The DSCOVR satellite, an initiative supported by Al Gore, is apparently the victim of more Republican antipathy to real science.
"Did spiking the mission have anything to do with the politics of global warming? Climate scientists think so.":
At a time when the Earth's climate is at the top of practically every nation's agenda, it might seem perplexing that there's a $100 million, fully completed climate-sensing satellite stored in a warehouse in Maryland.
The Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) was supposed to be delivered five years ago to the L1 Lagrangian point—a gravity-neutral parking spot between the Earth and the sun that affords a continuous, sunlit view of the planet. From here, DSCOVR would measure the planet's energy balance and reflectivity, known as albedo, which is critical data for calibrating climate change models and monitoring the ozone layer. Yet the mission was quietly killed this year, so the satellite is sitting in a box at Goddard Space Flight Center.
Could the decision to kill DSCOVR have anything to do with the politics of climate science? For years, Republicans have claimed the need for more data before acting to curb global warming. A letter President Bush wrote to four Republican senators in March 2001 (after DSCOVR's endorsement by a National Academy of Sciences review panel) referred to "the incomplete state of scientific knowledge of the causes of, and solutions to, global climate change." More recently, in a 2005 briefing, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan asserted that "there is still a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the science of climate change." Dr. Kevin Trenberth, Head of the Climate Analysis Section at National Center for Atmospheric Research, said, "It is as if the administration prefers to continue to hide behind lack of definitive data as an excuse for lack of action and leadership."
According to Dr. Jonah Colman, who does climate modeling at Los Alamos National Laboratory, "the availability of DSCOVR for inter-comparison between other measurements" would reconcile discrepancies in data from low-Earth orbit satellites. "Albedo is incredibly important," he added. "It can change quickly, and we currently do not have a direct method for measuring it. DSCOVR would have given us that." Project leader Dr. Francisco P.J. Valero, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, describes the mission as "an urgent necessity." Dr. Robert L. Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, is even more blunt about the importance of DSCOVR's data: "Not knowing may kill us."
If we're interested in understanding how climate changes and how to predict what's going to happen next, DSCOVR would appear to be a crucial undertaking. So what happened? The loss of the Columbia shuttle certainly didn't help, but the real coffin nail seems to have been partisan politics.
Back in 1998, Al Gore championed a probe that would broadcast real-time images of Earth to the Internet at the relatively cheap cost of $20 million. Dubbed Triana (after the sailor on Columbus' voyage who first spotted the New World), Gore hoped the probe would foster greater awareness of the fragility of the planet; the idea, he admitted publicly, had come to him in a dream.
After a peer review process, the mission was upgraded to allow the spacecraft to continuously monitor the energy budget of the entire planet—the first one ever with this capability—making it a much more credible mission. The name was later changed from Triana to DSCOVR, likely in the hope of jettisoning the Gore-dream baggage.
Republicans didn't buy it. In 1999, GOP Congressmen put the project on ice, calling it the "Goresat," a "multimillion-dollar screen saver." Dick Armey, then House Majority Leader, quipped, "This idea supposedly came from a dream.
Sep. 19, 2006 | In February, there were several press reports about the Bush administration exercising message control on the subject of climate change. The New Republic cited numerous instances in which top officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and scientists at the National Hurricane Center sought to downplay links between more-intense hurricanes and global warming. NOAA scientist Thomas Knutson told the Wall Street Journal he'd been barred from speaking to CNBC because his research suggested just such a link.
At the time, Bush administration officials denied that they did any micromanaging of media requests for interviews. But a large batch of e-mails obtained by Salon through a Freedom of Information Act request shows that the White House was, in fact, controlling access to scientists and vetting reporters. (The e-mails were provided to several members of Congress for comment; Rep. Henry Waxman's office has now published them here.)
In 2005, NOAA press officer Kent Laborde wrote an e-mail that approved Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin's request to interview scientists. "CEQ and OSTP have given the green light for the interview," he wrote. CEQ is the Council on Environmental Quality and OSTP is the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Both are White House agencies that work on science issues. During the Bush administration, numerous critics have charged that CEQ has been particularly aggressive in pushing a pro-business agenda and suppressing inconvenient science.
In another e-mail, Laborde's boss, Jordan St. John, said of NOAA scientist Dave Hoffman, whose work tracks greenhouse gases, "This doesn't say anything new about the data, it's just a new way of tracking it. This was the CEQ-approved release that went on the NOAA Web site earlier this week."
The e-mails also show that after Hurricane Katrina, NOAA press officers had to get clearance from the Department of Commerce for scientists to discuss global warming and hurricanes with the press. (NOAA is part of Commerce.) Regarding the request for a particular interview, Commerce press officer Catherine Trinh wrote, "Let's pass on this one." The response from a NOAA official reads, "Can I please have a reason?"
In another message, Trinh writes, "Let's pass on this... interview, but rather refer him to BLANK of the BLANK at BLANK. CEQ suggested him as a good person to talk on this subject." The blanks denote passages that were whited out by lawyers releasing the documents.
But Commerce's deputy director of communications, Chuck Fuqua, was happy to have a more politically reliable NOAA hurricane researcher named Chris Landsea speak to the press. At the time, Landsea was stating publicly that global warming had little to no effect on hurricanes. "Please make sure Chris is on message and that it is a friendly discussion," Fuqua wrote regarding a request for Landsea to appear on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." On the show, Landsea downplayed research that linked global warming with more-intense hurricanes like Katrina.
In an e-mail the week prior, Fuqua OK'd Landsea for another interview and asked, "Please be careful and make sure Chris is on his toes. Since BLANK went off the menu, I'm a little nervous on this, but trust he'll hold the course."
The individual who went "off the menu" could have been researcher Thomas Knutson, whose published research indicates that hurricanes will grow stronger because of global warming. But when NOAA press officers asked if Knutson could appear on CNBC, Fuqua asked if Knutson had the same opinion as Landsea. When he learned that Knutson had published research suggesting that hurricanes will be getting stronger, he responded, "Why can't we have one of the other guys on then?"
Fuqua is the former director of media relations for the Repub
Sadly I doubt that the technologies that are actually be relevant to these kids' future -- Open Source, ODF, OS X, Solaris, BSD, basically anything not-MS -- will be represented in their computer labs...
But it's consistent with MS' time honoured motto: "Spreading Ignorance and Low Expectations."
I'm sorry you didn't appreciate the ironic quotes around "developed". Perhaps your definition of progress is uncontrolled industrialisation, environmental destruction and social injustice such as the West has enjoyed on an unprecedented scale since the Industrial Revolution. The quotes are intended to question these criteria of civilised Progress.
You have to be a pretty big wanker to think it's an insult to call a country both fat and lazy. That's a fucking achievement. Many countries -- wait a second, I think they're called developing countries -- are hard-working and starving-thin.
It is quite clear from context that I referred to Australians as "fattening" -- not as fat as Americans perhaps, but like all the "developed" bodies, certainly getting there. Oh, there I go again with the quotes.
Ditto "lazy republics" is obviously talking about those who manage to piss huge sums down the drain on dimwitted, porkbarrelling IT with not much to show for it. I even linked to two examples.
I'm sorry you somehow read that as criticising Chinese or Indians, who I fully realise often possess a very healthy work ethic undiluted by bourgeois sloth; I was not.
Being anti-MS may be popular on slashdot, but it's not always the smartest (or cheapest) in real business.
I'm bone-tired of fanatical pragmatists throwing themselves in front of the ox-cart of Revolution. Call me back when MS is down to a reasonable 40% market share.
But I cannot deny those parting remarks were partly playing to the crowd.
(!!??) Look at the math: India has 1.2 billion, many of which are at subsistence level; Australia, a "developed" country, has 20 million fattening middle class aspirants. A 200:1 ratio reflects that reality.
And of the $200 spent per head in lazy republics, 90% of it goes down the drain (FBI's Keystone Cops IT fiasco; name-your-favourite-boondoggle; even Russia caught quickly on to the overspend-and-underdeliver game, it's a great way to embezzle). Raising indigent populations to Western standards of waste is not really helpful, is it.
Anyway, if you didn't get Carr's memo: IT's a commodity now. The industry's shrinkage can't be blamed on nine-whatever or the "War on Common Sense"; the gold rush days are OVER. Spend less and spend better (hint: not on *cough* MS junk; hint: don't reinvent - unless it's to take business from MS:)
First we had the absurd suggestion posted here that Apple is somehow playing "catch-up" to the as yet unreleased, reheated clunker -- when in fact, Vista if released won't sport more than a fraction of the capabilities of very-much-released OS X circa 2002.
Does every article now have to refer to Vista as if it is somehow visionary? Let us compare OS X 10.5 to Windows XP, more reasonably, since that is the slum in which somehow most computer users have allowed themselves to be incarcerated. Will Vista, if released, even manage to measure up to Xgl? Certainly not on comparable hardware.
As usual, far too little, far too late. On second thoughts, compare away!
This plan, the Underground bombs, the Bali bombing, and so on, is directly connected to UK support of bloodthirsty, aggressive and morally unsupportable US foreign policy (more than 5 decades of it). Reap what you sow -- and as long as US-made bombs (Lebanon, most visibly) and bullets fall around the world, and Orwellian doublespeak conceals this root cause, so will retaliation be inspired.
A possible explanation given at the Linux Kernel Summit:
Speaker David Airlie started with a review of the current state of free graphics drivers. Intel chipsets are relatively well supported, thanks to an enlightened position being taken by that company. ATI is a "former leading light" in the free software world, but is no longer cooperating. Even so, the free R200 driver is feature-complete and, at this point, faster than the binary-only fglrx driver....
Why do vendors refuse to support the free software community? David noted, with amusement, that both ATI and Nvidia withdrew support at about the same time that they got Xbox contracts. Let's hope, he says, that Intel never works an Xbox deal.
I knew I'd probably have to roll my own. I was curious as to the mechanisms available for overriding it. I'll have to look into browser support... (Pity you can't attach a custom css to your profile, then it would go wherever you go, with no browser support required, eh.)
Speaking of bitching - where *is* the "I hate the new CSS" thread? I can't be the only one.
I'd post this on the "omg ponies/. redesign" thread, but it's closed.
What can you do if you don't much like/.'s new CSS? I mean, it's okay for the most part, like a new haircut. It doesn't turn Helen Hunt into Jessica Alba. But the part that I don't think I can live with long term is the switch to Verdana from Times. Say what you like about Times -- and the most wounding thing is perhaps "it was just the default. So that font is called 'Times', eh?" -- it's a remarkable print typeface and I got used to seeing/. in crisp serifs and authentic italics over the past decade or so.
Laugh if you will but I am finding it subconsciously hard to take/.'s bland sans-serif content seriously and it has even made me reluctant to post in my journal (and guys, there are some lingering bugs too. Try the <I> tag in a journal entry?) I need to switch to a serif font, at least. What's the easiest way to do this?
Actually there are other things I think could be improved in the new CSS (introducing a couple more colour accents would be very practical) but that's for another time.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly I doubt that the technologies that are actually be relevant to these kids' future -- Open Source, ODF, OS X, Solaris, BSD, basically anything not-MS -- will be represented in their computer labs...
But it's consistent with MS' time honoured motto: "Spreading Ignorance and Low Expectations."
A lot of the source material is gone, gone, gone.
If I had a dollar for every time I've wished this on him.
For most things - assembler, shell, Perl, C, C++, SQL... Slick Subversion integration is a plus.
Sun Studio for Linux might be worth trying out.
I'm sorry you didn't appreciate the ironic quotes around "developed". Perhaps your definition of progress is uncontrolled industrialisation, environmental destruction and social injustice such as the West has enjoyed on an unprecedented scale since the Industrial Revolution. The quotes are intended to question these criteria of civilised Progress.
It is quite clear from context that I referred to Australians as "fattening" -- not as fat as Americans perhaps, but like all the "developed" bodies, certainly getting there. Oh, there I go again with the quotes.
Ditto "lazy republics" is obviously talking about those who manage to piss huge sums down the drain on dimwitted, porkbarrelling IT with not much to show for it. I even linked to two examples.
I'm sorry you somehow read that as criticising Chinese or Indians, who I fully realise often possess a very healthy work ethic undiluted by bourgeois sloth; I was not.
Being anti-MS may be popular on slashdot, but it's not always the smartest (or cheapest) in real business.
I'm bone-tired of fanatical pragmatists throwing themselves in front of the ox-cart of Revolution. Call me back when MS is down to a reasonable 40% market share.
But I cannot deny those parting remarks were partly playing to the crowd.
(!!??) Look at the math: India has 1.2 billion, many of which are at subsistence level; Australia, a "developed" country, has 20 million fattening middle class aspirants. A 200:1 ratio reflects that reality.
And of the $200 spent per head in lazy republics, 90% of it goes down the drain (FBI's Keystone Cops IT fiasco; name-your-favourite-boondoggle; even Russia caught quickly on to the overspend-and-underdeliver game, it's a great way to embezzle). Raising indigent populations to Western standards of waste is not really helpful, is it.
Anyway, if you didn't get Carr's memo: IT's a commodity now. The industry's shrinkage can't be blamed on nine-whatever or the "War on Common Sense"; the gold rush days are OVER. Spend less and spend better (hint: not on *cough* MS junk; hint: don't reinvent - unless it's to take business from MS :)
Here (long, funny, interesting).
http://www.sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-T1/index. xml - 32 hardware threads in one package.
n dex.jsp
Which powers the record-breaking T1000/T2000 servers: http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/overview/i
- Are you a republican voter?
- Do you believe the Iraq war was necessary and just?
- Is America the greatest nation in history, pinnacle of civilisation and rightful world ruler?
- Is it okay for America to use force against any nation anywhere on any pretext?
- Is it okay for an American president to lie and break any law at will, domestic or international?
- Is corporate profit more important than the environment?
- Is corporate profit more important than an egalitarian society?
- Should the rest of the world be remade in the image of America, the greatest nation ever?
- Do you believe that American foreign policy is moral and useful in every respect?
- Did the USA win the Vietnam war?
- Is it okay to use nuclear weapons from time to time, in American interests, of course?
- Should the USA invade Cuba/Iran/North Korea/Canada/Iceland bringing the sunshine of democracy and prosperity?
- Should every computer in the world run Windows?
and so on. Anyone who answers No must by definition be a terrorist.First we had the absurd suggestion posted here that Apple is somehow playing "catch-up" to the as yet unreleased, reheated clunker -- when in fact, Vista if released won't sport more than a fraction of the capabilities of very-much-released OS X circa 2002.
Does every article now have to refer to Vista as if it is somehow visionary? Let us compare OS X 10.5 to Windows XP, more reasonably, since that is the slum in which somehow most computer users have allowed themselves to be incarcerated. Will Vista, if released, even manage to measure up to Xgl? Certainly not on comparable hardware.
As usual, far too little, far too late. On second thoughts, compare away!
This plan, the Underground bombs, the Bali bombing, and so on, is directly connected to UK support of bloodthirsty, aggressive and morally unsupportable US foreign policy (more than 5 decades of it). Reap what you sow -- and as long as US-made bombs (Lebanon, most visibly) and bullets fall around the world, and Orwellian doublespeak conceals this root cause, so will retaliation be inspired.
...for the congregations.
Every cloud has a silver lining, etc.
...I'd prefer she was visible.
(7th in Google, not bad for a fictional corporation.)
That's probably the easiest way of getting Times again (cool, thanks). But there are some less appealing side effects...
I knew I'd probably have to roll my own. I was curious as to the mechanisms available for overriding it. I'll have to look into browser support... (Pity you can't attach a custom css to your profile, then it would go wherever you go, with no browser support required, eh.) Speaking of bitching - where *is* the "I hate the new CSS" thread? I can't be the only one.
I'd post this on the "omg ponies /. redesign" thread, but it's closed.
/.'s new CSS? I mean, it's okay for the most part, like a new haircut. It doesn't turn Helen Hunt into Jessica Alba. But the part that I don't think I can live with long term is the switch to Verdana from Times. Say what you like about Times -- and the most wounding thing is perhaps "it was just the default. So that font is called 'Times', eh?" -- it's a remarkable print typeface and I got used to seeing /. in crisp serifs and authentic italics over the past decade or so.
/.'s bland sans-serif content seriously and it has even made me reluctant to post in my journal (and guys, there are some lingering bugs too. Try the <I> tag in a journal entry?) I need to switch to a serif font, at least. What's the easiest way to do this?
What can you do if you don't much like
Laugh if you will but I am finding it subconsciously hard to take
Actually there are other things I think could be improved in the new CSS (introducing a couple more colour accents would be very practical) but that's for another time.
Twiki.org = powerful version controlled wiki, very easy to use. Check out the case studies and customer list!
You need to check your facts sir, you're out by several orders of magnitude. Also spelled "Colossus".
There's always pico, nano, Diakonos, gedit, ... But frankly I love using vi[m] :)
Why would anyone tag this story "stupid"? Sheesh.
Nice work, troglodytes.