#Many satellites exist explicitly for the purpose of monitoring and knowing more about the ocean

[maeamian]

About to go insane trying to find sources for this, but starting to develop a theory that the idea that the bottom of the ocean is totally unknown is pretty outdated, but is an extremely compelling factoid and as such has persisted longer than it is true.

[naivelocus]

US science agencies face deep cuts in Trump budget

NOAA

Funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's weather satellites, which track hurricanes, would be maintained under the Trump plan.

When it comes to science, there are few winners in US President Donald Trump’s first budget proposal. The plan, released on 16 March, outlines double-digit cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Institutes of Health. It also lays the foundation for a broad shift in the United States’ research priorities.

Rumours of the White House proposal have swirled for weeks, alarming many researchers who depend on government funding — and science advocates who worry that the Trump administration’s stance will jeopardize US leadership in fields ranging from climate science to cancer biology. It is not clear how much of the plan will survive negotiations in Congress over the next several months, however.

And the Trump proposal is notable for what it leaves out. The barebones document omits detail about many programmes and even entire agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF). The president is expected to release a fuller budget request later this spring.

Fear over potential spending cuts has been pervasive at the NIH’s National Cancer Institute, according to a scientist contractor there. That is especially true among researchers who work on epidemiological studies that require continued funding to collect data without interruption over many years. “Everyone is worried, but everybody has to work,” says the contractor, who is not authorized to speak about the agency.

The Trump budget would cut funding for the entire NIH by 18%, to $25.9 billion, making it one of the hardest-hit research agencies. The document also calls for a reorganization of the NIH's 27 institutes, but offers no further detail beyond a pledge to “rebalance Federal contributions to research funding”.

Shrinking the EPA

The biggest swing of the budget axe — science-wise — is aimed at the EPA. The White House hopes to slash the agency’s US$8.2-billion budget by 31% from the current level, and lay off about 3,200 of the agency’s 15,000 staff. The EPA's Office of Research and Development would see its funding drop roughly 50% in fiscal year 2018, from $512 million to $250 million.

The proposed cuts, combined with the Trump administration’s hostility toward climate and environmental regulations, have sparked fear throughout the agency. “President Trump is always talking about creating jobs, but he is talking about cutting 3,000 people at the EPA,” says one EPA biologist who is not authorized to talk to the press. “He doesn’t even blink an eye.”

The biologist, who studies chemicals that affect the endocrine system in fish and potentially people, is part of a programme that Trump wants to eliminate. To her, the reason for this seems clear: if there’s no science to point out potential problems, there won’t be any more regulations.

But Jonathan Adler, who heads the Center for Business Law and Regulation at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio, says that drastically reducing the EPA’s budget would undercut the Trump administration's efforts to overhaul environmental policy. Because the agency’s decisions can be overruled or modified by federal courts, the only way to fundamentally reorient programmes is to work with Congress to change the law or rewrite regulations. And that requires staff and money, he says.

“If you cut an agency too much, all you’ve really done is hand the agency’s priorities over to the courts and litigants,” Adler says. “And I’m not really sure that’s what the Trump administration wants.”

The White House is also seeking to cut 5.6%, or $1.7 billion, from the Department of Energy (DOE). The plan would eliminate the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, which funds 'high-risk, high-reward' research. And it would slash 20%, or about $900 million, from the DOE's Office of Science compared to the 2017 funding level.

The Trump plan does not include an overall funding target for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But it would eliminate the agency's long-running Sea Grant programme, which supports a network of 33 US colleges and universities that conduct research, education and training about ocean and coastal topics. The budget also expresses support for the agency's “current generation” of weather satellite programmes, but offers almost no detail on funding levels. The document also pledges to expand the use of commercial data in NOAA weather models.

To Europa — and beyond?

In contrast, the White House proposed a tiny cut, just 1%, for NASA overall’s budget. But the Trump plan appears poised to shift the agency’s research priorities, calling for NASA to focus on “deep-space exploration rather than Earth-centric research”.

Within the agency's science directorate — which encompasses astrophysics, Earth science, heliophysics and planetary sciences — the planetary division is expected to gain the most. Its budget would grow from $1.5 billion to $1.9 billion. And the White House proposal would accelerate NASA’s plans to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa.

For years, lawmakers led by Representative John Culberson (Republican, Texas) inserted money into NASA's budget for a Europa mission — overriding the judgment of the space agency during the administration of president Barack Obama. NASA is now developing a spacecraft called the Europa Clipper to launch in the 2020s. Its goal is to fly by Europa multiple times, mapping its surface and looking for any signs that life might exist in an ocean beneath the moon's icy shell.

The White House would also explicitly cancel the Obama-era plans to drag an asteroid near lunar orbit for astronauts to study up-close.

It would also slash spending on Earth-science research from $2 billion this year to $1.8 billion, eliminating funding for four missions — including the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3, which is intended to continue NASA's efforts to monitor carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere from space. Also on the chopping block: the Earth-observing instruments aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR. The primary purpose of the satellite, which launched in 2015, is to track space weather — but it was first proposed as an Earth-monitoring mission in the late 1990s by former vice-president Al Gore.

But planetary science's gain does not necessarily come at the expense of other NASA science divisions, argues Casey Dreier, director of space policy for the Planetary Society, an advocacy group in Pasadena, California. "On a certain level you have limited resources and you have to make priorities," he says. "Some divisions growing while others shrink is common among different administrations."

Dreier is not a fan of trimming NASA’s overall budget, however. "NASA is given tasks by the nation," he says. "We need to give NASA the resources that will allow them to be successful." Last month, Trump told Congress that American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream — but those footprints cannot happen without funds, Dreier notes.

Next stop: Capitol Hill

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is not mentioned anywhere in the Trump budget document, in a surprising omission. The agency received about $7.5 billion in 2017. Although it has traditionally received bipartisan support in Congress, Republican lawmakers have sought in recent years to limit the NSF’s geoscience and social-science divisions.

The Trump plan adds more uncertainty for the agency, which is already struggling to cope with the federal hiring freeze that the president instituted in January. The NSF is scheduled to move its headquarters later this year, and an internal survey suggests that 17% of its 2,000-person staff plans to leave within the next two years because of this. The hiring freeze would prevent the agency from replacing many of these employees if they follow through on plans to leave.

“I know two individuals who have put off retirement to help out during the hiring freeze,” says a programme director, who asked for anonymity to prevent retaliation. “We don’t know if they’ll stay past the move, or if some of the people who plan on retiring will put it off.” Overall, the programme director says, “morale is low”.

It is not clear how Congress, which must approve any federal spending plan, will react to Trump’s budget plan. While the president’s fellow Republicans hold majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, some have indicated that they will oppose aspects of Trump’s budget. Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, told Alaska Public Radio on 13 March that she would fight rumoured cuts to NOAA’s satellite programmes.

Other Republican lawmakers have expressed scepticism about the Trump administration’s plan for drastic cuts at the EPA. “They are proposing nothing less than a dismantlement of several decades of bipartisan support for foundational environmental protections,” says Elgie Holstein, a former budget official under president Bill Clinton who works for the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group in New York. “There are going to be a lot of Republicans, as well as Democrats, on Capitol Hill scratching their heads.”

Thus far, the non-political ‘career’ employees at the agency are trying to remain calm and take a conciliatory approach with Trump’s political appointees. “We’ve got four years with this administration, so we are trying to educate rather than confront,” says one senior career official.

Waleed Abdalati, a former chief scientist at NASA, offers similar advice to researchers who are worried about potential cuts to Earth-science programmes at NOAA and NASA. “Rumors are counterproductive,” he says. “Rather than complain about what hasn’t happened, we should advocate for what should happen.”

— Nature News & Comment