It’s not enough for them to fund and support a massive public relations campaign to convince the American people to look the other way, as the effects of climate change become increasingly obvious.

Now the Republican Party wants to destroy the scientific agency that studies the causes of climate change for clues on how to stop the onrushing train: US Lawmakers Seek Deep Cuts to NASA Climate Research.

Republicans in the US House of Representatives want NASA out of the climate-change business.

A bill floated by leaders of the House Science Committee seeks to restore “proper balance to NASA’s science portfolio” by slashing roughly US$500 million from the agency’s Earth science division, which received $1.785 billion this year. The move is part of a broader push by Republicans to replenish NASA’s planetary science division, which has seen drastic cuts in recent years.

But the severity of the Earth science cuts even shocked Steven Squyres, a planetary scientist at Cornell University in New York, who led the planetary community’s 2011 decadal survey. He told lawmakers today that the proposed cut to Earth science research is “alarmingly deep”.