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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.
Other countries need to fill in as the US culls science programs and generally sets itself back to the stone age. After all, you'll need to know how much CO2 is being emitted when the US has to come crawling back years from now to buy carbon credits from the EU and China...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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!
Even if you think global warming is overhyped, this is still a bad thing, because more environmental data is always good for science.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
They withdrew from the PCA a year ago, so monitoring compliance of countries in the Accords is not within the USA's purview anymore.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
You know, I love watching things burn.
Head to the Big Island. I hear lots of stuff is going up in flames there... If you get close enough, it will pop your corn for you; do try.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This isn't a uniquely Republican / Democrat United States problem. It's a problem in the UK and and it's a problem in Australia and so likely in most Western Democracies.
Simplistic ideas presented with easy-to-remember slogans defeat any complexity because of how humans work. Very few voters have any understanding of the various issues facing modern society, so politicians can say whatever they want without really being held to account in any kind of realistic fashion.
As a meta-example, it would be easy for me to get on your Republican-bashing bandwagon, but the issues at stake are infinitely more complex than that. The Republican / Democrat divide is a perfect example of humans inability to process nuance outside their areas of deep understanding, which are generally very narrow if they exist at all.
We've got easily persuaded societies under political systems that reward the kinds of people least deserving of positions of power.
If anti-science wins votes, then anti-science it is!
Headline doesn't mention that the US is simply not measuring greenhouse emissions to ensure Paris Climate compliance, because after all, why should the US spend money on something it was withdrawn from?
Considering the enormous size of the federal budget and how many considerably more expensive programs are in it, it really makes you wonder why Trump would cut such a small program. It's obviously not for fiscal reasons as that's chump change and it's not for political reasons either as it's only going to piss people off, particularly educated people. No, the only logical reason I can think of is special interests groups representing heavily polluting industries lobbied him into doing it so that they can pollute more freely the same way Israel and Saudi-Arabia seem to have lobbied him to pull out of the Iran deal in an effort to weaken Iran (a regional competitor).
Then again maybe he's still just learning the political ropes kind of like Margaret Thatcher when she ended the British school milk program in 1971 to minimal savings and massive political uproar, earning her the nickname "Maggie Thatcher - Milk Snatcher" and teaching her that ending programs like that needed to come with actual cost savings to be politically worth it.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
I would say good post, but I think it is better to say sad post. You are spot on.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why Trump? It's his administration.
He calls global warming a hoax.
He's old and will not live long enough to see the damage he causes this world and our country.
The first sentence makes the assumption that you can manage it. As everybody knows, when you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you and umption.
Such monetary figures equate to a basement project for likes of Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, Al Gore, etc. Each of those charlatans has aircraft and maintenance costs that approach $65 million dollars - just to spew carbon for their collective convenience they're paying it already.
They can pay for this easy
No to Agenda 21 and its heirs
No to Kyoto and its heirs, specifically the PCA.
None of these "international agreements" have ever been ratified by the Senate and are therefore not binding on the US or its citizens.
Any programs of dollars spent towards any of these things that were "nodded" to by previous administrations needs to be stopped immediately.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I don't know, maybe because he's the President? I don't recall any similar complaints when people attributed actions by the Obama administration to President Obama.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Which raises the question: if the con artist doesn't believe in climate change and is scrapping this program because it's not needed, why did he need to build a sea wall to protect his failing golf course?
Ask those in Hawaii about controlling nature much less the climate.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I think you might have found the perfect US political spin for this: it's not that canceling monitoring is bad for the environment, it's that it helps China cheat.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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.
Maybe it's because he knows it's all a bunch of nonsense having more to do with politics and money than any real threat. 10 million per year to monitor carbon? That's a lot of graft to the contractors. Political donations too I'm sure. One hand always washes the other.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
A country full of actresses who played Joanie Cunningham?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Public and private entities are not inherently good nor evil, they are both made of people and are both susceptible to human flaws and weaknesses. Does the American government really kill more Americans on an annual basis than private entities??? I think the case can be made that they don't.
When you're not a party to the Paris Climate Accords, why measure compliance with the Paris Climate Accords?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Hey, I would piss on a spark plug to restore that. Simple fact is, that we need it for so many reasons and it is one of the CHEAPEST means of getting that data. OCO3 is built and ready to take up to the ISS. It would cost us less 5M, probably less than $1M.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The real news is Trump did something quietly.
Table-ized A.I.
Except that is not the only task of CMS: https://carbon.nasa.gov/cgi-bi...
Well, this shouldn't be about any specific governmental agreement or treaty or policy at all.
This is simply about gathering scientific data. Without accurate information, no one on any side of the debate can know what's even going on, let alone decide what to do about it. Completely short-sighted and makes the administration look like they know that their position is wrong and want to hide something for fear of being proven wrong.
Have a lie down...relax...try the little pink pills next time.
First off, I agree that the far left is being worthless on this. They continue to point fingers at just America, and use worthless normalization. Basically, it is a case of we will go after the one doing 5 knives, not the ones doing 4 knives, 10 knives, or even 30 knives to kill somebody.
Secondly, putting up OCO3 is NOT about policing. It is about KNOWING who is doing what. There is a difference between policing and just getting intelligence. And that is what scientists do. They gather intelligence on all of this.
As to paris accord, it is a joke. As long as we allow ANY nation to continue growing their emissions with new coal plants, we only make things worse. ALL nations need to stop adding fossil fuel plants (that includes America). It is one thing to simply replace old coal plants with new plants, that are smaller in size, and will burn equal or less coal. The problem in places like China is they are replacing OLD coal plants with new ones that are multiple sizes bigger, and will burn 2-5x as much coal. IOW, they are adding to the global problem.
Trump should allow science to continue. To try and kill it off and declare that it is not happening when all of the top scientist say otherwise, is just plain insane. Right now, America will continue to drop CO2 emissions due to economics. Nat gas and wind are now cheaper than coal, so, our old coal plants are being replaced by decently clean energy. However, if Trump goes in and changes the economics such as direct subsidies for coal, as he is talking, we are fucked. We will become no different than China.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They are supposed to create the budget that includes funding for research such as this. They haven't done a proper budget in years. Besides, how important is this compared to boondoggles like like California's high speed rail "to no where" that is getting Federal money. You can't fund everything so if you have something you care about call up your representative. If you can't be bothered I guess it really isn't that important.
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.
I'm not sure where you get your news... but, the Russia thing is not bullshit. Russia did hack the US and spread FUD on social media to try and influence the election. These are known facts. The Mueller investigation is still going on, so we don't know for sure if there was any collusion or not.
Trump is mentioned by people on here, not because people are "butthurt", but because his administration pulled the plug on a vital program. It is an idiotic move. Especially given that the common argument of Climate change deniers is that "We don't know if climate change is man made. We don't have enough evidence." So...lets stop collecting more evidence and more science. If you don't have enough evidence, wouldn't you want to ramp up and collect more evidence and study it more? Besides the fact that there are many hundreds of thousands of peer-reviewed documents which come to the same conclusion. i.e. Man made climate change is real and is a fact.
This is a horrible move. Just because you can't notice a different, personally, does not mean the overall climate in the world hasn't changed since then. I personally haven't noticed a difference from my childhood either (my "sniff test"). The problem is that climate change is so gradual, that people don't notice, it makes it tough for scientists to explain, because we live in a culture of instant gratification and instant change, etc.
However, climate change is happening. It is causing global warming (they are 2 different things). It is well documented and researched and is considered to be a fact. But, this is a free country and you are free to deny it all you want. That doesn't mean it isn't real and isn't a fact.
Clearly a word got dropped when I was moving it around / changing it. Are you smart enough to tell what it was?
The topic is greenhouse gasses, CO2 and coal consumption. Try to keep up.
What's with the knife nonsense? You are much higher than other countries so you clearly have the most to cut. You also have the most money, so it should be easiest for you to cut as well.
Why are you telling all the poor countries they can't be just like you? What makes you so special you get to use so much more of the CO2 quota?
If the whole world was like India, what would happen?
If the whole world was like China, what would happen?
If the whole world was like America, what would happen?
The world would be saved, but we would all be shitting in fields.
The world would struggle on as everyone tried to cut back.
The would would basically already be destroyed...
The problem in places like China is they are replacing OLD coal plants with new ones that are multiple sizes bigger, and will burn 2-5x as much coal.
What kind of stupid argument is this?
Show somewhere credible that predicts China will use 2-5 times as much coal?
China already has oodles of spare capacity, if it's 'master plan' as you think it, is just to burn more coal, they would already be doing it. They are trying to cut back. Hundreds of plants have been cancelled. If they were planning for 5x the coal, why would they do that? You just aren't credible WindBourne.
Capacity isn't use. It's quite important for you to understand this so I'll tell you again. Capacity isn't use.
New plants are all more efficient than the old ones. They can and will burn coal cleaner, produce more electricity from the same amount of coal.
The number of plants doesn't matter, it's how much coal you burn in them...Fewer bigger plants are better than lots of little ones spread about anyway.
The main reason your argument is stupid though is that the US is only running it's coal plants at about 50% capacity. You could burn 2x the coal as well without building another coal plant (using older dirtier plants to boot). That's if you are entertaining your fantasy scenarios. Back in the real world, neither actually will.
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
Yes, but...
The move jeopardizes plans to verify the national emission cuts agreed to in the Paris climate accords
Well since the U.S. is not *in* the Paris Climate Accords, why should we spend $10/million a year on something we do not need?
If the countries still clinging to that accord really want the data that badly, they can fund it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
CO2 is not a pollutant.
And water isn't a poison, so clearly you won't mind being drowned.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Why do we care again? None of those nations actually committed to doing anything. In case you forgot, the Paris Climate Accord was an agreement where each nation set their own goals and there were no penalties for not meeting them and no benefits to meeting them early.
Speaking of delusional... I think it is funny that people like you continue to deny facts, even when the proof is indisputable. But it is a free country, so you can believe or deny whatever you want.
Reported. Say hi to the secret service for me.
So great to see a President who fights for America. Thank you to all of those hard working men and women who produce the energy that fuels our wondrous computing machines and powers American manufacturing. Now that global cooling is a thing, many will turn away from Al Gore's Church of Global Warming (TM). I'm proud to say that I was raised free in Zion, outside the Democrat-media-academia complex that latched onto anthropogenic global warming as a convenient tool to effect world socialism. Vostok ice cores anyone? Take the red pill, and I will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Meanwhile, America is back and people are going to work, raising families, and dreaming about the future. Welcome to Earth, 3rd rock from the Sun... #MAGA
Actually it is understood and well documented. Humans are causing climate change.
Completely agree. Well said.
CO2 is not a pollutant.
Are you sure?
A pollutant is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired effects, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource. A pollutant may cause long- or short-term damage by changing the growth rate of plant or animal species, or by interfering with human amenities, comfort, health, or property values.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The climate change hysteria is getting out of hand. I can't even notice a slight difference in winters from my childhood (40 years ago now), but somehow we have imminent disaster coming? It doesn't pass most people's sniff test.
You've got to be a paid troll. No human can be this stupid. It's not possible.
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.
Um... no? Many climate scientists are employed by universities and other research groups. Some are funded by different governments, some get funding from other sources. Also, you seem to think that research scientists earn far more money than they actually do.
But the bigger problem is the very strange belief that if climate change is proven false, then they would need new careers. Huh? That's just a nonsensical statement.
First, anyone who proves that climate change is false will be insanely rich and famous forever. Disproving accepted theories doesn't happen very often, because accepted theories are ones with lots of evidence, but it does happen. Ever hear of a chap named "Einstein" who proved that Newton's Laws of Motion were kinda incomplete? So, by arguing that scientists are ignoring the "truth" about global warming, you are arguing that scientists hate money and fame.
And second, there are many many pieces of the climate that need to be studied and are now being ignored because people fund "planetary threat" before "how el niño affects butterflies"; both are important areas of knowledge but one is rather more critical.
It's good to have information.
That statement is arbitrarily vague.
What if I collected all of the information about how often I bought shoes over the last ten years. According to you, that has any value whatsoever because "it's good to have information".
The truth is there is a lot of information is the world it is meaningless to have, especially when you are weighing spending $10 million to obtain it. Since this is NASA, I would vastly rather that $10 million go to outer space probes, information that in the long run is ACTUALLY VALUABLE.
We don't need to spend $10 million a year collecting CO2 data because it is pointless. The overall trend for the U.S. will be down going forward as renewable adoption increases as do emissions standards (and yes, emissions standards are getting more stringent every year despite what you have heard about a pause on the way to the final limit adoption).
Or to speak in a language you can possibly understand since it's the language of emotion and not rationality, we could use that $10 million to feed the homeless. Obviously by supporting Big Carbon Research you are literally killing millions of homeless children. You monster.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Obesity is something you mostly do to yourself. Maybe there are "reasons" (you're a kid and your parents feed you foolishly, or maybe you have disadvantageous genetics, or whatever) but seriously, a lot of it has to do with the obese person eating when they ought to stop, never getting off their ass and instead staring at a screen all day, etc. We don't need government to fix that. Obesity isn't something that people are doing to each other. People taking responsibility for themselves is the #1 very best solution to obesity.
Dear god. Whilst I'm sure there are people who fit the causes for obesity that you said, they seem to be the minority.
Obesity specifically, and eating disorders in general, is a maladaptive behaviour where something that can be controlled (eg. food intake) is substituted as a response to something that can't be controlled (eg. sexual abuse).
How many people actually want to be obese? The answer is close to zero. But when a sexual predator says to a young child "you would look better if you lost a few pounds", the child learns that eating to gain a few pounds makes the pain stop. Then this behaviour carries into teen years / adulthood as a maladaptive behaviour: have emotional pain, eat to make pain go away.
The sooner obesity is recognized as a response to pain, rather than a problem in itself, the sooner this "crisis" can be resolved.
I would strongly object to getting drowned, but that's off-topic.
No it's not. You're being faceitously pedantic about it.
None of which can be said about your own, customarily witless, ejaculation.
That's about the most ronudabout way of calling someone a wanker that I've ever heard.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
When Bush was President is was "Bush did this" or "Bush did that", when Obama became president it was "The government did this" or "The government did that", now we have "Trump did this or that". See the pattern?
"The number of plants doesn't matter, it's how much coal you burn in them"
O rly?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
China currently produces 2x the CO2 as the US. (While producing barely 2/3 the GDP, too)
They should be subject to (at least) 2x the penalties and restrictions.
Are they? No?
Then the climate accords are political hypocrisy, not problem-solving.
-Styopa
>I thought I could pray hard for Trump to come down with brain cancer and die, soon, and have it happen.
You missed your target; or your god did.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
So the spin was that the government implemented ObamaCare and Obama had nothing to do with it? Right ...
Furthermore, the current administration seems hellbent on undoing most of the big things Obama got credit for. Your claim that Obama didn't get credit/blame for these things seems utterly ridiculous. The pattern I see is that your own bias is showing loud and clear.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
https://www.independent.co.uk/...
http://www.politifact.com/pund...
https://www.rt.com/usa/374292-...
You can't manage what you don't measure. The adage is especially relevant for climate-warming greenhouse gases,
I don't think this was ever actually said by its original attributee (Abraham Lincoln).
WAKE the FUCK up, EVERYONE!
Trump IS the proverbial anti-Christ!
Someone please help me understand: How can this be a good thing?
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
While this probably should've been under NOAA instead of NASA, I can't remember the last time NASA was given something to do. It seems like any news is either funding cuts, project cuts, etc., or look at what their robot toys are doing. Maybe it's time to turn the military implications of satellites and the like over the military and let the military handle the military implications of space development and use and sell off the rest of NASA's assets to SpaceX or some other American company and be done with it. The government is clearly incapable of doing anything else worthwhile with NASA and it's pretty much just dead weight now.
I loved learning about all the good things NASA has done in the past with things like the Apollo program and the like and I thank NASA for doing it, but that age is gone and it's not coming back. At this time I'd rather see private companies move forward with space exploration run by citizens who actually care about getting results.
As for Trump cutting something related to climate change, is anyone here really surprised? Trump would rather have us turn back the clock before the information age and live lives full of pollution and bad living conditions because it's profitable for his wealthy friends and it's easy to cover up truths when information does not spread so easily. He and people like him who live in the past will doom the US to being left far behind by the rest of the world. Conservatives and Liberals both need to step up and modernize big time if we're going to get out of this funk we're in.