ClimateGate: Will NASA Be Next?

I'm a big fan of NASA, but personally I've always thought they should focus on the task at hand; which is primarily building and launching space ships. Well, they've stuck their d**k into climate change, and it looks as if they may get burned by it:

Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said NASA has refused for two years to provide information under the Freedom of Information Act that would show how the agency has shaped its climate data and would explain why the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data going as far back as the 1930s.

"I assume that what is there is highly damaging," Mr. Horner said. "These guys are quite clearly bound and determined not to reveal their internal discussions about this."

The numbers matter. Under pressure in 2007, NASA recalculated its data and found that 1934, not 1998, was the hottest year in its records for the contiguous 48 states. NASA later changed that data again, and now 1998 and 2006 are tied for first, with 1934 slightly cooler.

....Mark Hess, public affairs director for the Goddard Space Flight Center which runs the GISS laboratory, said they are working on Mr. Horner's request, though he couldn't say why they have taken so long.

Maybe because they're engaging in a CRU-like data dump?

Similar attention must be turned to climate centers such as NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, home of the deeply partisan, highly political James Hansen; the National Climate Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, now headed up by the equally partisan and political Jane Lubchenco; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, home to scientist Tom Wigley, also featured prominently in the Climategate emails

The problem, as always, is mixing science with politics. NASA was more than happy to receive additional funding to research "climate change", and realized that to keep the good stuff flowing, they needed to report what their paymasters - Congress - wanted to hear. So the data was fudged, until they were busted and forced into a "re-adjustment", and when no one was looking, they changed the data back to suit the needs of their political benefactors.

Of course, if they could think more than five minutes ahead, the NASA suits would realize that the climate change legislation they are helping to pass with their shaky data will undoubtedly harm the economy and drastically lower tax receipts, which can only lead to reduced funding for NASA's core projects. It's a hard enough sell in bad times (billions on space shuttles?), in worse times, it will become a sitting duck for the budget axe.

Audit NASA. Expose our own contribution to the climate-change scam. Replace the politicians at the space agency with scientists, and move forward. Anything less is a disgrace to our nation, and to whatever good will is left to the name of Science....