Bizarre, Environment, Politics, Society

Tomahawks Over Turtles: Congress and Obama Administration Move To Slash NOAA Budget

Wondering where the money is coming from for our three wars, including the over $1 billion for the latest war in Libya? Well, as we spend billions on the wars (including one for an oil-rich nation which has refused to re-pay any of the costs), the White House is slashing domestic programs. A good comparison is that the cost to date of the Libyan war is basically what Congress is about to cut from the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The cuts from Congress are above those asked by the Administration. Trillions of cuts are being worked out in light of budget shortfalls.

Hundreds of millions will be cut from the Joint Polar Satellite System, a reorganized satellite system and hundreds of millions more will be cut from NOAA’s Operations, Research and Facilities budget. NOAA is already a lean organization with an expanding mission. Other countries are increasing oceanic and weather monitoring to protect lives and property. However, with yet another war launched by President Obama, we can hardly be tossing away money on the environment and science while tossing cruise missiles at Tripoli.

Source: Science Mag

182 thoughts on “Tomahawks Over Turtles: Congress and Obama Administration Move To Slash NOAA Budget”

  2. I can’t help but wonder how much BP lobbied for this particular cut.

    Why wonder?

    The [John] Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media — that BP’s lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company’s bottom line.

    While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.

    Now that BP’s oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market.

  3. Corporatism’s attitude is: “Move along folks, nothing to see here. We’re spending too much and have to cut all those wasteful government programs and let Corporations handle everything, including soldiering if we can work it out. Where we can’t replace our troops with mercenaries, make sure we pay them little and get rid of their costly benefits. Shrink the big bad government until it goes down the drain. Private enterprise solves all things.”

    This of course is to distract us from understanding that the Bush Tax Cuts for the “Haves” and “Have Mores” caused the deficit. Two unneeded wars, kept off the budget, grew the deficit exponentially. Tax credits for Oil Companies and others added to the deficit. Out of control spending to Defense Contractors exploded it further. Finally, allowing major corporations
    operating in the US, to avoid taxes with schemes to put phony headquarters in places like the Cayman Islands, has fatally decreased government revenues.

    When NASA is replaced by competing corporations we will get these corporations declaring territories on the Moon and Mars, their property. Genetics will be copy-written. Water resources will become privatized, just as is happening with highways. We will have returned to the “wonderful days of feudalism, with competing fiefdoms, eventually leading to a King or Emperor whose crown will of course rest uneasily. The old Chinese curse will have reached its acme and we truly will be living in interesting times.

  4. Gyges makes a point I hadn’t considered.

    The CIA loves their wars and as long as they have a president who walks their line, we will be at war. The more they can scam from other governmental agencies …

  5. Good, it’s not like a major event with a possible huge long term impact on the ocean happened right in the Gulf of Mexico any time in the last year or so right?

    I can’t help but wonder how much BP lobbied for this particular cut.

  6. kderosa,

    I’m sorry, but I’ve been reading your posts on other threads and won’t be taking your numbers out of context seriously. Or pretty much anything else you might say for that matter. However, I will provide some context for other readers.

    You have failed to take into account not only inflation, but the high costs of developing new technologies and an increased but imprecise and creeping mission mandate from politicians. Gone are the days when NASA’s mission was unitary and clear; the space or bust days of Gemini and the Moon or bust days of Apollo.

    NASA is set up to follow projects based on Space Act Agreements. Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) and Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) programs are the two of Space Act agreements that are not subject to normal Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR). COTS is the program to help develop private delivery systems to be used to supply the International Space Station (ISS) and operates in conjunction with CCDev which is the part of the program to help develop private delivery systems for rotating out crew from the ISS. The Commercial Space Transportation Capabilities Agreements are for facilities support and information sharing regarding the following five private projects:

    Planetspace’s Silver Dart lifting body project
    tSpace’s Crew Transfer Vehicle (CXV) capsule project
    Spacehab’s ARCTUS cargo delivery vehicle project (using existing US technology)
    SpaceDev’s Dream Chaser lifting body spaceplane project
    Constellation Services International’s cargo delivery vehicle (using existing Russian technology).

    All of these agreements have come into force since 2007. More and bigger missions mean bigger budgets. The budgetary increases, however, have not been in line with the costs of the mandates created by the SAA’s.

    None of changes that cutting out pure science projects like the Webb Space Telescope in favor of private enterprise support is both literally and figuratively shortsighted. Space is one of the most hostile environments imaginable and the more we know about it, the safer we can make our inevitable outward expansion. The JWST is a valuable tool in gathering that knowledge.

  7. @Better Noir — Do you mean that there weren’t any extreme weather events affecting human lives or cost money prior to 2010?

  8. Yes, because what good could increased monitoring of world-wide ocean and atmospheric currents do? It’s not like there have been any changes in weather patterns, or any extreme weather events that might have affected human lives, or worse, cost any money.

  11. Welcome Gene….Haven’t seen this gravatar until this morning…Good luck…we do have trolls that like to bait…alls you have to do is ignore them..some will go away on their own…

  15. President Obama today issued the FY 2012 budget for NOAA, requesting $5.5 billion for the nation’s oceanic and atmospheric agency. The proposed budget includes key investments to strengthen NOAA’s most critical programs and initiatives while addressing the administration’s goals of ensuring long-term economic growth, promoting innovation and American competitiveness, and reducing government spending.

    The budget request represents a $56.8 million decrease compared to the 2011 budget.

    The horror: A 1% decrease.

    But Still a 16% increases from FY2009.

    For Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) requests a total appropriation of $5,554,458,000 an increase of $806,105,000, or 17 percent over the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2010.

    For Fiscal Year (FY) 2010, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) requests a total appropriation of $4,483,750,000 an
    increase of $109,880,000 or 2.5% over the Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009.

    The budget could be slashed another 750 Million and still be above FY 2009 levels.

    Whatever will those poor sea turtles do?

  16. GeneH: “I should thank the HST team for my avatar. I tried to image Eta Carinae with a Polaroid and a pair of binoculars, but their pictures turned out much better than mine.”

    🙂 Well done sir.

  17. What’s so silly in this christianly screwedup christian country is that “war” can only be declared by Congress. But christians want to kill on behalf of their man made god Jesus so much that they believe that being at war is a natural. Remember the song “onward christian soldiers”? They just love to be in battle with something, drugs, homosexuals, communists, infidels, nonbelievers, muslims and so on and so on. They just love to kill on behalf of their false man mad god Jesus. How terrible

  18. Those mean ole Republicans are forcing Obama to do what he wants to do anyway. No Democratic President would dream of cutting social Security so I think that means Obama isn’t what he says he is. I can’t understand the hostility from the Republicans to Obama. He is one of them.

  19. While I’m thinking about it, I should thank the HST team for my avatar. I tried to image Eta Carinae with a Polaroid and a pair of binoculars, but their pictures turned out much better than mine. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the HST will be a piece of NASA gear like the Mars rovers and continue to serve us long past the expected expiration date.

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