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Panic Over Failing QuikSCAT Satellite Overblown
daeg writes "We previously read and discussed about the aging QuikSCAT weather satellite used to help predict tropical storms. It turns out that the panic is likely overblown and the loss of the satellite won't have any dramatic effects on forecasting at all. Some in the National Hurricane Center are now calling for Director Proenza's resignation over this and his overall handling of the center."
...and Bill Proenza is right. You won't get the resources if you don't scream for them. It makes you look bad, but the sad fact is that there is only one way to get the attention of Government and it is closely related to the thinkofthechildren meme.
Make a case, exaggerate if you have to. Get the resources when you are able to make the argument. Don't wait until it is too late.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
god, who thought that name up?
"the loss of the satellite won't have any dramatic effects on forecasting"
Since the primary method of weather forcast seems to be rolling the dice, I would agree with the statement.
ultraparanoid.wordpress.com
Too much time on the internet... +1 childish.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
So, if the satellite was so worthless that it will have no effect on weather forecasting, why did we bother supporting it?
The answer is either:
A) They are spinning the loss and trying to blame it on the squealer.
or
B) Weather forecasting is so useless, nothing could affect how accurate it is.
Reading the article, I find that they are critical of the report he used with only 19 samples. The satellite hasn't existed long, and major storms are -not- that common. How the hell was he supposed to get more data? It's his -job- to do the best he can with what little data he has, especially since we're talking about one of the most imprecise and unpredictable sciences there have ever been: Weather forecasting.
So, the situations stands thus: He tried to warn people that the satellite, which provided valuable data (even if exagerated in usefulness) was going to fall. He was warned to shut up about it. Satellite falls, and now they want to fire him for it.
I can't see in any way, shape or form how this was his -fault-, only that he tried desperately to get someone to do something about it. Since he can't fly, and doesn't have the money to send up a space shuttle, he did the best he could.
Did he overstate the importance of the satellite? Probably. Does that matter a whit? Nope.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Is that, the public sooner or later gets wise to it, and that undermines all of science. In the USA, we've seen a number of scientists argue all manner of shocking things in order to get funding, and all that has done is undermine science altogether.
We have seen proclamations of the end of all mankind if we do not research something, that it almost seems miraculous that we are still here at all, becuase we obviously haven't researched everything. Noted cynically, the last 50 years has seen a bevy of failed pronouncements by members of the academic community:
a) The asteroid will hit us at any second.
b) We're real close on nuclear fusion.
c) We'll have nuclear power in everything from planes and ships to cars.
d) A cure for cancer is right around the corner.
e) We've mastered bacteriological illnesses and we're real close to conquering the virus.
f) The sea has an inexhaustable supply of fish, if we would just harness that we could feed the world.
g) The planet is cooling down, and we're headed for an ice age.
h) Global warming will cause more hurricanes.
i) Eat plenty of eggs and cheese.
Instead, we haven't been hit by an asteroid, nuclear fusion is still decades away, nuclear power has been destroyed by
To make matters worse, people see scientists as just another kind of smart people, like doctors and lawyers. People already have a growing distrust of western medicine, witness the rise of alternative medicine. And nobody trusts lawyers.
The best approach for any scientist looking for funding is to tell the truth, and simply, and not to over-sensationalize things. That way, when something does need to be sensationalized, such as global warming, people will actually believe it, and right now, they don't.
Why else, might you ask, would 10,000 scientists, from the UN, argue for action, meaning research dollars, on global warning, only to fall on deaf ears.
This is my sig.
I'm sure they think it all went to the right place.
The only thing this blog writer concentrates on, is whether the precise quote of Proenza is correct or not.
It's not important. Proenza probably dumbed down/oversimplified on his statement and that's a good thing, because he is the main fundraiser for his institute. It should be slightly over the top. He's a fucking salesman, and Congress damn well knows this.
It's not important at all to say "yeah well, it's not quite accurate and why didn't he give a measure of uncertainty" blah blah.
Point is, the QuickSCAT satellite is used for lots of things, among them crossreferencing data of other satellites when the accuracy of those isn't up to snuff.
Satellites get older. Sensors decay due to cosmic rays damaging sensor pixels. Models use multiple inputs of data and when one satellite heavily degrades, that's a loss for science.
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I wonder if the QuikSCAT satellite detected the resulting shitstorm from this.
*ducks*
I'll be here 'till Friday. Try the clam chowder.
- Scott
A butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil and it creates a cyclone over Bangladesh two weeks later. A weather satellite falls from the orbit and a director gets fired two weeks later...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Overblown panic in a Slashdot story? Well color me surprised .....
Makes me wonder what other skies aren't really falling either. This sort of thing, I wish scientists could see only undermines scientists more.
There was once a great piece on NPR, in which a scientist admitted that he wouldn't debate right wingers because they were better with people than he was. This right winger's first word of advice would be, to tell the truth and not overstate things, unless, you are planning to topple an oil rich dictator.
This is my sig.
You mean a mainstream media story was over-hyped to the point of it being more-or-less false?
I did a rare thing here in /. land, I read the article (at least one of the links. Take the last line of the Tampa article:
"The director of the National Weather Service has told Proenza to be more tactful within the bureaucracy and more moderate in his public comments."
So, here is a manager who was outspoken in trying to get/save funding for a center who's funds are being slashed, who tried to explain to the public the value of technology to weather forecasting and what would happen without it and the response is....tone it down?
Hell, I'd quit, find a nice home in Oz or New Zealand, and laugh as the US slowly crumbles away.
As proud as I am of the heritage of this country, I am saddened, disheartened, and at times disgusted with it current crop of leaders and citizens. 500 billion and counting (can't even speak of of the human cost) for a shithole conflict that will have done squat for security of this country, yet we cannot fund basic universal healthcare, we cannot fund programs who's job is to monitor and protect our own shores (USCG/Police/Fire), and we slash funding on systems that would provide some measure of early warning to people living in harms way.
While good folk try to warn, our *elected* officials play See no evil, Speak no evil, Hear no evil...but have no problem with Do Evil.
the fiddling sounds just a bit closer today.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
Chaos by Gleick is one of my all time favorite books of science for laiety, but it was much more fun to grab a couple of fractals equations off of the internet and run them myself. "Surely you are joking", is another great book. I hope that if my son decides to build a cyclotron, I'll have the money to help him do it.
I write in a voice as the slashdot spokesman of the right wing, largely becuase I think its safe to say that I am the only Bush support on slashdot that can program in assembly language and is also self effacing enough to take my politics not too seriously. The reason, in all seriousness, is to not try and change your mind about your preferred economic system, because I can't, but at least that, if there are people like me to build some bridges of understanding, we can work together and over time put some of the political wars behind us and work for a better quality of life for all NATO members.
The thing though, is that, the left assumes that because we on the right are critical of science, that we do not support it.
Far from it!
If anything, right wingers support science even MORE. First off, we have a relentless need for new products that only scientific research can genuinely provide. Then, to get that product around the globe we've needed advances in everything from transportation to logistics, bringing in jet aircraft, super sized ships, massive cranes, computers, containers, along the way. Finally, to ensure that the reach of our consumer free trading system is global, we pour hundreds of billions of tax payer dollars every year into military research, so that, if we can't reason our way into our superior system, we can at least help those who are more backwards still to see the light.
Along the way of doing all this, we righties have learned that scientists use the sky is falling argument. And yes, we certainly understand that even if an experiment fails, the knowledge gained has some intrinsic value so therefor, at some level, its ok to say that the planet might freeze up, only to later learn that it might warm up. But, on the opposite side, we have shareholders (each other), our customers and employees, and they demand that planes fly farther, cheaper and faster, ships that hold more, goods delivered on an increasingly accurate schedule, and new products to be released on time, and so, at some point, the pure asthetic gain of knowledge gained must yield to the current demand for practical results.
I certainly agree that you wouldn't expect to hear this on Fox News, but the reality is, most of us weller to do right wingers, even far righties like me who still support President Bush, watch the likes of Fox really more for entertainment, and view the likes of Hannity and Rush in the same kind of people as Howard Stern - shock jocks but not real values. For real news, we listen to NPR or read CNN's web site, the WSJ, the Economist, Scientific American, Discover, and yes, gasp, Slashdot.
Incidentally, this whole globalalization thing is a vision, actually, we stole from your liberal Roosevelt. We of course wanted to have protected markets but saw that the war which resulted was a disaster, and realized that if capital could flow everywhere on the planet, we could get really rich. We were the original isolationists, and now your side is. And, from you liberals, we learned that change is not so bad, in fact, change is really good, because, where there is change, there is opportunity, and where there is opportunity, there is profits.
That lesson, my friend, you liberals have seem to have forgotten, and if you rediscover it, pat yourselves on your back for one thing. Roosevelt's vision worked and the world is richer than it has ever been for it. You were right about that.
This is my sig.
SCAT comes from Scatterometer (which is what the instrument is). Quik comes from the speed with which the spacecraft and instrument came together.
QS was created to fill a gap when the satellite carrying it's predecessor (NSCAT) failed after 6 months on orbit. There was already another scatterometer being built (Seawinds) which was scheduled to launch a few years later on ADEOS-II. They took spares from that instrument, found a spare launch vehicle (Titan II) found a spacecraft (Ball BCP2000), and cobbled it all together in 13 months from start to launch, which is VERY quick in the NASA satellite business, hence the name..
I don't like people telling me what to do. It's really that simple. I am an iconoclastic anti-social rebel. When people form big groups and say, hey, why don't you get along either, well, I just want to laugh.
So, for me, the whole of idea of a cooperative socialist society is a bunch of crap, because, I want to do what I want to do, not what someone else tells me I should do, even if it might serve some "greater good".
Its so bad that when I see a hundred people in agreement on an issue, I instinctively have to disagree, even if I might buy into some of their arguments, largely because if I see a crowd of people getting roiled up, it usually means something stupid is about to happen. Even on slashdot, if I see a 100 people bashing Bush, well, I'll post he's the greatest. If, they were all cheering Bush the great, I'd probably call myself a liberal, and move on with life.
Politically, this translates into:
a) smaller government regulation, because I don't like all the cops required to enforce the laws. it's not so much about the size of government that bothers me, as much as it is about the rules that it imposes. If the government decided it wanted to do something like feed the poor of the planet earth, and it wouldn't cost too much, I could go along with it. Just don't give me new laws about it, but have a web site if I'm drunk and want to feel good about being an American.
b) private ownership of guns is essential. hold a gun in your hand, and you are free. It's a gut thing, and you just have to feel it.
c) free speech across the board. I don't like it when people trash my cultural icons in the media, but I reserve the right to trash theirs too more importantly than I feel the need for some oppressive body to say no to all of us.
d) free trade. don't tell me where to buy, who to work for, or who to hire. that means, be pro-immigration, even if it means amnesty. If don't want to learn spanish, I won't, but that would be more of a pain in the ass than any sort of soverieign imposition.
e) global warming. sigh. Even if global warming is not caused by rising co2 caused by man's sins of the SUV, the CO2 level is surely rising and there is an obvious need to manage the planet's atmosphere. So, therefor, I say, we need to invest in sequestration technologies while also switching to nuclear power and electric cars. It's no different than seeing a need to build a levee to stop a rising river. Freedom's alright, and I wish I wouldn't have to deal with it, but, sometimes you need to work together to stop the flood to stay dry, and to fix the air, just because, its not all mine, and I don't really want to own it all anyway. Just get on with building the nukes, electric cars, massive sequestration machines, and I'll deal with it. But don't bitch too much at me if I still want to drive a V8 from time to time. I'll plant some trees.
This is my sig.
A peer reviewed paper is not the same as a blog, or even a poster paper. It has to pass critical and adversarial review by experts.
Until the paper is published, we don't really know if there's an apples-to-apples comparison here. Right off the bat, the "more comprehensive" data used by the poster (the only thing we have to go on here) makes me question whether it is relevant to this discussion, because it lacks an analysis of baseline accuracy broken down by region. It is likely that the peer reviewed paper has similar problems.
And both studies are for short periods of time in a single season. We don't know if one or the other season is anamalous.
This is normal in environmental situations: there is just not enough data to determine what we'd like to know. We don't know if one study or the other, or even both are based on anomalous data or situations. We don't know if conclusions in one geographic extent extend other ones, or to every part of the extent, given the paucity of data. It's not that we know nothing but we know every little.
And it is in states of comparative ignorance that an increment of knowledge has the greatest marginal value. It is unthinkable that we should lose a major Earth monitoring instrument at this point in history.
It is logically impossible that the data from the QuikSCAT system could hurt our predictions. It is very possible that it may help, in certain cases quite a bit. Remember we are not concerned with average cases here, we are concerned with disasters. Disasters are when human adaptations to average condition come up against the hard reality that statistically rare events are more or less inevitable given time.
It follows that we need as much data as we can get, and this has be analyzed in great depth over many years and many different situations. You can't expect every system or every investment to pay for itself overnight, or even in a predictable time period. But in aggregate climate and meteorological research is a no-brainer expense. And research doesn't work without data.
America is not just the world's military superpower, it has been for many decades the greatest global scientific superpower. It is not that other countries don't contribute to science, sometimes in greater proportion than their population or wealth. But America has an unique role to play in many fields of science, particularly climate and weather research. No other country has the combination of applied science and technological capabilities that we do, and in no other field are these capabilities needed more.
But just at the time when these capabilities would be most useful, we've lost our enthusiasm for applied science. We're only comfortable with science whose conclusions little bearing on the present generation, fearing infringements on our commercial or religious activities.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
(Disclaimer: I work for NOAA)
I am not sure about the mode by which Bill P raised the alarm on the upcoming loss of weather satellites. I do think his message was correct though - to raise the profile on what he sees as a critical issue - the issue of proper funding for NOAA and satellite capabilities. NOAA does so much, with so little... We are stretched incredibly thin compared to other agencies.... I don't believe Dr. Jeff Masters had access to the all the data Bill P used in his decision to go public. People disagree with how he did it and it made more work for the NWS PR people.
Jeff Masters is also advocating the replacement of QuickSCAT with a "next-generation" scatterometer, one that has greatly improved capabilities to help tackle the structure and intensity problem"..... I hope Dr. Masters isn't trying to recreate the NPOESS problem by linking a satellite needed now to a high-risk/experimental sensor because it sure sounds like it.
I don't think I would panic over a satellite named after SCAT.
They have treated him to a pop inspection, kind of like they did Iraq before the invasion:
Want to bet the result is a smear job?
The attacks on the integrity of his policy shows up the problems of scientific publishing more than it does anything else. Jeff Master's critiques look solid, but he points to a big problem:
The article should be widely available so I don't have to take Master's opinion of it. Weather Underground, because of the Weather Service Scandal is a suspect source of information. They did their best to cripple free updates from the national weather service and I'm still angry at them for it. Even if Master's claims are valid, they don't warrent the attention Proenza is getting.
Really what you see here is a scientist being smeared and muzzled. It's not the first time scientists at the NOAA have been gagged. Only bad policy has to be defended by firing people and shutting up the rest.
Proenza's problems and forcasting are just the tip of the melting iceburg of this scandal. QuikSCAT provides information about storm intensity, a key point in global warming research. It looks like the Bush administration is willing to sacrifice forcasting accuracy in order to bury evidence of global warming. There's more where that came from.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
... were people are selling sex toys in a VR world, the name of this satellite just seems wrong! (ROTFLOL)
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Seems if there are more problems at the NHC...why the original poster didn't include these articles in the first place is beyond me.
i
Storm intensifies as forecasters want director removed
http://www.miamiherald.com/459/story/159712.html
Pressure builds for storm chief
http://www.miamiherald.com/460/story/158757.html
Actual QuikSCAT data
http://manati.orbit.nesdis.noaa.gov/quikscat/
http://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/sat-bin/scatt_winds.cg
Extreme right wing followers argue that the pure free market will solve "all" of our problems, by increasing the wealth of society. Followers of the extreme left (communism) argue that market forces are evil and should be banished, since they lead to an uneven distribution of wealth in society. Both of these positions are extremist ideologies that have little to do with what happens in the real world.
An ideology is a set of ideas which purports to define how the world works. Examples might include pure free market capitalism, communism, and extremist religious ideologies. They tend to be simplifications, focusing on a limited set of characteristics of the world. They usually outline a series of steps to follow to achieve "salvation"; if we follow the "steps", there might be a period of painful adjustment, but in the end our society will show great improvements.
The problem with ideologies is that their simplistic prescriptions ignore the true complexity of the world. Pure free market capitalism is extremely useful in ensuring that goods and services are properly distributed in a society. However, it does not form the basis for managing a civilization. Free market ideologues promised that in Iraq, the free market would free the suppressed economic potential of the country. These promises ignored the true complexities, the history and culture of Iraq. We see the result today. Soviet communists also ignored complex reality, and their system failed.
Our civilization tends to have a weakness for ideologies. They are seductive and simple prescriptions, promising solutions to our problems. Perhaps it is our laziness, our unwillingness to look the world as it actually is: complex, and difficult to understand. We tend to pick ideologies like we pick sports teams to watch. We root for our own ideologies and boo the opposing ones, without any real thought as to the implications of what we believe. We ignore complexity because it is uncomfortable, because it reminds us of our own limitations in understanding the world. Ideologies promise certainty, while the real world is uncertain. As Voltaire said, "Doubt is uncomfortable, but certainty is absurd".
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
After seeing a propaganda piece on The Weather Channel about this I knew exactly what they were up to. After Peter Weiss passed away in 2005 [1] Bush and his cronies have been chomping at the bit to restrict public access to US government weather data. They cite concerns over "security" and complaining that they are competing with the shareholders of Accuweather. Never mind that the US taxpayer already paid to collect the data...
5 _weiss.htm
[1]http://www.nws.noaa.gov/com/nwsfocus/fs2005081
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
I'm a Scatman!
skibbydibby dip da dee dap dop.
dip dee dap dop.
+5, Truth
Like you say, societies are far to complex with too many competing goals and needs for any simple system to work.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
On balance
Global warming is probably real.
C02 emmissions probably will not be reduced.
If the above is true
The US will suffer through more severe weather events.
The US will need more/better weather sensors.
A satelite fits the bill
This is one reason why government shouldn't fund R&D unless it applies to defense.
Libertas in infinitum
Welcome to America; if you speak the truth, you will be smeared, so just shut your mouth and don't rock the boat. Honestly, this is a blog putting out a smear job; he cites a POSTER as being more reliable than a peer-reviewed study? Give me a break.
Weather Underground, because of the Weather Service Scandal is a suspect source of information. They did their best to cripple free updates from the national weather service and I'm still angry at them for it.
Why are you mad at Weather Underground? You're thinking of Accuweather and the other people. If you follow a link from that slashdot story you'll see that Weather Underground is not listed as a member of CWSA.
They claimed to be victims at the time, (and the article appears at archive.org so it's not a fake), but so what? One way they are appeasing their benefactor. The other way, they are under duress. Either way they can be manipulated.
If that were the only problem, it could be ignored, but the rest of the story is rotten too. Raids, posturing and gags are all made to cover up things that stink.
The larger pattern is an administration that's corrupt, abusive and thin skinned. I was willing to ignore early claims of favoritism for reporters, but the stories just keep piling up. People are being punished for doing their jobs and say things that are detrimental to some big dumb company. Instead of admitting their mistakes, they are making things worse by trying to hide the truth itself.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If I had mod points, you would get them.
quia potentia mens mentis