Andrew Follett reports for the Daily Caller on the impact of global warming alarmism on our nation’s space exploration operations.

NASA’s obsession with global warming research is crowding out funding for planetary science and exploration, according to Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

“The Obama administration has consistently tried to cut NASA’s space exploration budgets in order to fund increases for Earth science programs,” Smith wrote in an email to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Just this year, the president proposed drastically cutting NASA’s exploration systems by more than $440 million dollars while Earth Science accounts have increased by 63 percent over the last 8 years.”

“These cuts would make it impossible to keep on track NASA’s programs that will take our astronauts to the moon and Mars. Thirteen agencies do climate research, but only one conducts space exploration” continued Smith, a Republican.

The budget of NASA’s Earth Science Mission Directorate is the largest and fastest growing budget of any NASA science program. Over the same time period, the general NASA budget grew only by 10.6 percent– just enough to account for inflation. The directorate’s goal is to help NASA “meet the challenges of climate and environmental change.” The organization is also responsible for global warming models that have proven to be inaccurate.