The Republican-controlled House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology has mounted another offensive on Thursday against climate science by attempting to gouge NASA’s budget for earth sciences, reported The Los Angeles Times.
This is an attack on climate studies. The NASA authorization bill for the coming fiscal year was approved along party lines. However, committee Republicans amended the bill and hid it from committee Democrats to purposely to keep liberals in the dark.
“[We] did not even know [the markup] existed before last Friday . . . After we saw the bill, we understood why,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX).
The Republicans’ markup slashes NASA’s budget from $1.77 billion to $1.45 billion, approximately $323 million. What’s worse, NASA is in danger of having its budget cut even further by one-third, cutting its budget to $1.2 billion.
Angered by the Republicans’ deceitful actions, Rep. Johnson wrote in an op-ed for The Hill that “It’s hard to believe that in order to serve an ideological agenda, the majority is willing to slash the science that helps us have a better understanding of our planet.”
The Planetary Society, which is headed by Bill Nye, issued a statement decrying the bill that seeks to ultimately destroy the study of earth sciences. According to the Planetary Society:
Obviously, the cuts to Earth Science make this a hard bill to support, therefore The Planetary Society cannot support the full bill as written at this early stage. We want an authorization bill for NASA that can pass Congress and be signed by the White House, we hope that the committee markup will find ways to preserve and grow all science as this moves forward [emphasis added].
Despite this protest against the Republicans’ markup of the authorization bill, committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) praised the letter as support for the bill because one part of the letter showed support for a “scientifically ambitious, affordable plan of solar system exploration.”
Republicans control vital committees charged with ensuring the proper exploration of space and Earth, but they seek to do the opposite. They want to stifle the study of climate change in order to please their petroleum industry overlords.
