US House of Representatives
As House leaders examine ways to cut spending and address the ever growing budget deficits that have plagued Washington for years, U.S. Representatives Bill Posey (R-FL), Sandy Adams (R-FL) and Rob Bishop (R-UT) were joined by several other of their colleagues in calling for a reprioritization of NASA so human space flight remains the primary focus of the nation’s space agency as budget cuts are considered.
In their recent letter to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers (R-KY) and Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee Chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA), Posey, Adams and Bishop state that while “moving forward under a constrained budget, it will be critical for the Appropriations Committee to produce legislation that is precise in its budget cuts. For years, Presidents and Congress have charged NASA with completing tasks that fall outside the scope of NASA’s primary mission.
“Our space program attracts and inspires the world’s greatest minds and gives our young people inspiration to excel in math and science. Human spaceflight, however, is not simply a matter of national prestige. Our nation’s ability to access space is a critical national security asset and plays an important role in our future economic competitiveness. Space is the ultimate high ground and nations such as China, Russia, and India are anxious to seize the mantle of space supremacy should we decide to cede it.”
“Limited resources force us to make important decisions with regard to the objectives of all federal departments and agencies, including NASA,” said Representative Bill Posey (R-FL). “NASA’s primary purpose is human space exploration and directing NASA funds to study global warming undermines our ability to maintain our competitive edge in human space flight.”
“As NASA’s human spaceflight program hangs in the balance, it is imperative that we ask ourselves: What is the future of NASA? With the current administration unable or unwilling to outline a plan or stick to their original promises, it is time to refocus NASA’s mission towards space exploration,” said Representative Sandy Adams (R-FL). “That is why I am encouraging Chairmen Rogers and Wolf to reduce funding for climate change research, which undercuts one of NASA’s primary and most important objectives of human spaceflight.”
“It is counterintuitive to direct millions of dollars to NASA for duplicative climate change programs and at the same time cancel its manned space flight program- the purpose for which the agency was originally created. Far too many forget that at one time in our nation’s history we were losing the space race. With the creation of NASA, we emerged as leaders and have remained so ever since. If NASA’s manned space program disappears, our nation will once again experience a ‘Sputnik Moment.’ Our country will again watch from the sidelines as countries like Russia, China and India charge ahead as leaders in space exploration and missile defense,” said Representative Rob Bishop (R-UT).
In Fiscal Year 2010, NASA spent over 7.5% --over a billion dollars-- of its budget on studying global warming/climate change. The bulk of the funds NASA received in the stimulus went toward climate change studies. Excessive growth of climate change research has not been limited to NASA. Overall, the government spent over $8.7 billion across 16 Agencies and Departments throughout the federal government on these efforts in FY 2010 alone. Global warming funding presents an opportunity to reduce spending without unduly impacting NASA’s core human spaceflight mission.
See letter here.
SPPI has published a new Book, The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment. The full book can be purchased here.
Global warming alarmists tell us the horrors of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration. Skeptics tell us that it’s not all that bad. Finally, there is a non-apologetic treatise that tells us of the benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment in an alphabetical format. This extensively referenced 360-page color book by Drs. Idso and Idso tells us of fifty-five benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment, and belongs in the library of all who study CO2 and climate.
That’s 55 benefits. Fifty-five!
The benefits are not squeezed out of computer models, but are based on real data. CO2, after all, is plant food, absolutely necessary for all of the biosphere.
The Science and Public Policy Institute has released a ground-breaking book chronicling the many benefits of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The 55 benefits discussed are drawn exclusively on the peer-reviewed literature.
Many books and reports rail against mankind’s usage of fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil because of the carbon dioxide or CO2 that their combustion releases into the atmosphere.
Indeed, this phenomenon is routinely castigated in numerous print and visual venues as a result of the unproven predictions of catastrophic CO2-induced global warming that are derived from theoretical computer-driven simulations of the state of earth’s climate decades and centuries into the future.
Now, however, comes a book that does just the opposite by describing a host of real-world benefits that the controversial atmospheric trace gas provides, first to earth’s plants and then to the people and animals that depend upon them for their sustenance.
The book is The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment, written by the son/father team of Craig D. and Sherwood B. Idso. It is encyclopedic in nature, with fifty-five different subjects treated and arranged in alphabetical order—starting with Air Pollution Stress (Non-Ozone) and ending with Wood Density—each of which entries comes with its own set of reference citations.
The book is subtitled How humanity and the rest of the biosphere will prosper from this amazing trace gas that so many have wrongfully characterized as a dangerous air pollutant.
Says Dr. Craig Idso, “It may not be everything you ‘always wanted to know’ about the bright side of the issue; but it illuminates a number of significant aspects of earth’s biosphere and its workings, as well as mankind’s reliance on the biosphere for food and numerous other material necessities that are hardly ever mentioned by the UN IPCC or the mainstream media.”
The book is so unique a reference source that it belongs in the library of every organization or institution concerned about the issues of CO2 enhancement and derived public policy initiatives.
Brief synopses of each of the 55 sections of the book may be found on the SPPI [scienceandpublicpolicy.org] website and that of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change at www.co2science.org
The book can be ordered from Vales Lake Press.
Contacts: Robert Ferguson or Dr. Craig Idso
cidso@co2science.org
bferguson@sppinstitute.org
www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org