Beyond Climate Change: Cruz, Rubio Appointments Could Threaten US-Russia Relations

The Republican-controlled Senate recently appointed climate change skeptics to committees which oversee two of the country’s major agencies that study the issue. These appointments could have major implications that echo here on Earth and out in space.

On Jan. 8 the Republican-majority U.S. Senate appointed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) as the chairman of Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to chair the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard.

The subcommittee now chaired by Cruz helps to oversee NASA, while Rubio’s subcommittee oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Both agencies conduct research on climate change and global warming.

The announcement of the senators’ fresh appointments came as a shock to the media, citizens and other politicians, as both Cruz and Rubio are well-known deniers of manmade climate change — positions that are fueling speculation that their appointments may adversely affect the work of NASA and the NOAA.

“We have a climate denier who is in charge of a committee that has a heavy science mandate,” Melinda Pierce, legislative director of the Sierra Club, told McClatchy. “I fear for NASA’s portfolio of climate science research.”

In 2013, NASA boasted about its participation in and contributions toward authoring and reviewing the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which concludes that “95 percent certainty that humans have caused most of the warming of the planet’s surface that has occurred since the 1950s.”

Likewise, a 2013 environmental research letter published by the Institute of Physics, a not-for-profit society that publishes leading-edge scientific research, states that in a review of

11,944 abstracts of peer-reviewed scientific literature on global climate change published from 1991–2011, the overwhelming majority (66.4 percent) endorsed no position on “anthropogenic global warming,” or human-caused global warming. Yet, of the 32.6 percent of abstracts that did endorse the concept, it determined that “97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”

Basically, the scientific community is almost 100 percent positive that manmade climate change is real and significant. Further, NASA and NOAA recently released two separate analyses showing that 2014 ranked as Earth’s warmest year on record since 1880.

Despite this relative consensus, Cruz told CNN last year, “The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that – that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn’t happened.”

Meanwhile, Rubio has gone on record saying, “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.”

Though many news outlets are reporting that Cruz’s appointment effectively puts him in charge of NASA, that’s not entirely accurate, explained Keith Cowing, a former NASA employee, astrobiologist, and editor of the space program blog NASA Watch.

Cowing noted to MintPress that there is more than one Senate committee that deals with NASA. Among other committees, there are authorizing committees and appropriations committees for NASA in both the Senate and the House.

“There’s a dozen or so committees that have something to do with NASA in one way or another in the U.S. Congress. So Ted Cruz is simply the chair of a subcommittee that has a part of that responsibility,” Cowing explained.

However, that does not mean Cruz won’t have any power over the agency. Cowing says Cruz “could steer legislation. He can pass bills out of that committee that can affect NASA’s budget.”

“NASA has a new deputy administrator nominee. When she comes up for confirmation, it will almost certainly be before his subcommittee at first. So yea, he definitely can have an impact,” he explained.

The NASA nominee for deputy administrator, the space agency’s second highest leadership position, is Dava Newman, director of the Technology and Policy Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the MIT Portugal Program. She was nominated by the White House in October, but has yet to be confirmed.

Newman explained to MIT that her possible position would “include NASA’s legislative and intergovernmental affairs; communications; the Mission Support Directorate; and international relationships, including the multinational partnership that manages the International Space Station.”

After assuming the chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, Cruz released a statement on Wednesday, titled “Focus NASA on Its Core Mission: Exploring Space and More of It.” In the statement, he addresses Russia and the U.S. International Space Station (ISS) cooperation with the country.

“Russia’s status as the current gatekeeper of the International Space Station could threaten our capability to explore and learn, stunting our capacity to reach new heights and share innovations with free people everywhere. The United States should work alongside our international partners, but not be dependent on them. We should once again lead the way for the world in space exploration.”

While Cruz’s statement seems to reflect his intentions of growing the space agency and expanding the United States’ capacity for space endeavors, it also threatens to inflame what NASA has called “the most politically complex space exploration program ever undertaken.” Currently, the U.S. relies on Russia for crew transportation to the ISS, among other things.

Cowing described Cruz’s statement as “goofy,” noting that despite U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia in light of the events in Ukraine and Crimea, “the one thing between the United States and Russia that has not changed at all is our agreement to run the International Space Station.”

The U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia after the country annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula last year, and it also accused Russia of violating a treaty regarding the development of medium range cruise missiles. But the ISS was exempted from those sanctions.

In response, Russia sanctioned the U.S. agriculture sector. On Aug. 6, the Kremlin announced prohibitions on imports of “agricultural produce, raw materials and foodstuffs originating in countries that have decided to impose economic sanctions on Russian legal entities and/or physical individuals, or have joined such decisions.” But space cooperation was not jeopardized.

“Everything from oil prices to whether or not gay Americans can adopt Russian children – pick anything you want, the one thing that has not changed in America’s relationship with Russia is the International Space Station,” Cowing said.

“So if he [Cruz] thinks he’s going to change that, okay,” he continued, laughing. “Good luck with that!”

In his Wednesday statement on NASA Cruz also says, “Our space program marks the frontier of future technologies for defense, communications, transportation and more, and our mindset should be focused on NASA’s primary mission: exploring space and developing the wealth of new technologies that stem from its exploration.”

Cowing told MintPress that what’s notable about this statement is that Cruz is a well-known skeptic of climate change and global warming, and NASA has a significant earth science budget that is meant to be put toward exploring those issues.

He also said that both Cruz and Rubio chair subcommittees that oversee NASA and NOAA, the main government agencies that deal with climate change, which includes using satellites in space to study the climate back on Earth.

“When you hear what Ted Cruz said about climate change you can be very certain that he’s going to be skeptical of NASA’s budget for earth science,” Cowing said. “Even though he’s only one person, you may hear him questioning whether NASA is supposed to be spending money on earth science and climate change in the first place.”

Yet Cruz is unlikely to get much traction if he chooses to pursue that kind of questioning. As Cowing pointed out, NASA’s charter, the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, specifically mentions “the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space” as an objective.

“So he says he wants NASA to get back to its core mission,” Cowing said, “Its core mission is in its charter, and the charter says, among other things earth science.”

Basically, the scientific community is almost 100 percent positive that manmade climate change is real and significant.

Basically only 32.6 percent of the scientific community
is positive....must be the Common Core math.

Won’t matter if it was 100% or 97 % or even 32 %. They are all wrong. New study just showed Greenland’s Ice Sheet is growing at fastest rate in 4 years. Antarctic sea ice growing. Arctic ice steady. And Great Lake Ice coverage could set record this year. All that is impossible if we are still warming.

The way this paragraph is written, it says that of those abstracts that “endorsed the concept” of human-caused global warming, “97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.” In spite of being a tautology, they somehow managed to LOSE 3%. Whoever wrote this is displaying a very marginal level of English or a marginal level of logic and general intelligence, or both.

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