It's Official: NASA Is Giving Up on Climate Change Science

Houston, we have a problem.

Junk Science

In a major blow to climate change science, NASA is officially not continuing its work studying global warming and will instead just stick to space exploration.

During a Fox Business news segment, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy (who also happens to be the Secretary of Transportation) dropped the bombshell during a live interview on Thursday.

"All the climate science and all of the other priorities that the last administration had at NASA we’re going to move aside, and all of the science that we do is going to be directed towards exploration, which is the mission of NASA," he said. "That’s why we have NASA — is to explore, not to do all of these Earth sciences."

The news is not so surprising given the fact that President Donald Trump has long been known to be a climate change denier.

His anti-science agenda has systematically undercut any climate research. Just last month, the Department of Energy issued an error-riddled report that denied the existence and impact of global warming.

Giving Up

For NASA, the writing was on the wall when Trump officials forbade the space agency from hosting important climate assessment information on its website.

Trump officials had also ordered two important satellites that collect climate information to be terminated, which critics say doesn't make any sense and could even break the law.

NASA mothballing its work on climate change is pretty galling — especially in light of Duffy's remarks — because the space agency has a long record of studying our planet and its various natural systems since at least the 1960s.

The agency's contributions towards climate science research have been far-reaching to say the very least. Because of all the years of groundwork, scientists are, for instance, able to predict and model future Earth conditions, and even apply climate science work to determine whether exoplanets can support life. 

In short, the Trump administration's decision seems like an extremely short-sighted move that will have unforeseen impacts in the future.

Most of all, it shows that administration officials have little respect for the scientists and engineers at NASA.

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