"You can't handle the truth!" ranted Jack Nicholson in
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Few_Good_Men#Trivia">A
Few Good Men. I never saw the movie, but
I saw the commercials.
Several months ago, Seed
Magazine (a darn good publication) published an
article entitled
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/free_dscovr.php">Free
DSCOVR!. The article informs us that a fully
functional, paid-for satellite is sitting in storage, not used.
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?...
A few
days ago, President Bush gave a speech in which he claimed to be
advancing the goal of limiting global climate change.
href="http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2007/s1942395.htm">Few
href="http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/features/article_1313906.php/Interview_Bush_%2560not_credible%2560_on_climate&cid=1116956298">were
href="http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/comment/0,,2096425,00.html">impressed.
James Hrynyshyn
href="http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2007/06/data_we_dont_need_no_stinking.php">noted
at The Island of Doubt that the AP released a story
indicating that the case of DSCOVR is not unique. There is a
pattern emerging:
AP
reported yesterday that "The Bush administration is drastically scaling
back efforts to measure global warming from space" and "U.S. scientists
will soon lose much of their ability to monitor warming from space."
The
LA Times reported independently on the same thing:
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-satellite5jun05,1,2282521.story?coll=la-news-science">U.S.
short-changes climate monitoring, report says
Reducing the number of satellites
places the global-warming program 'in
serious jeopardy,' government scientists warn.
By John Johnson Jr., Times Staff Writer
June 5, 2007
America will lose much of its ability to monitor global warming from
space unless the Bush administration reverses course and restores
funding for the next generation of climate instruments, according to a
confidential report prepared by government scientists.
Cost overruns and technology problems recently caused the federal
government to cut the number of planned monitoring satellites from six
to four. Those four will focus on weather prediction rather than
climate research, according to the report.
"The recent loss of climate sensors … places the overall
climate program in serious jeopardy," said the report, which was
drafted by government atmospheric and space scientists for the White
House Office of Science and Technology.
The report was posted on the Internet Monday by Climate Science Watch,
a Washington-based watchdog group...
I like the article overall, although I disagree with the statement,
"Cost overruns and technology problems recently caused
the federal government to cut the number of planned monitoring
satellites from six to four." [emphasis added] There may have
been technical problems and cost overruns, but hey, there have been
technical problems and cost overruns in the Iraq War; that did not stop
anyone. It is a matter of priorities. The truth
about climate change is not a priority. Maybe Bush can't
handle the truth.
From the Climate
Science Watch site, there are links for those who want
the details:
We
have prepared a 7-page briefing paper href="http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/file-uploads/NPOESS-Summary.pdf">NPOESS-Summary.pdf
that summarizes key points that lead to this conclusion, drawn from the
text of the 76-page internal report href="http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/file-uploads/NPOESS-OSTPdec-06.pdf">NPOESS-OSTPdec-06.pdf
to the White House Office of Science Technology Policy by a team of
senior science managers at NASA and NOAA.
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This reminds me of something I read about the Columbia disaster. Apparently, some engineers at NASA, concerned about the foam hit, were able to negotiate with some Air Force (I think it was) people to get satellite photos of the Shuttle. The upper management canceled that, on the basis that the official agency position was that foam hits weren't a problem, so they didn't want to check. Plus, there was nothing they could do if there was a problem.
Bureaucracies in general serve primarily to maintain themselves. Violent upheaval is the biggest threat, but undeniable knowledge of upcoming violent upheaval is just as big a threat... and the latter is much easier to suppress or prevent.
At the very least, the Bushies have to admit that there's a possibility that global warming is happening and could be bad, and as such you'd think that they'd want to launch these satellites. But it's much easier to keep your head in the sand, and put off as long as possible additional information that might contradict the position you've held to. Maybe it will go away, and if it doesn't... well, you can argue that when you were there, the information available to you wasn't conclusive enough (as all the global warming skeptics continue to argue to this day). More important to preserve your legacy than to learn more about impending disaster, after all!
-Rob
This predates Bush. DSCOVR was originally Triana, and was nicknamed "Goresat" by the GOP for his advocacy of it. They called it an "overpriced screen saver" and refused to launch it. So it probably has more to do with ego and their hatred of Gore.
Gordon, I remembered that, too. But I think it works both ways. They hated it because it was "Gore's satellite", and so propagandized against it as a climate research satellite. But they also hated it because it was a climate research sat and propagandized against it as "Goresat".