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NASA Slashing Observations of Earth
mattnyc99 points us to a new report by the National Research Council warning that, by 2010, the number of NASA's Earth-observing missions will drop dramatically, and the number of operating sensors and instruments on NASA spacecraft will decrease by 40 percent. The report says, "The United States' extraordinary foundation of global observations is at great risk." Popular Mechanics asks an MIT professor what it all means. From these accounts it is clear that the Bush administration's priorities on a Mars mission and a moon base are partly to blame for the de-emphasizing of earth science. Neither article quite says that some responsibility must fall to the administration's footdragging on global warming.
From these accounts it is clear that the Bush administration's priorities on a Mars mission and a moon base are partly to blame for the de-emphasizing of earth science.
Translation: Apparently big oil can't disprove the overwhelming evidence which proves global warming, so they've turned to the only alternative they have. Get Bush to make NASA stop collecting the evidence.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
They keep telling us that there are all these other countries out there -- has anyone proposed that some of the others could possibly do this, since it's so, y'know, important? Neither article quite says that, either.
Neither article quite says that some responsibility must fall to the administration's footdragging on global warming.
Someone should whisper in the Bush Administration's ear (located in the rear underneath the belt) that the Iranians are behind global warming. That should get funding for the earth sciences in the right direction.
when a country spends 500 billion a year on the military (more than the rest of the world combined spends) and 8 billion a month on killing^Wliberating people in a foreign land while their own people starve in New Orleans its quite clear where a nations priorities lie and Space and the advancement of the Human race comes way down the list
i wonder how long it will take after this regime has gone to recover from the damage, methinks it will be several decades if ever at this rate
shame, no really a damm shame
Neither article quite says that some responsibility must fall to the administration's footdragging on global warming.
Can we mark a submission, as -1, Unnecessary Trolling?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Nasa creates a market need, market blooms, Nasa leaves market, commercial space companies fulfil market need, commercial space companies bloom. 2010 maybe cutting it a little close, I would rather see a gradual transfer out, but either way I foresee mutual benefit.
Demented But Determined.
they have been owned by DIGITALGLOBE everyone can see the earth thanks to digitalglobe now. no body needs nasa
Ah, that's all right. The way we're running things here, all those sensors would just end up producing the solar system's first planetary snuff film.
i've been a slashdot fan since 1997. seems like the submissions, and comments, are getting further and further left. wow. seems like there's no centrists any more. or maybe all the conservatives have moved on to other sites. Or maybe they just all got sucked into the big-oil conspiracy vortex.
Not to mention troll bait (but just the fact that certain words ARE troll bait should tell you something) but global warming is just one of them. why is this a Michael Crichton (the Harvard-educated scientist who wrote Coma, Jurassic Park and A State Of Fear, among other things) vs Al Gore (inventor of the Internet) battle? If we're scientists, where is our skepticism? For that matter, where are our manners? Are we unwilling to admit that we might be incorrect?
(..Wait, I forgot. Sorry. Please don't revoke my geek card.)
What I really don't understand is why all the surprisingly non-geek-oriented but heavily political stories are appearing on Slashdot.org. Anyway, back to finishing my TPS reports..
Resubmit the grant applications:
1. replace all occurrences of "global warming" with "terrorists"
2. replace all occurrences of "crops" with "WMD's"
3. replace all occurrences of "fisheries" with "offshore oil resources"
4. ???
5. Profit
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
but if you are going to establish a moon base, do you need to keep putting up satellites, or can you just use the moon base to monitor the Earth?
Sure, sure, sure, I know they will use it to monitor US citizens, but it could also be used to monitor the globe.
When you buy a new car, you don't buy spare tires at the same time?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Mars is the new hotness.
At least it will be after we terraform it and over develop it.
And yes I agree that SlashKos is getting old.
I'm sorry but I sincerely feel that NASA eats up too huge a chunk of the Federal Budget. I agree with space exploration to a point such as gathering vital information such as weather and counterintelligence but I do not feel that Mars Missions or Moon missions are cost effective or necessary. I'm glad for the possible downsize.
Gryphoenix
will now fall under the domain of the Office of Homeland Security. So don't worry, it's not like we're not watching the Earth anymore.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
some jerks will find any reason to link anything to global warming. did it ever occur to you that they have more insturmentation then they need up there?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
"Neither article quite says that some responsibility must fall to the administration's footdragging on global warming."
/. for balance...
Must editorial opinions mark every bit of tech news here on Slashdot? Maybe Andrew Rosenthal should be granted an editorial position here at
Less government observation of its people?
Libertarians, rejoice!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Im surprised Nasa gets anything done with a paltry $15.5 billion a year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasa
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
.. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
From these accounts it is clear that the Bush administration's priorities on a Mars mission and a moon base are partly to blame for the de-emphasizing of earth science.
Perhaps he is looking for Martains to support his "surge". Earthlings have pretty much puked all over the idea.
Table-ized A.I.
Hi -
Since slahsdot readers on average are much more intelligent than the electorate as a whole, it is no wonder we see more leftist or progressive viewpoints here.
Red states = rednecks
TWR
Second, the NASA budget is essentially fixed. There are 4 directorates within NASA:
- Aeronautics (conventional aircraft-related research)
- Science (satellites and probes)
- Space Operations (funding to maintain shuttle and station)
- Exploration
- COTS (Funding commercial space to provide space transportation capability (non-exploratory)
- Constellation (Ares/Orion/LSAM - the vehicles that will both replace shuttle as well as comprise the lunar architecture)
The problem is that over the next couple years, the Exploration budget starts ramping up as the development costs begin to really add up in advance of a 2014 first (crewed) flight. Meanwhile, until the shuttle is retired in 2010, the SOMD budget must remain relatively constant since the cost of operating the shuttle fleet doesn't dip until its retirement. So what are your choices?If you ask me - the obvious solution is:
D) Increase NASA funding to maintain all of the above until Ares/Orion enters an operations phase.
Keep in mind - the NASA budget is about half of one percent of the federal budget...
Note: you can mock the lunar outpost and Mars missions all you want - but those costs aren't even in the budget yet (and won't be for some 10 years or more) and are not driving this "problem" despite the misleading claims in the article.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GORESAT
Table-ized A.I.
Inappropriate ideological sniping. That is a stated opinion on a highly disputed theory among experts in the field, not science.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
Anonymous Coward, if there's one user here who's stuck with Slashdot through thick and thing, it's you. Who could forget your hot grits? Your gayniggers? Your table-breaking HTML?
/. 3 AC
All and all, I'd just like to send a shout-out from all of us, to you.
While I hate to comment about something I have little personal knowledge in (Mars vs. Earth study)- but I have to say it seems very obvious that we only have so much money to spend on space in general, and so to simply frame it as a loss of research is ignoring the potential of such a shift. Maybe this is an obvious poor choice to change focus. If so present data as to why that is so, instead of simply complaining as if somehow NASA is getting less dough, or cheating us in some way. Why shouldn't we more boldy explore? I'm quite open to a change of heart.
The fact that the number of Earth-observing missions will drop is interesting. The fact that the submitter sees some wierd link between that and the global warming bandwagon is not.
Instead of using the logic of "10 million lemmings must be right", global warming advocates would do well in looking at the underlying scientific knowledge instead. The measurements are scientific and wholly honest for the most part, but the popular interpretations are not scientific at all, and should be ignored by those who value science above advocacy and social posturing.
There is a very wierd popular meme that the fact that a large number of scientists *THINK* that there is a substantive correlation between CO2 levels and the melting ices indicates that there actually *IS* a causal effect. Well, science doesn't work that way. The number of adherents to an interpretation has absolutely no bearing on science, despite the popular feeling that "it must be right".
The simple fact is that the various intrepretations are all within the same error bounds, and manmade CO2 has been demonized for no good scientific reason at all, mainly because of lack of alternatives it seems. Well that's just not good enough. The real demon is our lack of knowledge about what's going on. Blaming CO2 doesn't absolve us.
Anyone who is still wholly convinced by the CO2 agit prop ought to take a look through Earth's history, back to a time when the CO2 levels were hundreds of times what they are now, and yet the Earth was a solid block of ice.
That's one important piece of evidence to the contrary, but when it comes to science, there is a vastly more important issue to consider, and it has nothing to do with observations.
Science is based on mathematical models that are the basis of our theories, and the use of hypotheses derived from those theories by which the theories can be tested. Well, in climatology, those theories are embodied in computational models, our many Global Climate / Circulation Models (GCMs) --- and not a single one of those GCMs predicts the extreme temperature oscillations between glacial and inter-glacial periods that have been occurring with total regularity every 100,000 years over the recent million years of Earth's history.
When the theory doesn't match observations, then the theory is wrong. Yet, people are basing their predictions about the effect of manmade CO2 on those blatantly non-working models.
Well sorry, but that's scientifically invalid.
I have no personal axe to grind either way, being just an observer with a good scientific background. But I take great exception to science being used to underpin political agendas (in either direction) when it is not yet able to model even the most large-scale parameters of climate. That's not science.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
"From these accounts it is clear that the Bush administration's priorities on a Mars mission and a moon base are partly to blame for the de-emphasizing of earth science. Neither article quite says that some responsibility must fall to the administration's footdragging on global warming."
A quick glance reveals that one article never mentions Bush by name, the other only in that they are calling for more emphasis on global warming research and that real scientists (not /. scientist wannabes) are happy they really are funding the Mars missions.
What is this, really? The New York Times (not exactly known to have a major conservative slant) doesn't bash Bush so instead the /. article has to insert in a completely unsupported accusation?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Medical doctors are not generally scientists. Some happen to be scientists, too, but most are not.
p.s. Don't you know that anything with "science" in the name (e.g., health science) is not really a science?
He was right until he signed (technically, directed the United States to sign) the stupid thing (http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/12/11/kyoto/) , knowing that he wouldn't be there when the Senate said "Hah, this is crazy, no way we're ratifying this" (Gore actually put pen to paper on the document in 1997, after the Senate had passed a 95-0 resolution saying "Notice: we won't ratify anything that harms American competitiveness versus developing nations.") Dubya did the right thing and said "This is inimical to our interests and both parties in the Senate have said they will not ratify it. Accordingly, I'm not going to support it." He was roundly criticized both at home (by Democrats who had no intention of screwing over their own union workers by destroying US industry to make the targets) and abroad (largely by Europeans who proceeded to miss the quotas they had agreed to anyhow).
Kyoto was one of the most cynical maneuvers in the history of environmental politics, which has no shortage of them to compare to. The main supporters either were not affected by it (China, India), would have felt no effects (Russia, because they got to compare their emissions against the old Soviet Union prior to the collapse of the economy -- economic collapse being the ONLY way to make the targets set out!), or just plain lied through their teeth on their intention to go through with the cuts (you know how many European nations hit their targets after four years? Well, there was that economic stalwart Romania. Everyone else said "Uhh... Well... You were going to actually MEASURE pollution? Umm.... DUBYA MADE US DO IT!")
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
NASA is leaving earth science to the commercial sector. It is more then capable in doing so. Commercial Sector is launching satellites all the time.
And remember people, NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Their mandate is to explore the solar system. Building a moon base will benefit mankind allot. Near Zero G experiments to the feasibility of humans surviving on Mars for long periods of time. And reaching mars will enable us to begin a terraforming process or at very least, make it possible to build a dome in a valley.
NASA is doing the right thing here. Because Earth Sucks.
\
"Boldly exploring" Mars is boldly exploring an area that we already have high-resolution overhead and 3D maps of and where we've already sent robots to look around on the ground and do atmospheric, chemical and geological experiments. It's the equivalent of boldly exploring a town you've never been to, but you've sorted out your route on your in-car GPS/mapping system and your brother's already checked out the area for you.
India and China didn't have to sacrifice anything. Russia might have technically, but since they got to compare against the pre-collapse Soviet baseline they would have made the "sacrifice" without any special effort. Europe signed up for modest reduction targets and, well, is going to totally miss them (with the exception, at the moment, of the UK and Sweden -- they're on target). Japan blew its target, too. It was the US who everyone was asking to spend trillions ("Not trillions! Merely tens or possibly hundreds of billions! And besides, you're rich, you can afford it!", said the Kyoto fans) to "take the first step to solving this problem".
Oh, did I mention this was the first step? The plan was to shave off about 5%. Some of the environmental doomsayers say we really need to get down to about 50% by 2050. Industrialized countries would have to cut 80%.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Slash 0.5% of the defense budget (for example cut it on nuclear weapon research or capability) and give it to the Nasa Budget. I recon that would be a nice nifty increase for the Nasa budget while not really a loss for the defense capability of the US (seeing that it has a budget which is roughly on the order of half of the world spending on military if you are to believe wiki).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
With the possibility that NASA will embrace the metric system, they could find this as an excuse to redeploy every sensor that previously flew. Screw spreadsheet conversions, we want real data, just to be sure.
Sarcasm aside, NASA stopped being relevant years ago, so there should not be any surprise to hear that various information gathering projects/systems are soon to be extinct.
Naturally, when NASA needs a cash infusion, it cries to the public, Jane and John Doe - don't forget how many mission manifests were DoD related. I don't recall all that information moving into the public domain.
I'm sure the EU and/or the Chinese will be happy to take over for the next few decades. And why not - it seems about time someone else's tax $$ were spent instead of mine.
I wonder what this professor's motivation could possibly be? Maybe his funding was cut?
The cynic in me say this is the grand plan of NASA:-
1) Struggle to fly the shuttle with ever reducing $$$$ from Congress
2) Decide on grand plan "Lets go to MARS!"
3) Pull out of Earth Orbital work
4) Let Commercial Companies fund the costs of a Shuttle Replacement
5) Wait until 4) is working. Continue to spend $$$ On Mars Mission
6) "Obtain" all commercially viable space vehicles under the guise of National Security
"Those pesky terrorists might crash this space plane into the White House"
7) Cancel MARS Mission - there is no life(read voters) there anyway
8) Result, NASA gets a Shuttle repacememnt for almost $0.00
Ironically, much of this sort of thing is discussed in an SF Book I'm reading at the moment
Titan by Stephen Baxter (British Author). Written in the late 1990's. It also includes a second Shuttle disaster on reentry
and the subsequent funding crisis in NASA, JPL etc.
Sounds familiar eh?
In this case, the grand plan is to goto Titan not Mars.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
First they laugh at it Then they ignore it... You know the rest :-(
It isn't that Liberals are ignorant.
It's just that they know so much that isn't so. - Ronald Reagan
Your microsatelites will be launched by Laser Beams: http://lightcrafttechnologies.com/
Oh, and a network of these bad boys would make a handy defensive weapon, reflected from space to make a surgical strike weapon, defocused for search and rescue missions, light sail accelerator, bug-eyed alien tamer, asteroid deflection system and high quality extrasolar signalling aparatus.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
not 2 weeks to make a revolution... 4 weeks! 2 weeks to go watch the other side of Earth...
I'm really tired of kdawson's stories always blaming Bush for everything he disagrees with in American government. This isn't simply because I disagree with his politics; it is foolish and irresponsible to blame one person (either individually, or by using the surrogate term "administration") for the problems of a government of hundreds of movers and shakers. Keep the partisan bull-droppings off of Slashdot, and especially out of stories about politically neutral topics like space.
"Facts have a liberal bias"
That's obviously untrue, and must not go unchallenged.
Facts have no bias. You are perhaps talking about interpretation of the facts - and people will argue about that forever. It is impossible to argue against a fact.
You might be a believer of "Cultural truth" too - the idea that what is generally believed in a culture is true. That Papua New Guineans believe in many gods is at odds with the beliefs of other cultures. Clearly, two contradicting beliefs must leave at least one wrong.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
so ... how will google keep its satellite images and thematic maps up to date?
It seems to me that for global warming all you need are the temperatures everywhere. Since, you know, that's how they came up with that idea in the first place. Someone looked at the (incomplete) temperature data for about a century and noticed, basically, "Hey, wait a darn minute, the averages rose by a whole 1C." Some of that data is from the 1800s, before anyone had even figured how to do a good ballistic rocket, much less launch anything into space. All that later satellites and scientists added to that was more data, as we started to know the temperatures in other parts of the globe too. The original data was lacking, say, such stuff as what were the temperatures in China in the 1800's, but now the Chinese too do meteorology.
So it seems to me that to keep plotting that you don't even need one single space mission. You just need to take the temperatures from all those meteorology stations all over the world, take an average, plot it. How can the big oil stop you from doing that? No, seriously. I'm curious. And even if you need data from meteo satellites, why do you need NASA there? By now there are enough sensors up there to forecast the weather, which starts by telling you exactly what is happening with the weather right now. (Forecasting then just feeds that into a model and tries to predict what will happen tomorrow.) How can the big oil stop you from using data from those?
I'm sure there must be some other science data that we're going to miss, maybe even for modelling the atmospheric phenomena, maybe even something that might help understand better _how_ that global warming is or isn't happening. But stop you from collecting the evidence? How would they possibly do that, anyway? Shoot every single meteorologist on Earth, or what? Bear in mind that that doesn't only include the mouthpieces presenting the weather forecast on TV. The Air Force in every country, for example, is extremely interested in the weather too, because their air missions depend on it. Plus a lot of other commercial and government stuff. Even if you shot all meteorologists, the air force and governments and everyone else will just train more, because they really need that data.
That's what annoys me about conspiracy theories, including the trolling in the submission: they propose that the big bad conspiracy is doing something impossible, pointless and stupid to even try.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"It [Kyoto] was basically a bill that punishes the first world for pollution, while the worst offenders get a free pass."
The way I see it, by refusing to sign "the worst offenders" have given themselves a "free pass" at the expense of everyone else.
First up, Kyoto was never intended to be a silver bullet, it has a use by date of 2012 and was intended to get everyone on board and "level the playing field". As a prototype GHG treaty it was eventually accepted by virtually all nations, the only two dissenters (that still matter) are Australia and the US.
Second, although China may surpass the US one day, (either in total or per capita output), currently the US consumes 25% of global fossil fuels and has 3% of global population and where I live (Australia) has a similar per capita ratio.
Third, the developed world is "developed" due largely to the advantage we have gained over the 20th centry by burning FF's and in doing so we have used up a large chunk of the climates finite ability to "cope" with the extra CO2 (by "cope" I mean provide a habitat able to support humans and thier civilizations indefinitely).
Fourth, China, India, ect, have not burnt FF's in large amounts until recently and understandably demand some form of compensation in any "first cut" treaty to account for the capacity the developed world has already used (ie: in their eyes, "leveling the playing field").
Fifth, The claims of the US & Oz governments that they "will meet their Kyoto obligations anyway" is creative accounting at best, but I prefer to call it a lie.
AGW is a global problem that urgently requires a global treaty, in much the same way as atmospheric N-tests did in the 60's & 70's (BTW: the scientists had a rough time back then also, eg: Marsden from CSIRO who found plutonium spread throughout the atmosphere). I don't pretend to have the political answers but we won't get an answer until all parties come to the table in good faith, since that is unlikely we are probably doomed to be remembered as the Nero generation, that is if there is anyone left to remember.
I wouldn't mind this (myopic/insightfull?) "ruin the economy" meme as much had the US & Oz used economic models that were anywhere near the strength of the much maligned climate models, instead they used classic Friedman models and the associated basic assumptions that resources are infinite and pollution is sombody else's problem.
Take a close look at this "coventional" wisdom (well "conventional" to >3% of mankind) that Kyoto would "ruin the economy", what it really boils down to is: "it would ruining the fossil fuel market". I can only assume it will do this in much the same way as the ozone treaty ruined the CFC market, lead controls have ruined the paint and gasoline markets, and the atmospheric N-Test ban ruined the US military.
Global treaties to ensure global corporations and nation states at least attempt to preserve "the commons" is not some half-arsed socialist plot, it's plain common sense not to shit in ones own nest.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"lets see the dammm scientists prove their Eva-lutshun and Globaal Warmin' theories without datuh! heh heh heh heh! Now lets get this here surge! Lets see if we can sabotage the next administration, boy this sure is fun dickie!!"
Do you realize that in the probability that an nuclear exchange occurs between two nuclear nation, then both will either go totally out (aka carpet bomb with nuclear bomb) to avoid nuclear a riposte , or not do any nuclear bombing at all to begin with ? There is a good reason why MAD means Mutual Assured Destruction. Currently the capacity is to destroy each other (Russia/US) many time over. Instead of being able to destroy 3.5 time over, how about destroy only 3.3 time over ? Especially if the old bomb are so unreliable. I am sorry but you swallowed too much cold war rethoric.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Sadly, truth is that everyone once in a while I see the "Macs suck because PCs are better!!!11!one", and it gets modded insightful (presumably by a windows enthusiast).
Troll and Flamebait exist for posts like that.
All true. The difference is that Al Gore is not claiming to be an expert. Gore is pointing to, and deferring to, the mountain of evidence, along with the consensus of the climatological scientific community, the community that was persuaded by the very evidence he is pointing to. Gore is acting as a loud, strident, eloquent, persistent voice for the scientists, whereas Crichton is telling you that he's smarter than all the scientists. Al Gore is trying to get us to hear what science is saying, while Crichton is saying "nah, it's all hooey." One of these positions involves humility and knowing one's limitations, and one does not.
Is this the same Popular Mechanics that tells the public that large steel frame buildings can spontaneously explode, jettisoning giant steel beams hundreds of yards after a weakly smoldering jet fuel fire?
Isn't their credibility completely shot by now? For me, Popular Mechanics has become the Fox news of science journalism: It's obnoxious, generally wrong, even during the bulk of their stories which are fluff pieces, and I try to ignore it as best I can.
I'd like peer review to be a scientific term, not a term to describe putting together a coalition of vested interests to formulate lies that are somehow more believable or accredited by the sheer volume of liars involved.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
...Why aren't you opposing this?
After all, we've heard the relentless call that more research is required to prove GW or AGW or whatever. So, when funding is cut on precisely this research, making it likely to take far longer to get the answers you are asking for, where's the surge of outrage?
By the time this goes into effect, there will probably be a few dozen countries with satellites orbiting the planet doing what NASA has been doing for the last few decades. There's no point in everyone sending up satellites to gather the same data.
Since the US is the leader in space exploration, it makes sense to let the smaller players handle the smaller jobs while the US continues to expand the boundries.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
There are plenty of reasons (budgetary, political, etc.) that NASA is reducing these missions, but the big one always seems to slip through the cracks: its not their job. NASA has been tasked with EOMs (Earth Observation Missions) by members of Congress for years, (mostly out of ignorance) when Earth Observation is strictly the role of NOAA and USGS, not NASA. That's right, kids, NOAA maintains or operates 3 separate constellations of spacecraft(GOES/POES/DMSP), each with several operational and spares. They range from low, to mid to geostationary orbit. USGS operates the famous LandSat constellation (the one that produces the pretty false-color images of rice paddies or road construction or whatever). The point is, the work isn't going away, its just going to more appropriate government agencies that are already doing it anyway. NASA may not be operating these anymore, but they'll still be around to develop the essential technology that these missions use.
Well, it seems you are somewhat behind the times. It's pretty well established that there is a warming trend, so we hardly need the network of sensors you propose. There is some questions about how to set and interpret the errors bars, and the statistical significance of the warming trend depends on how you answer those questions. But sticking weather stations around the globe isn't going to make any difference to how those questions are answered.
The really critical questions relate to the mechanics of climate change. Questions about the magnitude and nature of human contributions to climate change vs natural factors. Having even marginally better answers to these questions is of immense public value, because they bear on policy questions with massive economic impact. For example, changing our use of fossil fuel even slightly would probably cost far more than the sum total of these missions. It follows that it would be good to know what precise impact of a marginal unit of change in petroleum use would be. It may be the optimal change would be zero (there is no chance of affecting anything), or it may be that we should reduce our use of petroleum considerably, until the net economic impact of slowed climate change equals the net cost of fossil fuel reduction.
In order to address these policy questions, we need climate models. The climate models are useful to the degree they are appropriately calibrated and tested. The most economical way to do that is with your space program.
Derek Bok once said, "If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance." Environmental research is educating ourselves on how the planet works. Thus, if you think monitoring the Earth is expensive, you will find that not monitoring the Earth is much, much more expensive. Suppose the truth is that the Earth is getting dramatically warmer, but there is nothing we can do about it. As sea levels rise, inundating lower lying areas, as breadbasket regions become arid, as Europe starts to become very cold, there will be politically impossible not to do something about it. The conclusion the populace will draw is that the change is purely anthropogenic, and whether or not that is true there will be irresistable pressure to lock the barn door after the horse has escaped. Thus we will compound the tremendous impact of climate change with futile but very costly effort to fix the problem.
No -- more knowledge is better than less. In this case, it is hard to think of a better bargain than a tiny fraction of the GDP spent on remote sensing missions.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Perhaps, because the 'translation' wasn't perfectly reasonable or insightful?
Sometimes you don't have to keep doing something as vigorously as you originally did. It's not a crime.
Well, what's a factor of ten when arguing about Kyoto and global warming?
I have heard that the regulatory damage to the US economy would have been $100 billion, and that the reduction in emissions would reduce the projected warming trend by 0.07 deg C. One wonders what the full dose would cost.
an ill wind that blows no good
So, what if someone at NASA said I can shave off 20% of the cost to run NASA by streamlining it?
But in doing so, it would result in 1000s of people losing their job?
Now who do you think in Congress is going to vote for that?
Especially when said politicians who are on NASA's review panel are those with the most number of voters working at NASA?
NASA (and its not alone here) has become sort of like an advanced Government welfare agency with more people working there than it really needs.
If NASA came to congress and said "we can save X% of our budget but it'll mean Y000s of unemployed" or "we need an increase of X% in our budget to grow the agency by Y000s of people", what do you think is going to get approved?
"Without America,..."
Yeah. Without America the rest of the world won't... Like they follow our lead now. But, of course if you have a problem with China and India, let's find a way to make it the fault of the U.S.
Had we signed, China and India would have been estatic. They would have gutted our manufacturing and then been the power guys. Oh, and they wouldn't have followed our lead.
...by 2010, the number of NASA's Earth-observing missions will drop dramatically... By 2010? Is this just an excuse to turn all the cameras on Jupiter?I wasn't aware that CO2 was 'poisonous shit'. I prefer to call it 'plant food'. Your benzene and cancer rants are truly bizarre.
an ill wind that blows no good
Back in our grandparents (or great-grandparents, from the sound of your vitriolic socialism) time, if you thought something was important, it was worth dying for. You'd put on your uniform and march with a bunch of other troops and enforce your nation's will.
When someone shows up in the US and starts shooting people for not cutting our emissions of greenhouse gases or signing Kyoto, then i'm sure we'll listen.
Unlike the constant leftist whinging of today, it had a certain righteousness to it. I laugh at "soft power". Make us.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
You seem to be mixing different climate forcing mechanisms to end up in confusion. I don't think you can point to evidence for CO2 concentrations of 8000 ppmv in the post Cambrian history of the Earth regardless of the ice covering. Cyclic glaciation may well be related to orbital dynamics, and it seems silly to bring this into a discussion about the relationship between the CO2 concentration and surface temperatures unless one is doing so to control for this seperate forcing. CO2 provides increased infrared opacity in the atmosphere which traps heat, warming the surface. This is pretty simple. Humans are mixing the biological and geological carbon cycles is a new way that increases the atmospheric CO2 concentration. This is pretty simple too. What we are doing is changing the climate.
not just earth science, but it seems science in any form is under attack from religious crackpots within and outside government.
science is evil, god says
Next thing you are going to tell me, the DRM on music and video isn't about piracy... ... Please, please, tell me it isn't about hiding Uncomfortable Truths, and is about the Science. Cause you know, this is the most sciency administration ever! And they are 40% more involved in Truthiness. Damn that Bin Laden... this is the fault of Al Qaeda. It's quintupled the cost of NASA because the EVA teams have to take their shoes off and scan them before exiting the Shuttle.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
The have been a lot of slashdot front page articles on global warming recently, and the number of comments in each of these has been large. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/1 6/1455234 leads
Tuesday's comments at 567 comments, http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/1 3/0049220 posted
on Jan 12 has 1073 comments. I'd say that that there is a mix of perspectives within the comments and the
large number of comments indicates a high level of interest. You may be correct that there is some trend to
cover this issue more closely, though the subject has also come up fairly frequently in the past, but it is
not such a bad thing for slashdot to post articles in which readers are interested.
Here's the obligitory mention of http://stepitup2007.org/ for those who would like to participate.
Sign up to help organize an event where you live. Reduce GHG emissions by 80% by 2050.
NASA's mandate is to put stuff in space when we need stuff put in space.
In other words, if it ain't military and it goes into space, it's NASA's job to put it there.
Furthermore, earth science is very much a part of NASA's mission:
That's taken directly from National Aeronautic and Space Act, which established NASA.
If we all know that global warming is real, then we don't need satellites whose only function is to prove it. If a question is already answered, people stop looking for it. It's hard to convince people that smaller, and more detailed questions can give us answers just as important, sweeping, or damn interesting. Their attention is already elsewhere.
Holy cow this is a beautiful post. You ran through explanations of everyone's stance and reasoning, and gave the facts pointing to that reasoning. Nicely done.
Someone give this man a cookie (and mod him up while you're at it).
Both Al Gore and Michael Crichton have two things that give them an edge, money and name recognition. Money allows them to dedicate a portion of their lives to educating themselves on the global warming debate. Name recognition gives their side of the debate media coverage, which in turn increases public awareness. It is a good thing that both of them are the unofficial "spokesmen" for global warming (however, it's debateable whether Crichton's single book and occasional remarks would make him a spokesman). Because of them, global warming is one of the forerunner problems in the public's mind. (I'm sure oncology would love to have a world famous person making cancer the biggest problem.)
In short, they may not be climate scientists, but it is a naive and foolish belief to hold that they _must_ be climate scientists to argue for one side of the debate. The educated opinions and insights that they express should not be discredited so easily.
"Global warming" is not troll bait. It is fact. The earth _is_ getting warmer. Where the argument breaks down is what is causing it and what will happen as a result.
Might the "official" downgrading of Earth monitoring sensors be coupled by an upswing in classified ($1,000US hammers) spending on monitors meant for spying? So far, this Administration's focus has been light on humane science and heavy on abusive technology. /tinfoil-hat
I am not an animal! I am something worse!
Why are you against the "surge"? ALL of these soldiers are stupid and lasy, and when you can motivate them at all, they just go out and rape, torture, and murder. I watch the news, and listen to the senators, and they have a CONSENSUS on these facts. You do believe in a consensus, don't you, or should you leave that arguement off your bullet list (your only item on the list, actually)?
By sending all these worthless bastards away, we should see a LOT less crime in the US. It also ties up the al`queda terrorists; who are a wonderful, peaceful, friendly peo[ple (same consensus), with the most wonderful set of laws ever developed; over there instead of here. I don't see any down side.
Every discussion of NASA cutbacks typically blames things like military spending, the war on drugs, or, lately, religious nuts. Hardly anybody mentions a money black hole that dwarfs any of those factors - social spending. Even with the war in Iraq, social spending in the Federal budget dwarfs the military budget. For FY 2007, the military budget is $439 billion, the total Federal budget is almost $2.8 trillion. And then we have a huge chunk about half the size of the Federal budget at the State and local levels, and that goes in large part toward social programs and education.
Even a trivial improvement in efficiency in our social programs would save enough to fund NASA beyond its wildest dreams. But more important than the money is the political pressure from extremists who see funding NASA as diverting money from "problems here on earth." The most cursory skim of the Statistical Abstract of the United States will show it isn't so, but Congress and the President are reluctant to invite criticism for funding NASA when social activists are sure to demand that the money be channeled their way. These are people who are capable of labeling budget increases as "cuts" if they aren't big enough. To social activists, NASA is a symbol of our society's shameful failure to funnel every last cent of GDP into social programs.
Actually, once we DID divert money from NASA to "problems here on earth." Remember the Apollo Program? It was supposed to run through Apollo XX. On September 2, 1970, barely a year after Neil Armstrong landed, NASA announced it was dropping the final three missions because of budget cuts. I think we should observe September 2 as a national day of shame by flying flags at half mast. Even more obscenely, the Eisenhower and Susan B. Ugly dollars featured an eagle landing on the moon. A nation that goes to the moon, and then quits, has no right to celebrate going to the moon on its coins.
But as anyone who recalls the Seventies can recall, it was all worth it. Crime plummeted to near zero. You could walk through the worst neighborhoods at any time of the day or night in perfect safety. Urban dwellers left their doors unlocked. Slums were eliminated and the traffic in heroin dried up. I am, of course, being sarcastic. In terms of social indicators, the Seventies were an armpit of a decade. We ended the Apollo Program, cancelled the Grand Tour mission (Voyager was the truncated stub of what could have been) and didn't send a mission to Halley's Comet. We let the space program atrophy for over a decade, and got NOTHING in exchange for it. What did our social agencies do with that money?
Bitter? Hell, yes. I could not watch the movie 2001 for many years without feeling seething anger, because we could have accomplished much of Kubrick's vision by 2001. Maybe not a manned mission to Jupiter, but certainly a permanent base on the moon. And it all was lost to fraud and waste.
NASA's big problem is it achieves measurable results, whereas social programs get away with waste and malfeasance forever by appealing to the "complexity" of social problems and warning against "simplistic" measures of success. But when it comes to asking social agencies what they need, the answer becomes marvelously simple: more money and more authority. If you think it's bad now, wait until we start paying for everyone's health care. And don't forget child care and reparations for slavery.
I think little by little you will see China and Japan emerge as a countries more interested in uses of space for earth observation and telecommunications. It will take them time as they tend to do things slowly, with consensus and take the longer term view. However, they know how to get us to pay for it all indirectly, by selling us their debt.
We will probably stop laughing when they start hiring our best scientific minds, as well as continue to train their own superstars, and come to some accomodation with the Russians and Europeans. Memories in this country are short and they fail to appreciate that the Bushites shut down our linear accellerator programs and largely ceded the future of particle physics to the Europeans. They have tried to cede stem cell and earth-baseed environmental research to others as well. Theirs is a general push to reduce science spending generally so as to better support military and funding in Iraq and weapons development.
Its perhaps symbolic that the Bush Administration is so interested in going to Mars as they may have a better understanding of just how far we will have to travel just to get out of the deep, deep hole of a budget defict they have dug for us than they are generally given credit for.
I quote: "Neither article quite says that some responsibility must fall to the administration's footdragging on global warming."
Every so often the "scientific community" goes wacky, typically aided and abetted by the hysteria prone portions of the media, and a left eager to increase its power. This is one of those cases.
1. In the late 1800s, it was the alleged superiority of people from northern and western Europe over everyone else. They were the civilizers, everyone else was trash. In the US, it was popular at places such as Harvard and inspired the drive for immigration restrictions that kept out Italians and Russian Jews. In Europe, it was championed by German professors such as Ernst Hackel (Darwin's counterpart in Germany) and led to all the nasty stuff about Aryan supremacy. I'm editing a collection of G. K. Chesterton articles written during WWI, and he's all over German academia for that foul idea. Only later did it move from the universities to politics and the result was Nazism.
2. In the early 1900s, the scientific hysteria of choice was eugenics, tooted as a "marvelous new science" in 1912 by the NY Times. Progressives and liberals thought state-controlled breeding was a wonderful idea (though they were careful not to say that very loudly). The primary critics were reactionaries such as Catholics. The result was the 1927 Supreme Court decision, Buck v. Bell, which claimed that forced sterilization was constitutional. That decision would be referenced favorably in the 1972 Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion.
3. In the 1960s it was the Population Bomb, made credible by being championed by Science magazine and others. In the midst of plumeting birthrates in industrialized world, population controllers told us we were having too many people. What we were having was too many black and brown babies for the likes of the eugenicists who were now calling themselves population controllers. The result is a disaster, with all the major developed countries except the US having birthrates so low, they will not be able to sustain their social support systems over the next few decades. The Population Bomb was an Evil Idea that became in effect a Really Dumb Idea. Ideas matter, bad ideas harm, really bad ideas do a lot of harm.
4. In the 1970s, we had a fizzle. Global cooling was the danger the scientific community was alleging. The goal was like all the others, to give scientists a chance to kick people around. Every so over those bookish nerds in white coats get the urge to "kick ass" with unfortunate results.
5. Now we have yet another scientific hysteria, global warning, with all the usual suspects involved--scientists wanting power, a hysterical media, the political left needing an excuse to regiment and, of course the ignorant little twits who, like H. G. Wells, worship a science they know little about and actually believe the propaganda. (Slashdot is full of them.)
Except for #1, whose success came too late to keep out millions of people from Italy, Russia and Poland, and #3, which cheated by getting an edict from the Supreme Court, these hysterias, while they did a lot of harm, weren't able to achieve their intended agendas. #1 and #3 wanted the state to dictate who could have children. Catholics kept that from happening, which is why liberals hate the old fashioned kind of Catholicism.
All the fuss about global warming is simply hysteria. You see that in the numerous inaccuracies (i.e. sea level rise in Gore's book). You see it in efforts to paint everything bad, when climate changes always have both good and bad effects. You see it in contorted efforts to blame what's probably a natural effect into something we (particularly the US) is doing. If people aren't doing it, they you can't kick people around. You see it in the concealment of history, such as the fact that a 1000-1300 AD warming period was marvelous for Europe.
So, if the Bush administration is foot-dragging on this, more power to them. Hysteria and lies, particularly those that claim to be sci
Instead focus government funding on earth observation missions, asteroid hazard detection and deep space exploration. As for the moon and mars, get together at the UN and come up with a way to allow private individuals and corporations mining and other rights to the moon on a first to get there, first use basis. Divvy up the moon, Divvy up Mars, set aside some large areas to keep as reserves or to keep as they are. Don't dilly dally any longer.
Truly revolutionary ideas comes out of new ideas, that challenge the incumbent ideas. While scientific research has gotten much more complicated, making it harder to enter without the education required of a PhD, the PhD worship is a little twisted.
There was a time that people we're allowed to spout out ideas that the Church opposed, and only the Church could approve ideas, and only the Church chose who was in the Church. This period of time is generally considered to have been bad for human advancement and is called the Dark Ages.
We now have the Academy, and only people allowed by the Academy are allowed to question science. The Academy controls who gets the credentials.
As Climatology coalesced around global warming, how willing to fund and approve PhD research that questions it happens. It's wonderful to say that scientists want the truth, which is true in the abstract, but at the individual level, academics want to publish, because publishing gets them tenure. To publish, they do research, which requires funding, which requires grants.
The Academy has become one giant mess of group-think. Also, while current PhD students may enter the program out of a love of science, the previous generation entered out of a love of draft deferments, which is why you have a collection of leftists professors (the few conservative professors out there would be considered liberal Democrats or liberal Republicans, depending on the state) there to collect checks, ride out their time, and be embittered that there school chums outside make more money than them because they didn't waste their time chasing a tenured professor track. Read Philip Greenspun's essay on the economics of the university and how it enforces the gender divide.
Those that are doing political incorrect research are outside the Academy, often at industry jobs, and are attacked as being on the payroll of corporations. Never-mind that University professors are on the payroll of government bureaucrats or non-profits, non of which are neutral opinions. Both fields attract a combination of incompetents and do-gooders that love to spend other people's money on themselves... ask anyone good that works in non-profits, they want to pull their hair out.
Stop elevating science to a religion, with challenge-proof dogma. Scientific inquiry MUST stand on the merits of the data and strength of arguments, not the credentials of those giving it.
Another possible interpretation:
"...by 2010, the number of US Earth-observing missions will not drop and the number of operating sensors and instruments on US spacecraft will not decrease."
Why? They are just going to take away from Science and give to Surveilance.
Guru Meditation #6d416769.21610a21
"There's no proof of global warming! It's all natural cycles! Nothing we do could possibly actually affect the world. We don't know enough about the world to know for certain."
"And so, of course, we're going to cut funding to anybody who might learn enough about the world to be able to know for certain. If we don't know about it, it isn't happening!"
Here's what I can't figure out. Okay, so maybe global warming is completely natural. Maybe the world moves in cycles of warming and cooling, completely naturally. Maybe humans have no say in the process. I will grant that it is a possibility.
So how, exactly, does it being a natural phenomenon help us when the ocean levels rise several meters, flooding many coastal cities in the US and drowning entire island nations? So humans aren't responsible for it, how will that help us when the permafrosts in Canada, Alaska, and Russia melt, dramatically increasing the warming? How will it help when the weather change dramatically increases severe weather? Picture several Hurricaine Katrinas, and don't just think about the effect it had on a poorly designed and planned coastal city, think about the effect it had on the rest of the area, and on other Gulf states. Global warming also means bad news for the fishing industry, increased forest fires and more severe forest fires, and even an extension of the favorable zones for insects that carry malaria. Global warming makes you more likely to get malaria.
Seems to me like the smart thing to do about global warming would be to stop bulls**tting and saying "Oh, no, it's a natural cycle, don't worry about it, it's not really happening", and instead try to figure out ways for our species to survive. Otherwise we're f**ked. We might be f**ked anyway, but at least we'd be doing something about it. Seriously, the "head in the sand" types are ticking me off, there is clear visible measurable evidence that the global sea level is on the rise, but they just don't care. Weak.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
All of Gore's books were ghostwritten and he's an environmental activist only when it gets him political points. He has had no problems in the past getting his buddies in Tennessee "free passes" that would exempt them from local environmental regulations. His wealth comes from Occidental Petroleum for crying out loud!
It's interesting that you consider global warming to be a "liberal" issue, since anthropocentric global warming is the consensus of the entire climatalogical community.
This shit cracks me up. "Consensus" and science. Haha.
Geez! Give it a break, will you? How about:
when it comes to the hard sciences. Money the government funnels into science programs train our people to be scientists while producing results that keep America on the leading edge.
If you want to be patriotic about it, anyway... But feel free to look at how many of our grad students aren't from the USA. There's a reason for that --- we aren't producing the caliber of students we ought to be. I'm pretty sure that foreign grad students pay their own way, too.
Can you really name one expert that believes global warming doesn't exist? Or are you just counting the fake groups set up by the oil companies? Kind of like the tobacco companies set up "research" to show that smoking is healthy for you...
If you don't think this stuff is going on, go look at then and now pictures of glaciers. Look at the fact that ski resorts aren't getting any loans or funding if they aren't above a certain elevation.
Fun fact I learned from Inez Fung: Phase changes are hard, if next to impossible to undo. So all of Greenland and Antartica that is melting won't reappear.
(Go ahead, look her up.)
Our climate models have gotten insanely complex over the last ten years. If you have a model, you have to have some sort of data to feed it to get a result. And you want some data to show you if your model seems reasonable. While you can go ahead and bury your head in the sand, and not look for any data, more information is always good.
More data, better models. Better models, we know how quickly we are screwed. *whee!*
There are two theses in your previous post which stood out to me for their inconsistency:
1. The developed world is developed due largely to the advantage we have gained over the 20th centry by burning fossil fuels.
2. By reducing the burning of fossil fuels, Kyoto would harm the fossil fuel market, not the whole economy.
Now, it's technically possible for both these statements to be false (fossil fuels might be a necessary but not sufficient condition for economic development) or for both to be true (perhaps fossil fuels were indispensible a hundred years ago but are due to be obsoleted by cheap solar panels any day now), but on first glance they're practically stating opposing sides of the same proposition: either economic development is hindered by not burning fossil fuels, or it isn't.
Why get into another stupid global warming debate? Nasa's Earth science missions are among its most benefitial contributions to science in the US. Who cares if US CO2 is to blame, or about Kyoto, the fact is that the Earth's weather and geography are really complex and really interesting, and we should study them. It doesn't matter whether or not you think so called "global warming" is bogus or not, it's a fact that (a) weather and climate change over the years, and (b) it has direct consequences to human life TODAY.
One of the greatest effects that creation of NASA has had is to develop amazing Earth-observing technologies and sciences.
If the US government thinks that NASA has too big a budget, they should fund EO and other actual atmospheric and Earth science programs, and trim the Buck Rogers stuff.
How can understanding how our planet works and how we can better survive on it efficiently and effectively be some kind useless left-wing hippie treehugger nonsense? It's critical for the continuing survival of the massive and ever-increasing number of homo sapiens on this little rock in space.
Reed
PS. for some incredibly inspiring, beautiful, and interesting images, take a look at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImag
To learn about real global climate and weather events with seriously real effects on human life TODAY, read some of the topics at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/.