In order for its anti-submarine sensors to perform at a high level, the U.S. Navy requires constant updates on the salinity and temperature of the world's oceans.
Rising sea levels and changing coastlines are bread-and-butter data for its multiple fleets.
Keep that in mind, and it’s far less likely you’ll hyperventilate over the latest scientific tug-of-war in Washington.
Late last month, the House Science Committee approved a two-year authorization bill that contains steep cuts – in the neighborhood of $300 million to $500 million – to NASA’s earth science program.
U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville, is the only Georgian on the committee. Prior to jetting off to the Middle East and Europe for a tour of international hotspots, Loudermilk posted an explanation for the Republican action in a press release.
President Barack Obama had proposed shifting more than $400 million from space programs to climate change research – an area of study whose budget has already increased by 63 percent over the last eight years, the congressman said.
The GOP purpose was to re-direct NASA to what Loudermilk said was its core purpose: Space exploration.
“While countries like China, India, and Russia are investing heavily in their space programs, the U.S. doesn’t have the capability to launch our own astronauts into space,” Loudermilk said. “In fact, we are paying the Russians $70 million per seat per flight to take our astronauts to the space station.”
Loudermilk’s goal: “American astronauts on American rockets from American soil as quickly as possible.”
House Democrats have protested the cuts as yet another Republican attempt to impose undercut scientific research that doesn’t mesh with its political ideology.
Georgia’s most influential meteorologist won’t go that far, but he has been drawn into the debate. Marshall Shepherd is a University of Georgia professor of atmospheric sciences and geography and a former president of the American Meteorological Society. He even has his own Sunday TV show: “Weather Geeks” on the Weather Channel.
Shepherd's op-ed piece in the Washington Post, protesting the NASA cuts, never mentioned the phrase "climate change." He's smarter than that. But Shepherd did use some choice words, including "reckless," "stark," and "primitive."
Rather like ditching your smart phone for a black, rotary model, he wrote.
In an interview, Shepherd also pushed back on the reasoning behind the cuts. House Republicans, like much of the American public, think NASA is only about space exploration, he said. And that’s wrong.
The answer lies in the 1958 act that established NASA, which called for the “expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”
“The Space Act that created NASA gave it leeway to study the earth, too,” Shepherd said. “One of the things that [NASA] does from the vantage point of space, is turn back and look at this planet. “I think there’s a fundamental lack of understanding of the breadth and scope of NASA’s mission – and it’s not something that’s evolved because of mission creep.”
Prior to his life in academia, Shepherd was a 12-year veteran of NASA. Often, when he told others that he was a meteorologist for the agency, they assumed he was a weather forecaster for space shuttle launches.
But his project was a satellite that circled the Earth’s tropics, providing data that allowed more accurate tracking of hurricanes, much to the delight of hurricane spotters and the U.S. Navy. He’s still working the project, through NASA earth science grants.
Loudermilk isn’t entirely wrong in his criticism of NASA, Shepherd said. The congressman notes that 13 federal agencies are now involved in climate change research, and Shepherd concedes that some of those lines of inquiry could be consolidated.
“A lot of people think that needs to be clarified. I think he’s identifying something that’s real,” Shepherd said.
But the meteorologist says he’s “cautiously optimistic” that the largest part of those massive cuts by the House Science Committee will be restored.
Civilian weather forecasting requires it. When Hurricane Sandy struck the Jersey shore in 2012, it was a NASA satellite that helped predict its left hook.
But it is NASA’s contribution to the U.S. military – specifically the Navy – that will eventually give Washington lawmakers pause.
The speed at which both planetary poles are shedding ice is ultimately a military concern. Whether you call it climate change or God’s snuggly embrace doesn’t matter — the Navy needs to know where ice is, and isn’t. And then there are those anti-submarine sensors we mentioned.
The House Science Committee is out to restore American rocketry as a point of national pride, which is no small thing. But in a contest, national security usually wins.
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