Charles BoldenYesterday, in an exclusive interview with Ars Technica, NASA’s Chief Administrator Charles Bolden said he doesn’t think his agency is getting enough money to study “everything from the climate and weather to natural disasters.” Except two federal agencies are already studying the climate in-depth: the EPA and NOAA.
They not only study the climate, they also fund other organizations to examine it as well, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. There are other federal agencies, but NASA, the EPA, and NOAA take the biggest slices out of every taxpayer dollar.
Formed in the early 1970s by Pres. Richard Nixon, the EPA was tasked with protecting America’s watersheds and environment. Since its inception, it has grown into a multi-tentacled creature whose goals mirror those of NASA, NOAA, and a host of other agencies. It spent approximately $8.1 billion this year in Congressional appropriations, with an all-time fiscal year budget of $10.3 billion in 2010, up 36 percent year-over-year growth. For FY2016, EPA chief Gina McCarthy requested a stunning $8.6 billion, even though she was unaware of no increase in “extreme weather.”
A quick visit to the EPA’s website shows that the agency is primarily focused on climate change, with more content devoted to global warming than clean water, less polluted air (ozone and particulates), or toxic landfills. In fact, it’s top five news items as of press time were for expenditures/awards/monies related in part to global warming/climate change.
And yesterday, the EPA announced yet another grant, this time to “four Massachusetts organizations that will educate the community about climate change.” These are American taxpayer dollars being hijacked by a federally funded environmental agency to promote the vision of a president tone deaf to critique or convention.
And all those new rules have costs attached to them, so much so that even the Supreme Court had to reel the EPA back into shallower waters as it had gone off the deep end once again. Any rule or regulation costs money. Some are practical (like clean drinking water and fresh air) and some are onerous and symbolic (the Clean Power Plan that just about every single expert has said will do nothing to avert the Earth’s temperature from rising, including McCarthy).
NASA’s Bolden, who said in the same interview about his agency’s desire to study our world’s climate as well as the universe, is also nonplussed by the House committee tasked with overseeing his agency. Since 2009, President Obama has asked for a “total of $107 billion for NASA’s budget,” which is overseen by the House Select Committee of Science, Space, and Technology, chaired by Rep Lamar Smith.
For FY 2016, Obama asked for $1.95 billion for NASA’s Earth science budget, but “congressional appropriators countered with $500 million less than the president’s request.” Half a billion dollars must seem like chump change to a government employee.
All the while, Rep. Smith has been requesting emails from NOAA regarding egregious climate-related missteps, so much so that scientists are using the government’s whistleblower protection act to expose corruption at NOAA.
Since his request, NOAA has refused to turn over a single email or internal communication. The Washington Post also reported that a “groundbreaking global warming study was ‘rushed to publication’ over the objections of numerous scientists at NOAA.”
The study, which some climate scientists say was politically expedient for Obama’s climate agenda, was a last-ditch attempt to rewrite the temperature data that goes back nearly 200 years to make it appear as if the last 20 years are actually warming (they aren’t). Rep Smith said “whistleblowers have come forward with new information on the climate study’s path to publication in June.”
As noted previously, satellite measurements orbiting the Earth show no statistical increase in temperatures since January 1997, including a particularly strong El Ni√±o event that made 1998 appear warmer than usual. Currently, an El Ni√±o event (a naturally occurring phenomenon) has formed in the tropical Pacific Ocean and is affecting temperatures worldwide (some regions are warmer, wetter, drier, or colder than normal). It’s also causing the northeastern United States to experience warmer-than-normal temperatures and other areas to have lower temperatures.
Since neither NASA nor NOAA can write new regulations regarding carbon dioxide emissions, the EPA has become the federal government’s go-to lawmaker, implementing tens of thousands of new regulations each year to reduce CO2 emissions ahead of the COP 21 climate talks in early December.
