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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.
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.
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.
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..
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.
"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!
How much of the Earth do you think DigitalGlobe images each year? (~3%) How much does NASA image each day? (>90%). Granted it's at different resolutions, but that underscores the point that NASA's remote sensors have different capabilities than DigitalGlobe's (or GeoEye's). Next question: who buys most of the high-resolution commercial satellite data? (The U.S. government via the Department of Defense(in fact, the DoD and congress forbid NASA from making high-res observations)). Do you think NASA's satellites are better calibrated than the commercial sensors, which is critical for studying long-term trends? Maybe NASA is capable of taking many more types of measurements, with spaceborne radars, lidars, scatterometers, thermal infrared sensors, gravity sensors, etc?
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Have you ever tried to buy an acquisition from DigitalGlobe? Do you have $10,000? If you have more questions, read the NRC report itself:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820
or read about NASA's current Earth science research:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
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
First, the chunk of the federal budget that NASA "eats up" is minuscule. $16.8 out of $2656.0 Billion in 2007.
I don't think handing that money over to Congress will lead to anything tangible for you or I.
Second, think about the peripheral benefits of everything NASA has done, not just the pretty pictures. Subtract the Voyager probes. The science section at Barnes and Noble is a whole lot thinner ehh? How many books have been published, how many scientists have been educated, how many television shows have been produced based on what those two probes discovered? Suddenly, we know virtually nothing about the moons of Saturn and I don't get to wonder if there is life under the seas of Europa.
Subtract some rocket science that was pioneered by NASA and the Soviets during the space race. Perhaps your cell phone can't call Australia anymore, hurricanes give us less warning and HBO does not have quite as many options. I doubt private industry would be quite so far along in communication satellite technology were it not for the feasibility of such demonstrated by NASA.
Subtract some planetary and atmospheric science regarding Venus. The Global Warming theory suddenly has holes in it's foundation and we couldn't have half the arguments we do on Slashdot.
Subtract Hubble. Suddenly the official stance of the Vatican's is that we are at the center of the universe, we have a few million less interesting web pages and my desire to learn more and educate myself regarding astronomy are greatly diminished.
Despite NASA's budget being slashed and despite their priorities being subject to the whims of politicians, they've done quite well in educating and inspiring all of us who care to pay attention.
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
Maybe defense at 537 billion.
How about Health and human services at 687 billion? There is oodles of waste there.
Here is a breakdown of the US budget taken from the treasury departments website http://www.fms.treas.gov/mts/index.html
Budget Outlays
Legislative Branch 4,463
Judicial Branch 6,382
Department of Agriculture 88,296
Department of Commerce 6,673
Department of Defense-Military 537,308
Department of Education 66,623
Department of Energy 21,583
Department of Health and Human Services 687,946
Department of Homeland Security 49,302
Department of Housing and Urban Development 45,891
Department of the Interior 9,952
Department of Justice 24,643
Department of Labor 50,218
Department of State 15,225
Department of Transportation 65,928
Department of the Treasury:
Interest on Treasury debt securities (gross) 440,627
Other 58,626
Department of Veterans Affairs 74,032
Corps of Engineers 7,758
Other Defense Civil Programs 47,540
Environmental Protection Agency 7,875
Executive Office of the President 3,644
General Services Administration 881
International Assistance Program 17,246
National Aeronautics and Space Administration 16,350
National Science Foundation 5,837
Office of Personnel Management 67,428
Small Business Administration 1,433
Social Security Administration 621,979
Other independent agencies 22,295
That is a total of 3 trillion, which gives NASA a wopping 0.5% of the US budget. During Apollo, it was at 6%. That is quite a difference.
NASA still does amazing work, but its kind of hard to make everything work when Congress will not give them the budget they were told to plan to. Something gets cut when they don't get money they were supposed to.
"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.
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.
It isn't that Liberals are ignorant.
It's just that they know so much that isn't so. - Ronald Reagan
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.
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.
Commerical remote sensing is quite distinct from the kind of Earth Observation TFA is talking about. The commercial business concentrates for the most part on very high resolution imagery, 1 metre pixel size or less -- optical for now, radar too in the near future -- while the kind of science data offered by the Landsat programme, for example, or ESA's ERS/Envisat, has limited commercial value (much of it is available free or at nominal cost to qualified researchers -- or anyone who knows where to look). With Landsat 7 ailing, and Landsat 5 older than most Slashdot contributors, the U.S.'s failure to ensure a Landsat continuity mission after 35 years of uninterrupted data is idiotic, and hopes that this continuity mission can be fobbed off on commercial operators even more so. A useful analogy would be high-energy physics research, or astronomy -- these are pure science and cannot show any immediate commercial return. Meanwhile the Bush administration ties up funds for dumb stunts like the Moon base or a manned mission to Mars, projects with a very poor scientific rationale and such limited feasibility that a non-gambling man like myself would happily bet they will never come to fruition.
Science fiction for grown-ups...
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.
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.
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.
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.