President Obama could be throwing NASA’s space exploration budget under the bus to make climate change a bigger focus of the world’s leading space agency, according to the House GOP science chairman.
“The Earth science request is 42 percent more than the planetary science budget. In fact, the planetary science request is a reduction of a $113 million over last year’s budget,” said House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, at a space subcommittee hearing on NASA’s fiscal 2017 budget request. The Earth science budget is used to monitor the planet’s atmosphere and has become steadily focused on studying the effects of climate change.
Smith on Wednesday scolded NASA’s counterpart on climate research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, for inaccurately measuring the rise in the Earth’s temperature, with the space agency, to support President Obama’s climate change agenda. He said NASA and NOAA research that 2014 and 2015 were record-breaking years for high temperatures have been contradicted by leading academic institutions.
But Smith appeared a bit more lenient with NASA. He supports the idea of space travel and going to Mars and Jupiter’s moon Europa, which he suggested Obama’s Earth-focused agenda would prevent the nation from doing.
“The Earth science request also is more than the astrophysics division, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Helio-physics Division combined,” Smith pointed out at the Thursday hearing. He said 13 agencies are involved in Earth science research, “but only one that is responsible for space science and exploration, and that’s NASA.”
Smith suggested he would recommend re-balancing the space agency’s budget “to support American leadership in space.”
But NASA Administrator Charles Bolden respectfully disagreed with Republican lawmakers who argued the Earth science programs should be removed and placed in other agencies.
Bolden said the Earth science programs are of strategic importance and have helped many states deal with drought in the West and California. He also said that in past budgets other agencies were given some Earth science responsibilities, but it was changed by Congress because lawmakers deemed that NASA was the appropriate agency.
Beyond the study of climate change under the Earth observation program, NASA is requesting $400 million to advance clean energy in the aviation industry, which surprisingly GOP lawmakers did not seem too critical of at the hearing. Bolden said the program will attract new talent to the agency, but removing the funding for the clean energy program would make the U.S. less competitive.
The new program falls under a recent international agreement the administration entered into with 19 countries called Mission Innovation. The agreement is meant to spur collaboration on developing innovative technologies to meet obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions under the December climate change accord agreed to by President Obama in Paris. Many scientists blame the emissions for raising the temperature of the Earth, causing more severe weather, drought and flooding.
“The budget for NASA includes over $400 million for Aeronautics investments ($321.1 million discretionary and $100.0 million mandatory) that will focus on exploration of new ideas and concepts that will revolutionize the aviation industry with the potential of reducing aviation’s impact on the environment,” according to the agency’s budget proposal.
An additional $34 million in discretionary funds is proposed for the agency’s Space Technology investments in technologies for “advanced power generation and storage,” including so-called “green propellant” for rockets, fuel cells and batteries. It also includes developing Earth environment sensing technologies, and technologies to obtain oxygen from carbon dioxide.
