with Myron Ebell, a vile climate denier. We have also learned that Republican energy lobbyist Mike McKenna is heading the Department of Energy team and former Interior Department solicitor David David Bernhardt is leading the effort for that agency. Trump has also pledged that on day one, he will begin to unravel the Paris Climate Agreement.

The Earth Science Division of NASA’S mission statement:

Earth is a complex, dynamic system we do not yet fully understand. The Earth system, like the human body, comprises diverse components that interact in complex ways. We need to understand the Earth’s atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere as a single connected system. Our planet is changing on all spatial and temporal scales. The purpose of NASA’s Earth science program is to develop a scientific understanding of Earth’s system and its response to natural or human-induced changes, and to improve prediction of climate, weather, and natural hazards.

A major component of NASA’s Earth Science Division is a coordinated series of satellite and airborne missions for long-term global observations of the land surface, biosphere, solid Earth, atmosphere, and oceans. This coordinated approach enables an improved understanding of the Earth as an integrated system. NASA is completing the development and launch of a set of Foundational missions, new Decadal Survey missions, and Climate Continuity missions.

The Foundational missions are those missions in development at the time the decadal survey was published and include:

The Decadal Survey missions are those guided by the decadal survey produced by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences and published in 2007. These missions include:

The Climate Continuity missions include:

Over the coming decades, NASA and the Agency’s research partners will continue to pioneer the use of both spaceborne and aircraft measurements to characterize, understand, and predict variability and trends in Earth’s system for both research and applications. Earth is the only planet we know to be capable of sustaining life. It is our lifeboat in the vast expanse of space. Over the past 50 years, world population has doubled, grain yields have tripled and economic output has grown sevenfold. Earth science research can ascertain whether and how the Earth can sustain this growth in the future. Also, over a third of the US economy – $3 trillion annually – is influenced by climate, weather, and natural hazards, providing economic incentive to study the Earth

Source: http://dailykos.com


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