U.S. Congress aims to cut climate science– Proposed cuts to NOAA and NASA target climate change research in particular

Desdemona Despair

By Gayathri Vaidyanathan
2 June 2016

(ClimateWire) – Congress is considering spending bills that would significantly cut funding for key climate change research by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 2017.

Among the losers: the oldest carbon dioxide observatories on the planet, the ability to track fossil fuel emissions in the United States and a program to study ocean acidification.

“We are asking for a small amount of money to do all the right things,” said James Butler, director of global monitoring at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL).

The spending bill passed by the House Appropriations Committee last week allocates $128 million for NOAA’s climate research, a 20 percent cut from the previous year. The bill allocates $1.7 billion for NASA’s earth science division, a 12 percent cut from 2016.

Republican appropriators termed climate and ocean services research “lower-priority,” which earned them a rebuke from Democrats. […]

ClimateWire analyzed the House spending bill and NASA and NOAA’s original budget requests to identify programs that might suffer, and ones that will receive love, in 2017. [more]

U.S. Congress Aims to Cut Climate Science