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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.
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.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I wonder if the QuikSCAT satellite detected the resulting shitstorm from this.
*ducks*
I'll be here 'till Friday. Try the clam chowder.
- Scott
Overblown panic in a Slashdot story? Well color me surprised .....
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..
(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.
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.
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)