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Trump White House Quietly Cancels NASA Research Verifying Greenhouse Gas Cuts (sciencemag.org)
Paul Voosen, reporting for Science magazine: You can't manage what you don't measure. The adage is especially relevant for climate-warming greenhouse gases, which are crucial to manage -- and challenging to measure. In recent years, though, satellite and aircraft instruments have begun monitoring carbon dioxide and methane remotely, and NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a $10-million-a-year research line, has helped stitch together observations of sources and sinks into high-resolution models of the planet's flows of carbon. Now, President Donald Trump's administration has quietly killed the CMS, Science has learned.
The move jeopardizes plans to verify the national emission cuts agreed to in the Paris climate accords, says Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University's Center for International Environment and Resource Policy in Medford, Massachusetts. "If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement," she says. Canceling the CMS "is a grave mistake," she adds.
The move jeopardizes plans to verify the national emission cuts agreed to in the Paris climate accords, says Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University's Center for International Environment and Resource Policy in Medford, Massachusetts. "If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement," she says. Canceling the CMS "is a grave mistake," she adds.
Why would a Climate Monitoring System be under NASA and not NOAA?
I would think that NASA's only role in this should be launching and maintaining the satellites. The Science and Climate Monitoring itself should be under NOAA control.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
One of the biggest issues going on with CO2 is that a number of nations are cheating at this. For most of the western nations, we have loads of ground, sky, and space monitoring. However, nations like CHina, block all ground monitoring except for their own. As such, when groups like IEA report on energy usage, or CO2 emissions, they are simply taking numbers from those govs. Yet, when OCO2 went up, it forced China to admit that they were burning 17% more coal, which interestingly, none of the current figures have been updated with. Right now, OCO2, along with Japanese GOSAT, can do is show relative numbers and not absolute. What is needed now, is absolute measurements, which OCO3, combined with the other 3 sats can provide.
Keep in mind that China is NOT the only nation cheating. Plenty of others are cheating as well.
The other real possibility, perhaps one that is better, would be to have private funding of multiple sats. If we can get a pass over areas every hour or two, it will show what is really going on.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The thing about a worryingly large amount of people with strong political leanings, particularly those on the right, really don't like data either as they think it's going to be used to argue against their stance on issues. You can see the same in the Dickey Amendment, put in place by NRA lobbying, and how it severely restricted the CDC's ability to spend money on collecting and analyzing data relating to gun violence. It did so from 1993 up until a few months ago and still continues to restrict them from doing analysis that could be interpreted as "gun control advocacy" and will obviously be defined very broadly by Republicans.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
First, it has hardly quiet, it was talked about months ago, it was published that the funding was going to other programs that NASA put at a higher priority, and the federal spokesmen even answered questions about the program ending. What would be needed to not make it a silent closing?
Second, the people complaining are those that were making money from it. According to this and other article if you have any financial interest in it, you are not a scientist but a shill. All the people mentioned in the article are nothing but shills and upset "their" money is going to others.
Third, this is a duplication on effort. There are already others who are doing the exact same measurements.
Your ire is misplaced and the downvote you gave me — wasted. Obesity is, largely, a personal problem (ignoring for a second the idiotic "war on fat" waged by the Federal government for 30 years), but this does not contradict what I said in any way. Because I never suggested, government needs to spend on fighting it.
You are appealing to authority, which is a fallacy. But worse, all of these people are employed by the governments and have a vast conflict of interest. Should they discover, the threat is overrated, the vast majority of them would need new careers. This is enough to impeach their testimonies and expert opinions. Without those words, you'd need hard facts. And those the alarmists do not have...
I never said it is. Read carefully, try to keep up.
CO2 is not a pollutant.
TL;DR
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.