No good can come of this.

(This is a 3D model of the hole in the ozone layer.)

Trump pretended the TrumpRyanCare hadn’t happened, instead crowing that he’d signed the 2017 NASA Authorization Act.  That act funds NASA, which is good, and even includes a $200M increase.  Remember that nothing has been budgeted yet, and Trump’s draft budget had a $100M cut in NASA spending, so… par for the course, I suppose.

Having a real budget is critical for NASA, which has to have on reliable, multiyear to commit to missions that take 10 to 20 years to complete.  So, being re-authorized is a good step, for what it’s worth.

But the 2017 Republican Authorization Act made some ominous changes.  for some reason (<cough!> Global warming!), they simply eliminated all earth science research from the NASA mission.  All of it, from what I can tell.  And they removed the coordination and cooperation between NASA and NOAA, another robust and productive collaboration.

Most people think of NASA as astronauts in rockets, but earth science is one of the main goals of the agency.  The very first NASA goal in 1959 was “The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”  Not Sputnik.

I can testify personally, having worked at NASA my entire career.  The majority of my work supported research into how the earth worked, and what might be going wrong.  It was surprisingly fun, for something that chilling.

Remember the hole in the ozone layer?  NASA helped show the deeply frightening extent of the problem.  After President Reagan funded more research, we found that the problem was primarily from relatively inert chemicals — chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) — that we found became significantly less inert after they migrated into the upper atmosphere.

This was a problem that would have damaged the whole planet.  Ozone in the upper atmosphere protects the ground from ultraviolet light.  Higher UV would decimate crops, and killed millions, possibly billions of people, ravaging the Earth’s ecology for generations.

Instead, with NASA and all the scientists all over the world, we found that if we changed air conditioners to use different chemicals, we could make the problem improve.  A lot.  There’s still more to do, but millions didn’t die unnecessarily.  This is good stuff.

Global warming is another problem that threatens the greater good.  Like it or hate it, the world is warming, and will continue to warm somewhere around 2° to 6° Celcius.  If it only rises 2°, it’s bad, but not terrible; if it rises 6° or more, it’s catastrophic.

It’s a basic conservative principle that change can be disruptive, and should be carefully managed.  You don’t simply accept every change because you don’t know all the ramifications and risks.  Instead, the conservative approach is to carefully plan for the disruptions that change may cause, and try to limit the harm.

The Internet, for example, was never a conservative favorite, and many conservatives spend years trying to smother it in its crib.

And yet now, unlike Reagan’s response, and contrary conservative principles and any common sense, Republicans are cutting all the relevant earth science funding, trying to shut all our eyes to the truth.  Are they so beholden to their corporate masters they’re willing to risk all of us, for quarterly profits?

Honestly, that’s so insane it’s hard to believe.  But that’s what they’ve done.