Burning to Act

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.

Why does NASA farm its research out to those with a special animus?

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. 

Since 2015, the Sierra Club has conducted a multi-million-dollar advocacy campaign to stop the practice of sugarcane burning. The group also filed a complaint under the Civil Rights Act alleging that the effects of sugarcane burning on air quality are racially discriminatory. Similarly, ProPublica has published several articles and produced a documentary on the topic. The two entities have often cited and relied on each other (and NASA) as authoritative sources when discussing the issue. But it turns out to be more than a mutual admiration society. The records show the coordination is deep and appears to have heavily shaped the outcome of federal research by traditionally independent science agencies such as NASA. 

The Tiger Team

In documents related to NASA’s grant to Colorado State University on the topic of the impact of agricultural burning on air quality, Sierra Club Kansas is listed among the stakeholders of the NASA “Tiger Team” that helps fund the research. Also among the Tiger Team’s stakeholders is Lulu Ramadan of ProPublica, who was tapped to lead the “broader public communications.” The researchers planned to “work closely with members of the Kansas Sierra Club chapter and Ms. Ramadan’s community network engaged in these projects to distribute information through local stakeholder groups and decision makers.”

The Tiger Team for “Satellite Data for Environmental Justice” makes clear that its NASA-funded work is virtually indistinct from the policy agenda of the Sierra Club, an activist organization with assets of over $144 million, according to recent tax filings. Another influential left-wing special interest, the Environmental Defense Fund, with revenue approaching a half-billion dollars, is also identified as a “Tiger Team” partner.   

Documents for a research grant to the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) show similar funding and participation from activist special interest groups. The influence of the activist-infused Tiger Team research appears to be widespread, with several federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and the EPA, indicating that the research would feed into their regulatory efforts.

NASA damages its reputation

That kind of reach is a huge win for activists. Special interests like Sierra Club raise over a hundred million dollars every year to advance their legislative and policy goals, while Pro Publica has long acted as a journalistic mouthpiece for left-wing political objectives. But it’s a potential black eye for NASA. 

Just as oil companies are not invited to shape government research about the effects of oil production, there are important reasons why activist organizations should be removed from the federal research they rely on to feed their lobbying and journalism campaigns. At the very least, these revelations call into question the sugar burning research so prominently promoted by Sierra Club and ProPublica. More likely, they expose a widespread practice that has the potential to taint a much greater portion of federal scientific research.

Go back to space

The records obtained by FGI are part of a series of FOIA requests and lawsuits into the potential influence of President Biden’s biggest political supporters and even that of his brother Frank Biden on top policy priorities. Frank Biden’s past public promotion of the sugar burning issue to fund his planned class action lawsuit raised ethics concerns at the time. These records on NASA-funded research only amplify those concerns. If the Biden administration has indeed outsourced core scientific research to their activist partners and political supporters, this could prove to be a major violation of the administration and science agency’s long-standing scientific integrity policies.  

Environmental activists shouldn’t be influencing government science. And NASA should go back to space.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolicy and made available via RealClearWire.