By Pete McGinnis (RealClearPolicy)
NASA, which used to do cool things with rockets and space travel, seems to have a tough time getting things done on its own these days. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has to send a ship to bring the agency’s astronauts home from the International Space Station. Closer to home, there’s evidence that NASA is letting environmental activists do some of its air pollution research for it.
NASA studies the effects on air quality from prescribed agricultural burns, such as those used in sugar harvesting in Florida and forest management in Kansas. The Functional Government Initiative (FGI) has discovered that environmental activists have been integrated into NASA’s research. Records obtained by FGI show that Sierra Club, ProPublica and other activist groups have influenced and participated in the research. This raises serious concerns about the objectivity of the respective federal research efforts. Heightening suspicions, many of the documents read more like issue advocacy campaign literature than objective government research efforts.