Center for a New American Security

Our friend and colleague Dr. Jay Gulledge has a terrific piece in the latest issue of Nature arguing that researchers must make a stronger case for funding climate science research against a backdrop of budget cuts and political divisiveness. (You can read the full piece here, but it requires a subscription.)  

Jay does a great job emphasizing the important role that science and technology programs play in U.S. national security policy. Reaching back into history, Jay notes that “U.S. federal science spending has long been rooted in the national security agenda,” pointing specifically to the establishment of the National Science Foundation after World War II “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense,” and to the creation of NASA in response to the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in the late 1950s. (As a side note, it is worth pointing out, too, that the U.S. Military Academy at West Point was founded largely as a science and engineering school.) Just as it was during the Cold War, science and technology programs are crucial to U.S. policymakers charged with protecting U.S. national security interests. Jay writes, “Neutralizing today’s threats — terrorism, biological and chemical weapons, nuclear proliferation, and cyberwarfare— is an intensely scientific undertaking.”

 Jay argues that the science community writ large needs to overcome decades of complacency in order to demonstrate why science is important to society and worth funding in an era of increased fiscal austerity. Indeed, he notes that during the Cold War, science and technology programs received broad bipartisan support in part because the United States aimed to achieve scientific superiority over the Soviet Union. Gone are those days, Jay writes, and “Unfortunately, through decades of cold-war complacency, the scientific community has developed a culture that runs counter to doing this.”

To be sure, there have been great efforts taken by organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and others to develop cross-cutting ways of incorporating physical science and social science that is accessible to policymakers, but more can be done. Jay goes on to discuss ways in which the science community can reorient itself to adapt to the challenges it faces as Congress gears up to reduce federal spending. If you don’t have a subscription to Nature, you can get a sense of some of Jay’s recommendations in our April 2010 report, Lost In Translation: Closing the Gap Between Climate Science and National Security Policy.

The stakes are high for climate science research. Surviving congressional budget cuts will inevitably require science to become more policy relevant, a point Jay makes crystal clear: “Those in academia who worry about the erosion of curiosity-driven science should have a greater fear: the erosion of science in general.”