Who Killed The Deep Space Climate Observatory?

Let politics be put aside, and Let it fly!

Good grief. There are times when I think we would all be better off just going back to being monarchies. At least then things get DONE.

What a tragic waste of a perfectly good crate. This vulture wouldn't be commended at a 6th
grade science fair.

Lions, tigers, and bears, OH MY!!! What do you suppose would happen if this satellite were to reveal that most of the heat energy that stabilizes the climate of the earth actually comes from the interior of the earth rather than from the sun? What if it revealed that human industrial activity had negligible effect on global warming and cooling?

Lewis Coleman: And your point is, what? To stir the pot with a pointless and antagonistic comment? One goal of science is to get to the truth of the matter. If this one satellite - out of many Earth observing satellites launched so far - subtracts from the current thrust of climate change science, then so be it. At least we'll know and can move forward.

I have a feeling, however, that instead of invalidating what all other Earth observation science is confirming, DSCOVR will add to the on-going climate change theory and will keep us moving in the right direction, right wing turd-tossing notwithstanding.

The turd tossing is very true, and I wouldn't put it past Big Oil and their lobbyists in having something, if not everything, to do with shelving the idea of this. With indesputable proof of emissions changing the climate Big Oil would be FORCED to take a much more aggressive stance regarding climate change. OPEC would be forced to divest MASSIVE amounts of money to researching alternative fuel sources that would not only lower their profits, but leave them cast in a very negative light in the court of public opinion. The name drop of Cheney actually says a lot here being as his financial contributors could have a vested interest in keeping this project on the ground. Nobody wants to decrease their paychecks. Its very sad when big business and profits have become far more important than leaving a lasting legacy for future generations and innovating newer and greener energy sources.

The most logical reason that this thing was mothballed was its unique perspective for observation. Currently there are no other satellites able to observe all others, this one would be able to. The military of all countries do not want this, especially in hands of civilians.

The seeker of knowledge who seeks to reach beyond the stars to go where no mans gone before to see things no man has seen and bring these experiences back for the whole world to hear and see.

now where in my cup of tea see i love space and everything to do with it i have a dream that dream is brings man to stars and one day i will for now i am mrely a humble commenter. to my belief as the years have progressed their has been less and less public or civilian support for space endevours so the goverment now in a fininacial crisis is basically trying to cut back as much as possible.them viewing the space program merely as wasteful science that has no importance on daily life or the prosparity of the nation they simply chose to shelve the project to use that money somewhere it will have a greater purpose. I dont like the decision but its respectable. another thing that catches my eye in all the is we really do need something like that in the sky simply cause we are facing a unpresidented climate change summers are getting hotter winters are less wintery or more extreme we are have more hurricanes and earthquakes are getting stronger we are sitting on a time bomb and as i see it we will end up dieing in the end humans are simply to indulged or contint with theirs life styles to sacrifice what they come to know and so they will tear at earths wounds tell catrophie happens and theirs nothing we can do about it its sad but nobody cares. i say humanity should unite and bring about prosparity and unity that would bring humantiy to a technilogical splender and bring about a new age space is so hard cause nobody wants it enough so you all wait out their one day i will show the world the majesty and wonders space has in stored for us. live love life From: Yours truly the Trulyvisionary..........

In 1963, the first International Geophysical Year (IGY) to explore earth from space -- the rocket team of engineers proposed building an orbital "space platform" (the Russians had similar ideas) where interplanetary spacecraft could be built at a tremendous savings from the cost of launching from an earth launching pad. This was the origins of the concept for the IIS.(Notice the current politicized and less practical or scientific difference in the mission of IIS?) Thus, shuttled materials could be carted up to the space platform and larger ships from there could set sail to the rest of the Solar System. It was placed into the first NASA Decadal Plan in 1968 -- Google it for more info). Nixon scrapped much of the NASA missions to pay Vietnam debts. Reagan revamped it to serve a more political "new world order culturally-diverse social club in space." George W. tried to reignite interest in it, but Congress killed the shuttle. Obama and Congress has left its future adrift. But, not since four years after it was adapted into the 1968 Decadal Plan has it ever followed its original purpose. Instead, at became a massive space-program sinkhole called the IIS. Just think where we would be in space capabilities if NASA would have been allowed to be apolitical and "stick with the plan"?

It is a HUGE issue -- and every non-decision and delay costs taxpayers billions more -- same with energy policies!

See, and this is why space should be privatized... It might not be the best thing for science, but things will most certainly get DONE!

Yet more evidence Republican and other denier opposition to action on global warming is based on irrationality and not on science. Such people can't claim to be rational if they deny the means to establish the facts.

Why do Americans continue voting maniacally conservative nincompoops into office? Conservative stupidity doesn't stop at denying GW science. The same irrationality led Republicans to develop the policies which led to, not only an American economic meltdown, but also that of the world.

Curbing regulation only lets crooks thrive, and denying science only lets ignorance live on. The same stupidity, one body: conservative politics.

The problem eregorn8, is that if you privatize it, people will only enter the 'market' if they can make money off of it. No private company will send up a $500M satelite just for the 'good of mankind'. Something as public as THE FUTURE OF MANKIND should be a public endeavor.

@Lewis Coleman
It's pretty clear that humans are causing unnaturally fast climate change by the following logic;
-CO2 / methane trap long wave radiation
-Humans emit these gasses through burning fossil fuels
-Therefore human activities is causeing more long wave radiation to be trapped in the atmosphere
-More long wave radiation leads to an increase in temperature.
It doesn't matter if this radiation enters the atmosphere from the sun or the core, all that matters is that we're changing how much stays in the atmosphere rather then leaking into space. Also, it's scientifically known the amounts of heating we get from all sources. See the following link for a simplistic version.
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Graphics/EarthsEnergyBalance.png

If we colonized other planets, we wouldn't have to worry if and when Earth dies. Sadly, money is the driving force of the world. Perhaps we need an alien species from wherever to land on Earth and kill us, maybe then we'll wake up and will stop being little children.

TrulyVisionary:

Your vision is as clouded as your prose, save us all a headache and spell check/ grammar check your post in Word and Copy/Paste it into the forum. EVERY post you leave is gramatically horrible, and abhors even marginal spelling accuracy. How do you expect to get your point across when (I'm sure I speak for many that post here) you can't get through the first paragraph much less identify a true point. It comes off more as rembling that reflective. Please take this as constructive criticism.

Clearly, the mechanisms by which the planet goes through cold (ice age) and warming (current) cycles is not well understood. Time scales measured in tens of thousands of years cannot be calibrated by systems which measure only miniscule fractions of such a time period. It's as if one were to take a single frame of the movie "ISHTAR" and claim it was a grand epic. FAIL.

Is global climate change related to solar cycles of electromagnetic and xray radiation such as are discussed in the attached article? Hmmmmmmm.... The SUN is thought to have some significant effect on the Earth's climate. /sarc

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-03/spacecraft-staring-sun-are-shedding-light-solar-mysteries

To attribute the the recently observed changes in global climate to civilized man's activites is the height of vanity. GAIA is crying at your arrogance.

I bet a military satellite is already occupying the L1 site.

I don't think so. Maybe, but by then it would have been announced on the news, right? I do think that Cheney was involved in it and i think they should of let it fly. I think we're the trouble, unless some outside source was doing it. Like way outside...

@zxy1212 maybe but unless it has a Klingon cloaking device we can it from earth. There are plenty of military secrets out there, but if it is in space somewhere somebody saw it launch, saw it in space, and is watching right now. what it is a different story.

I would think politics played a huge part in this. Climate change today is still a controversial topic. this is a sad story. this satellite is probably terribly out of date already. I don't think there is any chance they would launch it now. They would get it out of its crate look at it and discover they could add .001 megapixels to a on-board camera and start over from scratch.

A fascinating story about the life and death of projects in our government agencies. There are thousands of similar tales in other departments; seemingly good ideas that for some reason or another never got completed.

On the surface it sounds like a great idea. Though I'm skeptical about many of the anthropogenic global warming arguments, I think we should launch it if it's still a useful scientific instrument. More information is a good thing.

@eregorn8, I don't know if the private space industry would have launched this either, but it's gratifying to see the industry growing.

@tertertert, private industry doesn't always do things purely for profit, though they tend to be much more creative at getting things done by finding a profit motive and recruiting investors. Some of the wealthiest people are also the biggest philanthropists on the planet. As for your global warming rationale...sigh. Your central argument is about CO2 and its heat-trapping effect. You neglect to mention that it takes a HUGE increase in CO2 to produce negligible warming in a closed system. It's a logarithmic function. From instrument measurements we know for a fact that CO2 is increasing but we don't see a commensurate increase in warming. In fact at times we see cooling. Your simplified theory doesn't reflect what measurements show. We know there is a human contribution to CO2, but we also know that CO2 increases on its own as the planet warms after a glacial period. Can we alter warming due to CO2 production? Apparently very little if at all. So what's the point? Is a slightly warmer planet better or worse than a cooler one? Based on geological evidence it seems that warmer is actually better for living organisms. We will enter the next glacial period soon enough without any human intervention so why the massive worry, effort and expenditure on something that will take care of itself?

I remember when Al Gore first introduced his idea of an Earth-observing satellite to the world. At the time, the main purpose I heard for the satellite would be to relay images of the Earth, for the purpose of inspiring global unity. The scientists I heard downplayed the satellite's usefulness, stating, among other things, that it would be too distant to make useful measurements. I did not notice any scientific debate on the satellite's merits, only some political back-and-forth (and not much of that). The idea never had much support.

@laurenra7, I agree with your analysis, but no one has mentioned the contribution of dust to global warming. I recently read that since the start of the Industrial Age, the world has become much dustier, according to a scientist who is trying to learn the reason and affects of this dustiness.

I also think that NASA is too politicized. That's how we got this satellite in the first place! NASA also is too much of a dog-and-pony show. The general public and their politicians keep dabbling in NASA's mission, with predictable chaotic results. IIRC, a former NASA astronaut pointed out a few decades ago that this is the reason that the Air Force chooses to launch its own rockets.

Yeah! this reminds me of something... What was it? Oh yeah, who killed the Back to the Moon missions and the Mars Mission?

Wait, it'll come to me... Was it President Bush? Hmmm... Wait, no, not him.

Was it Vicce President Cheney? hmmm... No, not him...

Who was it? Man! I wish I could remember...

Oh wait, I remember... It was President Obama.

Keep this thing in a crate until they are willing to be non-partisan too.

Global Warming is a myth perpetuated by political activists like Gore to make money and extend their power base. One freaking volcano out spews our industrial complex in one eruption. The amount of CO2 we create is minscule compared to the ocean, the forests, volcano's, etc.

Give it up.

As soon as I read the name of Al Gore, my eyes glazed over and I lost interest in the article.
Real science needs that snake-oil salesman like a fish needs a bicycle.

Nice story, but the detection package is missing a detector.
It would be nice to know what the total gravity effects are at all times. DOes Jupiter being closer to Earth mean that there is more energy coming in? If you do not account for gravity then the so called energy balance at the surface is not valid. When I learned physics, energy was not confined to E/M energy. Gravity transports energy too.

The AGW scenario IDed by @tertertert says CO2/methane "Traps" energy photons & hence causes global warming. First GHGs do NOT trap the energy. They absorb it & release it within microseconds by colliding with the air. Hence warming the air and delaying the release of the energy to space. - ie the greenhouse effect. Well my pet rock (& all matter for that matter) does the same. It absorbs morning sunlight, & releases it later, thus resulting in the daily peak temperature being in the mid afternoon & not at noon when the peak energy input is. Does that mean my pet rock is a GHG?

Next the question of energy coming from the Earth's core heat. Yes my all means. At night when there is no incoming photons to be absorbed by the ground/ocean & reradiated to be absorbed by the GHGs, there MUST be some source of the nighttime temperature. ie The Earth's core radiated energy. So how can a computer code that ignores this source of energy be correct and valid?

This gets to my original contention, the force of gravity from the sun & planets provides the Earth's energy, It comes in, some gets converted to Earth spin (the driving energy MUST come from somewhere!!), some gets converted to the Earth's magnetic field by rotating iron ions in the liquid core thru a gravity field, and SOME gets converted to heat energy. This is why the sum of the forces of gravity (including storage as gravitational potential energy) actually correlates to the Earth's temperature for thousands of years (See Gravity causes Climate Change" in www.scribd.com)
The result is that varying gravity changes the number of energy photons available for the GHE. It is NOT the number of GHGs, but the amount of energy that dictates warming. The proof is simple. Every night the number of photons decreases due to Earth rotation, the temperature goes DOWN. BUT at night Man is producing even more GHGs. Why doesn't the temp go up ? If you look at the original Arrhenius 1896 paper. He concludes that (in IPCC words) "more GHGs means more warming". In reality he should have said More energy means more warming. He also postulates in CH 3 that there is no heat transfer from the ground to the air, which MUST mean that the GHE stops at night, but in reality it doesn't. The Earth still radiates energy but at reduced nighttime temperatures. After all it is not possible for CO2 to create energy, & the idea that energy can flow from cold (stratosphere) to hot (ground) as Hansen postulates violates a few thermo laws. Its just not possible for more GHGs to cause warming unless you also add more energy photons. Now if GHGs DO create energy we should be able to create a perpetual energy machine just using CO2- good luck with that!

Also how do you account for all the excess GHGs in water in the ocean? If more GHGs causes more warming, then why don't these ones vaporize instead of the GHE stopping at 33C?

In summary Mother Nature, not Man, causes the Earth's temperature variations, including climate change.

Heavy lift rockets are ready to go to Mars, just need to knowledge to get man the long distance. With the launch of Endeavour (unless Atlantis is funded) the United States will be turning over the ISS to the Russians ( for the unaware their current "taxi fare" is $55million per astronaut from the US; to go to $63million in 2014; unless the decide not to take any astronauts at all and only man it with Cosmonauts.
You may not like my comment; it's your right but know that I speak with alot of knowledge. I see the tower that was built for Constellation which was finished on a Friday and axed by Obama the following Tuesday.
My family has been involved in different capacities since before manned flight and it is a daily life for me.

A great scientific mind like Al Gore being questioned ?
I would hang in with NASA's actions.

Regardless of the outcome, the search for truth in the form of hard data is and always has been NASA's stated mission. To have NASA and the administrations of two presidents to deny the launch of this satellite is really telling.

What purpose can be served by denying the truth whether for or against human contributions to climate change? It makes me wonder if there is a conspiracy to either enforce global control by artificially rationing energy supplies, or an attempt to force political change in Middle East countries by forcing an operational 'boycott' of petroleum, rather than a serious attempt to determine how much the climate is changing.

The hardware has been built. Fund the thing and let it fly. We need the data which it can generate.

Who Killed DSCOVR? = Politics.

Once upon a time, when dandy Danny Goldin was admin, NASA was all but wandering in the wilderness. The general public had lost the faith. Manned space flight wasn't catching headlines. NASA was the poster-child for extravagant government waste. Dan came up with an idea "Mission Planet Earth." Rather than squander massive budgets on missions and projects that only a Phd could love, Danny was going to look inwards from space. The practical application of all that uber technology would feedback in practical ways to the taxpayer. Kind of like, weather satellites on steroids. Bang for the buck. Some thing the taxpayer could appreciate.

All kinds of neat platforms were proposed. Some were even built. A few never flew (see above). Others flew - and, then were summarily switched off... ?

What Danny had unknowingly walked into was the never ending game of finger pointing. It seems that factories, governments, cities, counties, and states - can do any thing they want - as long as the consequences can not be traced back to them.

If some damn fool can take credible data on their activities, then their credible deniability is shot all to hell.

So:
The need was real.
The science was necessary.
The designs were competent.
The politics sucked.

So, the DSCOVR was a victim of cause and effect.
It was created cause some people wanted to study an effect.
The People with the Power already knew what the effect was and wanted to obfuscate those effects.
Ultimately, DSCOVR was a victim of its own potential success.

It's the NASA way:
You can't win.
You can't break even.
and,
You can't quit the game.
Failure manifested in shades of mediocrity.

What a cluster, esp. w NOAA! Completely emblematic of the falldown of this society to recognize and follow through, to take action on the most profound risk to our way of life, mankind and the planet ecosystem. To our credit, the bird is ready to fly.

To underline the dysfunction, witness a lot of these comments. To deny a great tool to capture data on climate change is the height of anti-science insanity. IMHO, any argument about the lack of need for this is sheer ignorance or denial, save for the money is better spent on other Earth Observing satellites.

A dream I've had for years is to base the coming carbon economy firmly on the foundation of top soils. My read of the agronomic history of civilization shows that the Kayopo Amazon Indians and the Egyptians were the only ones to maintain fertility for the long haul, millennium scales. Egypt has now forsaken their geologic advantage by building the Aswan dam, and are stuck, with the rest of us, in the soil C mining, NPK rat race to the bottom.

The Ag Soil Carbon standard is in final review by the AMS branch at USDA. Both Congresional Ag Committees have asked for expansion of Soil Carbon Standard to ISO status.

With the Obama administration funding an inter-departmental climate effort of NASA, NOAA, USDA, & EPA, and now even the CIA is opening the data coffers, then soil carbon sensors may be less than 5 years away. I'm told by the Jet Propulsion Lab mission specialists responsible for the suite of earth sensing satellites, that they will be reading soil carbon using multiple proxy measurements in 5 years. Reading soil moisture to 3 foot dept in two year with SMAP, Reading GHG emissions and biomass from the tree tops down next year when the Orbital Carbon Observer (OCO, get it:) is rebooted, to 1 Ha resolution.

Then, any farmer can click "Google Carbon maps" to see the soil carbon accounted to his good work, a level playing field to be a soil sink banker.
The Moon Pie in the sky funding should be served to JPL

Since we have filled the air , filling the seas to full, Soil is the Only Beneficial place left.
Carbon to the Soil, the only ubiquitous and economic place to put it.

Thanks for your efforts.
Erich

Erich J. Knight
Chairman; Markets and Business Committee
2010 US BiocharConference, at Iowa State University

It did not cost one Billion Dollars to launch it, so it was just stashed away till it would cost that much. The Heavy Lifter will cost al least that much, so then it will probably be used.

CO2 is a trace gas in air and insignificant by definition. It is a poor absorber of IR (heat) energy from sunlight. Water vapor is seven times better and has 80 times as many molecules making 560 times the heating effect, 99.8% of it. CO2 only generates 0.2% of the heat in the atmosphere.

Every physicist knows this, but most are funded by government and have milked this concept for $106 billion to date. They cannot give it up as their careers now depend on it. This satellite would prove what I am saying and too many careers depended on its' failure. It is just that simple.

If you want the truth about petroleum and politics click on: http://www.adrianvance.blogspot.com The Two Minute Conservative for short provocative pieces on ideas, science and humor.

Launch the thing. Just do it.

Then we can see that it's just increased solar activity (as has been reported on other planets) that warms the planet instead of human activity.

Then PopSci can go back to the way it used to be!

Like all scientific programs, potential advances, and interest in any technology except toys (and they consider weapons to just be bigger toys), this was a victim of the repugnantcan (now teablican) culture of willful stupidity, their characteristic "I can't understand it, so what good is it?" backwardness.

It wasn't the only time the Dick snarled "I won't let one penny be spent on anything from those liberals! We worked hard to steal the White House and congress, and it's MINE now, ALL MINE!", either. The paranoid schizophrenic also threw the entire Gore Commission report on preventing terrorist attacks in the trash heap, with predictable results, even if the bushiosi HADN'T been directly involved in assisting the hijackers. (They were.)

The instrumentation and orbital observation point on Triana would indeed have revealed the startling and dangerous upswing in human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases, and the resulting accelerating effect on the addition of heat to the closed-system engine of atmosphere and ocean.

(Human-caused climate change deniers, like creationists and birthers, are simply too stupid to be allowed to even HAVE an opinion, and should just go disbelieve in gravity off the top of a tall building already.)

The other Dick, Armey, broke NOAA long ago, with his "If the military can't use it, screw it" diversion of all R&D talent and money to the weapons industry. Even the weather sats have been commandeered primarily to watch weapons testing and troop movements.

Dumbya and his traitor daddy did a lot of big talking about space, in their attempt to establish a political dynasty by imitating Kennedy, but they not only CUT the funding to pure science, ESPECIALLY for any new projects, their supporters also bent all their political manipulations into promoting "yes boys" until NASA had a top-heavy bloat of managers who sat around passing papers to each other all day, and practically no new engineering capability.

Even the next-generation crewed vehicle received only cursory attention. Every time Boe-Lock-Mart submitted the same old unworkable design, instead of demanding that they go back to the drawing board, NASA management REPLACED THE ENGINEERING REVIEW TEAM, hoping to finally get a bunch of yes-boys too incompetent to spot the fatal flaws.

Thankfully, the bushitsta were removed from power before they and their sycophants could kill any more astronauts. (Columbia was destroyed by skipped and falsified inspections to the hydraulics, a direct result of bad management and "cut costs but meet the schedule" pressure, not any BS "damage to the heat foam tiles 'accident'.")

The teabaglican takeover of the House in 2010 returned us to the bad old days of "We don't understand it, so we don't need it, just drill baby drill," obstruction of all innovation, not to mention cutting into education in their keep-'em-as-stupid-as-we-are agenda.

Anyone intrested in space, in science, in exploration, in SURVIVAL, had better get their head out of the [sand] of la-la-land LIES being spread by the repukeli-baggers. "Oh, we can have it all! Just cut taxes, cut all those pesky programs that don't make *us* money, solve all the problems here on Earth with our military might, and then, why, we can do anything, even send men to the sun! We'll just go at night!"

Our next major challenge is clean, sustainable energy. The space program does not run on hydrogen and ogygen and perchlorate and hypergols alone. Designing the systems, making the parts, training up the necessary expertise, even getting the materials over the road to the launch pads, COSTS ENERGY.

If Triana had kicked you oil addicts in the teeth a decade ago, maybe you at least wouldn't have voted for the oil-slicks in 2004, and maybe we would even have crewed lunar exploration in the actual planning stages, instead of the sound-bite sewage Dumbya spewed and you swallowed.

If you are impervious to logic, reason, rationality, and reality, then it does not matter how "visionary" you are. You're still worse than useless -- you're a hindrance to the very things you claim to support.

As Robert Heinlein put it, "Anyone who cannot handle mathematics is not fully human. At best, you've been taught not to make messes on the rug."

MATHEMATICALLY, you can't send people or even instruments into space simply by saying "Make it so."

I am so sick of hearing about how volcanos and oceans make more CO2 than humans do. Firstly, CO2 is not the worst gas we create on an industrial scale, Methane is. Secondly, do you think the oceans and volcanos were just invented, jackass? Our industrial emmisions are new to the scene, not the oceans. Although I guess you could argue that the Al Gore actually created the oceans back in 50s when he was a baby so that in his later years he could use them to suppport a phoney climate change proposition. I feel silly now. Forget what I said, Al Gore did this to us.

I love being a moderate who makes his own damn mind up about things. I get to laugh at the crazies on both sides of the fence. Especially I enjoyed 'the die hard's' tirade; 'if you don't think like i do you're an idiot'. LOL.

We may in fact be artificially warming the planet eventually bringing on a new ice age sooner that it was supposed to happen anyways. So it will be cool again what is the big deal?

-I am not busy because I did it right the first time.

As a geologist, enviromental consultant and remote sensing scientist, I just have to laugh. This was Al Gore's folly, created for the sole purpose to attempt to confirm his half baked science.

The climate change data pretty much confirms that global climate change is driven by the the cycles of the Sun. Has man played a part? Yes, and we can all change sea level by taking a piss too. The geologic record shows that the Earth has been far hotter and far cooler and there were no humans to tilt the balance one way or the other. Global Warming was and is a politically driven fiction. Global Climate change is unequivocably real, but man has no hope of effecting a change one way or the other.

So we wasted 200 million? What is that in comparison to the $ Trillons wasted by the current administration or the $200 million they just wasted nosing around in Libya?

Earth observation satellites are a necessity, but we lost our leadership role in that field a long time ago to first the French, then the Russians, Japanese, and probably soon to the Chinese.

Science in this country is too politicized. We elect people who are scientifically illiterate and have a media that are overawed by anyone waving an advanced degree. A degree and Nobel Prize in Physics does not an Earth Scientist make. A meteorologist is not a climatologist or a geologist. Science is a field of specialization, not generalization. When one field of science pretends to know all the answers and convinces our politicians that they do, we end up with Global Warming.

Global Warming has become a religion and any nay sayers are heretics and subject to the same punishment. The trouble is, that blind faith and zealotry in something does not make it true. Some of the previous posters wear their ignorance of science and reality on their, I assume, self woven hair shirts like a medal, as they walk to work wearing shoes made of woven grass. The utter hypocrisy of the new age, save the world, save the creatures crowd is mind blowing. Their brains are so clouded by ridiculous simplistic and infantile notions they could not recongnize a rational logical thought if it passed throught their brain, no matter how long it lingered. The mistake ideology for reality. I ran into tons of them in the Environmental industry. You know the one where we actually clean up environmental problems and make water safe for people to drink, and air to breath, not the one that use enviromental crises to raise funds, protect whales and hug trees.

Me? I'm going to drive home at 80 mph in my gas powered SUV, kick back and have a beer or two while I watch my 40 inch electricity gobbling Plazma TV and cook a nice thick Steak on my CO2 emitting grill. Truth be told Gore is probably doing something along the same lines but generating a hell of a lot more CO2 than I will be.

there is no reasoning with the deniers,the arctic is expected to become essentially ice free this year or the next if the current melting continues these next two summers as is forcasted...the deniers will just go to their default setting, "it is a natural cycle"....check this out www.science20.com/chatter_box/arctic_ice_march_2011_update_2-77499

Dr Chuck, Al Gore and the Gorebots have been claiming, as do you here, that the arctic will be ice free come summer for many years now. When it didn't become ice free in any of those summers (nor is it likely to do so this summer either), it was the Gorebots who claimed that it was "cycles" of one sort or another that stopped the melting.
These cycles that are spoken of...are as common as the day turning to night, as the spring turning to summer, as the Moon waning and waxing, as the glaciers advanced and retreated. To say that they don't affect the climate is to deny something that isn't deniable.
Except of course to Gorebots.
But I'm sure Al is proud of whatever monetary contribution you have made to his various enterprises that purport to combat global warming.

Considering the enormous deficit the U.S. has racked up, especially in the last year, I think launching a satellite based on pseudoscience is nuts. It's time to start being fiscally responsible, or we won't have the money to launch a paper airplane.

mudrake2 is correct about science in America becoming too politicized. Everyone knows of Eisenhower's warning in his farewell address about the military-industrial complex, but few are aware that he also warned of the danger of state influence in science and vice-versa:

"Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.

"Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

The federal government must be strengthened. Only a strong centralized state can save the planet.

It is inexcusable to spend this amount of tax$$ without simultaneously starting the ground and support infrastructure and budgeting for a launch vehicle--more expensive and time consuming than the space hardware.

While I think the taxpayers would have approved of this payload, I strongly suspect launch was cancelled because of very poor financial planning rather than a change in politics.

This is not the first time the government has built space hardware before discovering it is too expensive to launch and support.

Maybe NASA was afraid that facts might start getting in the way of the global warming hysteria. Why clutter up the debate with things like data?

Oh, btw, in 2007 the global warming crowd was predicting that by this year, there would be no ice whatsoever at the north pole this summer. Let's see if the "climate models" are of any use or if its all a bunch of baloney. Ya know, like all those monster hurricanes they've been predicting since Katrina that have never materialized.

My money is on them revising their prediction and pushing it off another 5 years. Being wrong over and over again has not stopped them from prognosticating before.

You need only to look at the view it would have had to explain it's demise.

you don't spend this kind of money and scrap it with out a really good reason.

you people do know that the leading contributor to methane emmisons are cow farts and cow crap right?and it has been proven that the climate change we are experianceing now is a cycle the earth goes through. the earth has gone into what is now being called "global cooling" by you al gore types. now can we take better care of the earth yes we can but we are not screwing the atmosphere or the cycles of the earth off anymore than natural phonomena

I cannot say whether climate change is or is not happening. I have still yet to formulate a concrete opinion, but here is a good website that talks about climate change. I will have to wait and see what developments come up on either side before I can choose one. I know many out there will be saying that it's government data that cannot be trusted but it's the best data we have.

climate.nasa.gov/

On the other hand, even if it is a load of crap, it can still be beneficial in moving us in the right direction. Oil is approaching $4 a gallon with most of that money going to questionable people, coal is destroying the landscape of our country through unsustainable mining practices, and shale is not viable. We must explore, through science and engineering, other sources of energy and more efficient methods of harnessing the energy. This is not a bad thing for our nation and our global community, but it might be for business. Honestly, I care more about science and engineering.

I don't think OPEC would be forced to do anything except to hire lobbyists to make sure that any clean energy legislation dies in congress (which they probably already do). Big oil will continue to crush small clean energy companies until the price of gasoline in America gets so unconscionably high and stays that way that people will drive less. That is when we will see changes.

Persons of influence on both sides of the climate debate should be pushing for the launch of the Deep Space Climate Observatory. We can all use more facts. It is great to see Popsci extending it's mandate from clarifying and informing to keeping our handlers honest in regards to science. I hope Popsci continues to see this through to launch. I'm enjoying Popsci on a whole new level.

A)Halliburton is the second largest oilfield services corporation in the world.
B)Dick Cheney was CEO of Halliburton in 2000.
C)The project was terminated within a few weeks of Cheney's arrival in the White House.

Coincidence?

I would love to see the ESA jump in and get a sattelite to L1 first. This seems too important for our politicians to be acting like weenies about.

What century is this? The story reminds me of the Catholic Church in the face of Galileo. I can't believe our most important decisions are still being made in the dark like this.

Rick Pereira
North Adams, MA