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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..
"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
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
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.
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.
Here's something for ya: Empirical evidence. You know, we have a good record of atmospheric composition and temperatures for the past 50-60-70 years.
Somebody tested various models on historical data. You know where you started, you know what happened, and you know the outcome.
Good enough for you?
They tried it. More here.
But, feel free to post any good rebuttals on this study if you indeed know more than I do.
Stop the brainwash
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.
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.
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.