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Proposal to Create a Super Earth Science Agency
Several former top heads of various US science agencies are proposing the creation of an integrated overall Earth Sciences agency. In particular they want to merge NOAA and the Geological Survey, with much closer collaboration with several additional agencies.
And the combined agency would provide a strong group on behalf of science, he said, working in collaboration with the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy and National Institutes of Health.ed.z.: I would be against it, I would rather keep seeing different groups of people studying similar problems to see if their results and recommendations jibe with each other. Yes, it is duplication of effort in a lot of cases, but this is research that leads to policy, the policy and implementation part costs 10 or 100 or 1000 times as much as the basic research, so it is important to get it right this first time, and the only way you can do that is to make sure it doesn't all come from the same place with one overall political appointee "head honcho" guy signing off on the reports. We've already seen what political motivation can do, so we need all the scientific "biodiversity" we can get. I see where they are coming from, and I can see that it makes some sense from their perspective, but looking from the outside back in at them, those guys can't see the problems that such an overall single agency can come up with it. Sometimes, bigger is just not *better*. What has reinvigorated man in space more lately, another space shuttle launch, or a dozen companies all going into space with private research and interests? Who is really coming up with revolutionary car design, any of the entrenched Detroit big three, or a few dozen smaller wild eyed dreamer "dare to be actually great" small companies? What has revolutionized software and computers, the same big mainframe corporations from the 50s and a few closed source operating systems, or hundreds of companies making computers by the millions yearly and the ability to actually craft your own personal operating system for cheap or free due to the work of hundreds of thousands of widely distributed and enthusiastic "wild eyed dreamer" programmers who got tired of shelling out the big bucks for bits of code and waiting in line at some dumb terminal? Ya, in the business world consolidation is still king, but is it always such a good idea? YMMV, I am sure there are any number of good arguments for the creation of the agency as well, I just can't think of many that would negate the detriments.
I'd link to the actual letter and proposal, but it is closed source, pay per view, and the summary says not much at all. Despite all the gents involved with this proposal being past or present tax payer very well paid guys and them talking about tax payer paid stuff that is going to be expensive, this article at Sciencemag is off limits unless you pay for it. That's just annoying in this case.