NASA ignores the genius of Anthony Watts and will launch 1/2 billion dollar CO2 Satt.

[PoloMalo43]

You guys should point them to Watts' site so they can get the truth from a weatherman who dropped out of college, those NASA fools.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/30/3454554/nasa-satellite-carbon-measuring/

NASA Launching Carbon-Tracking Satellite In Search Of Climate Change Answers

By Ari Phillips on June 30, 2014 at 12:42 pm

This May 15, 2014, artist concept rendering provided by NASA shows their Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO)-2. The OCO-2, managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on a Delta II rocket on July 1, 2014.

CREDIT: AP/NASA/JPL-Caltech

While in the political world carbon dioxide can still be referred to as an invisible, harmless gas for years scientists at NASA have been studying the way its dramatic rise in atmospheric concentration is affecting life on earth. On Tuesday morning, in a major landmark in understanding this relationship, NASA is launching a satellite to inventory where and how carbon is absorbed and released across the planet. It will be the nation’s first satellite exclusively monitoring carbon dioxide.

The OCO-2, or Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, will track CO2 as it’s emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes and absorbed into the ocean or taken up by plant life. Carbon dioxide levels are currently at their highest atmospheric concentration in the last 800,000 to 15 million years. Recent data shows that June will be the third month in a row with average carbon dioxide levels above 400 parts per million — a symbolic threshold first passed on May 9, 2013. With humans adding some 100 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every day, scientists are anxious to better understand where all the carbon dioxide is going and what it will mean for climate change.

“Knowing what parts of Earth are helping to remove carbon from our atmosphere will help us understand whether they can keep on doing so in future,” project scientist Michael Gunson, of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the Associated Press. “Quantifying these sinks now will help us predict how fast CO2 will build up in the future.”

FOLLOW LINK FOR THE REST OF THE STORY

 

[Hineswardkickedurpanzyass]

I am guessing Michael Gunson is one of those guys that can solve the worlds longest algorithm. But doesn't have the common sense to to answer this one "Knowing what parts of Earth are helping to remove carbon from our atmosphere will help us understand whether they can keep on doing so in future,” They are called trees you dumbass. I am guessing the Amazon, the Appalachians, etc eat up a bunch of CO2. I was on the Appalachian trail last weekend and you know what, there are more trees out there than there are cars in the USA. We will be fine. Can I have my $900 million back that you wasted on another ******* satellite that is attempting to cram flawed/manufactured science down our throats?

And as for the Watts reference, I don't follow him....but being a college dropout worked pretty well for Bill Gates. And maybe he dropped out because he couldn't afford it...so you are now being a dick towards poor people.

 

[Hineswardkickedurpanzyass]

and oh yeah, just in case you need a link- here ya go. http://www.binghamton.edu/news/the-newsroom/ask-a-scientist/?date=2011-04-13

ASK A SCIENTIST

Date: 04-13-2011

Question: How do trees make oxygen?

Answer:
This is an important question, because without trees and other plants, Earth would be uninhabitable. We need trees so that they can make the oxygen we breathe.

So how do they do it? Trees convert carbon dioxide into oxygen through a process called photosynthesis. Photosythesis means "to put together with light." The light is sunlight, shining on the tree, and the pieces being put together are carbon dioxide and water. When a tree has these three ingredients it uses the energy from the sunlight to combine the carbon from the carbon dioxide with the water to make a carbohydrate, or more simply, a sugar. The sugar is food for the tree, just as people eat sugar and carbohydrates. When the tree makes the carbohydrate, there is extra oxygen from the water, which luckily for us gets released into the air, giving us the oxygen we breathe.

Each adult tree is made up of trillions of cells. The cells in the leaves of a tree are where photosynthesis occurs, in special parts of the cell called chloroplasts. Each cell in a tree can contain up to 100 chloroplasts. Inside of a chloroplast, there are pigments that absorb light. The most common pigment, chlorophyll, is green, which is why most plants look green.

The tree leaves get water from the ground by drinking through the roots, trunk, and stems of the tree. The leaves also have tiny pores in them that they can use to breathe in carbon dioxide -- the gas humans and animals breathe out -- from the air. Then, when light hits the chlorophyll, the chloroplast uses the light\\\'s energy to cause photosynthesis. The tree keeps the carbohydrate as food, and breathes out the oxygen through the pores on its leaves.

So while we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide, a tree breathes in carbon dioxide and exhales oxygen.

 

[madinsomniac]

Wow, so NASA, who was bordering on absolute irrelevance, and losing millions in funding by the minute, suddenly has a useful purpose that has national focus... why is it when one side of any debate argues that all data from a source should be ignored because they have a rooting interest in how the data plays out, they conveniently ignore the people on their own side that have a huge monetary gain by taking the opposite side...

And again the laser tech they are using isn't as accurate as advertised. its still very subject to voltage instabilities that cannot be maintenance properly on a satellite and will degrade over time. it still is totally subjective to the initial calibrations, and it still has major interferants that will not be factored in. this kind of tech is good for generalities, not accurate readings. Nasa continues to force feed itself into this subject in hopes of keeping its doors open... means jack **** to me. Its funny that even the far more precise and smaller scale versions of what they are using still isn't accepted as a legit means to read CO2 for compliance purposes, despite repeated insistence from manufacturers that with proper maintenance these things are as accurate as NDIR or FTIR tech. We experimented with several versions of this tech. it has a pretty good initial startup, but it has a very limited range and has a terrible drift over time. The last satilite they were using for this had increased readings almost overlapping the expected drift for that tech. If they were just planning to have general readings on large scale CO2 this is fine... its going to be + or minus 1% Co2 (10000 ppm) accuracy, but reading on the lower scale Im just not seeing it.

A billion and a half dollars isn't really as impressive as you might think. One of the companies we test for spent more than that on its Hg monitoring program, and those analyzers were completely worthless. in the lab environment they were rock solid... once introduced into testing actual gas they were reading severely negative ionic mercury and not even close to correct elemental mercury.
Nasa's recorded reactions when the shuttle program went belly up about this really says it all... this is just their way of keeping their jobs alive at the taxpayer expense, since our society really doesn't give a **** about space exploration or colonization like it ought to. This is just another in a series of attempts to prove their usefulness by shoehorning a technology that has concerns about it into a satellite. Its not their first attempt at this.

 

[CharlesDavenport]

More government waste, more data to manipulate.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

Wow, so NASA, who was bordering on absolute irrelevance, and losing millions in funding by the minute, suddenly has a useful purpose that has national focus... why is it when one side of any debate argues that all data from a source should be ignored because they have a rooting interest in how the data plays out, they conveniently ignore the people on their own side that have a huge monetary gain by taking the opposite side...

That plus a couple years ago they revised their data to show that the earth wasn't warming as fast as Al Gore said it was, so obviously someone from Barry's office made their minds right by giving them some money and some work to do.

 

[EdReed4Prez]

Half a Billion would buy some nice water infrastructure for California. Crazy how this global warming money never gets past the academics and into shovels.

 

[Rod Farva]

I think I have this figured out. Polo is like Cheryl or Carol or whatever from Archer and gets off on emotional abuse.

 

[Confluence]

“Knowing what parts of Earth are helping to remove carbon from our atmosphere will help us understand whether they can keep on doing so in future,” project scientist Michael Gunson, of Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the Associated Press. “Quantifying these sinks now will help us predict how fast CO2 will build up in the future.”

FOLLOW LINK FOR THE REST OF THE STORY

Just a few highlighted words demonstrate several key issues:
1) science has not yet understood these sinks
2) science has not yet quantified these sinks
3) models with unknown variables cannot be correct or utilized to demonstrate proof of anything
4) unknowns, like carbon sinks these NASA guys hope to identify, could be so dominant and/or complex as to render any attempts to understand and predict them almost impossible
5) the admission of the existence of unknowns clearly underlines uncertainty in understanding C02 and its role in the earth and the atmosphere
6) anyone pretending to understand the nature of CO2 and its role in the earth and the atmosphere must foolish, misguided or fraudulent.

The existence of this search for knowledge by NASA is a clear admission that science doesn't understand some/many variables of CO2 and thusly cannot use same for any.....real science.

When Polo comes around and says this isn't true, she should then state exactly and precisely what is known about CO2 and attempt to explain why NASA would expend such resources on a known thing. Either NASA is just wasting $500 Million or they don't have a good understanding of this CO2 stuff.
Which one is it Pollo?

 

[fedderone]

The OCO-2, or Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, will track CO2 as it’s emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes and absorbed into the ocean or taken up by plant life. Carbon dioxide levels are currently at their highest atmospheric concentration in the last 800,000 to 15 million years. Recent data shows that June will be the third month in a row with average carbon dioxide levels above 400 parts per million — a symbolic threshold first passed on May 9, 2013. With humans adding some 100 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every day, scientists are anxious to better understand where all the carbon dioxide is going and what it will mean for climate change.

Please post the link with the cave drawings and/or stone etched data from 800,000 - 15 million years ago proving the spike.These scientist have readings from this far back? Please produce. I am curious to compare them to the readings for the three months in a row they're citing in this piece.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

Half a Billion would buy some nice water infrastructure for California. Crazy how this global warming money never gets past the academics and into shovels.

Bomma hates unions except in election years.

 

[ark steel]

Please post the link with the cave drawings and/or stone etched data from 800,000 - 15 million years ago proving the spike.These scientist have readings from this far back? Please produce. I am curious to compare them to the readings for the three months in a row they're citing in this piece.

Yeah, the models accuracy for that far back seems iffy towards checking any error corrections needed.

 

[Roy92040]

I think NASA has their priorities wrong. I would think they would be working on a new spacecraft to sent up to the space station so we wouldn't have to depend on the Russians.

 

[Badcat]

Yeah, the models accuracy for that far back seems iffy towards checking any error corrections needed.

They use carbon dating of minerals and rocks apparantly, which provides good data, but the +/- on accuracy varies far too much to allow it to be used where modern Scientists are trending on a single degree of temperature over a hundred years.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

Any scientist caught not agreeing with global warming spends a night in the box and doesn't get any grant money.

 

[Steeltime]

NASA Launching Carbon-Tracking Satellite In Search Of Climate Change Answers

Why the **** do they need a satellite to provide "climate change answers"?

I thought that "the science is settled."

So settled that they have to blow half a billion dollars on this ****? Oh, guess it's not so settled. But hey, it's all good - it's just tax money, so it's not like it came from people who could make better use of the money.

 

[ark steel]

They use carbon dating of minerals and rocks apparantly, which provides good data, but the +/- on accuracy varies far too much to allow it to be used where modern Scientists are trending on a single degree of temperature over a hundred years.

But how do you check the error to know whether your data is "good enough", expecially "good enough" to base dire predictions upon the results? I you are off by .2 degrees either way, it would seem to have some effect on your eventual results.

 

[hamster]

Wow, another thread on global warning, Pure genius. New Polo strategy.................if your old post fails miserably, then start a new one.

 

[PoloMalo43]

Wow, so NASA, who was bordering on absolute irrelevance, and losing millions in funding by the minute, suddenly has a useful purpose that has national focus... why is it when one side of any debate argues that all data from a source should be ignored because they have a rooting interest in how the data plays out, they conveniently ignore the people on their own side that have a huge monetary gain by taking the opposite side...

And again the laser tech they are using isn't as accurate as advertised. its still very subject to voltage instabilities that cannot be maintenance properly on a satellite and will degrade over time. it still is totally subjective to the initial calibrations, and it still has major interferants that will not be factored in. this kind of tech is good for generalities, not accurate readings. Nasa continues to force feed itself into this subject in hopes of keeping its doors open... means jack **** to me. Its funny that even the far more precise and smaller scale versions of what they are using still isn't accepted as a legit means to read CO2 for compliance purposes, despite repeated insistence from manufacturers that with proper maintenance these things are as accurate as NDIR or FTIR tech. We experimented with several versions of this tech. it has a pretty good initial startup, but it has a very limited range and has a terrible drift over time. The last satilite they were using for this had increased readings almost overlapping the expected drift for that tech. If they were just planning to have general readings on large scale CO2 this is fine... its going to be + or minus 1% Co2 (10000 ppm) accuracy, but reading on the lower scale Im just not seeing it.

A billion and a half dollars isn't really as impressive as you might think. One of the companies we test for spent more than that on its Hg monitoring program, and those analyzers were completely worthless. in the lab environment they were rock solid... once introduced into testing actual gas they were reading severely negative ionic mercury and not even close to correct elemental mercury.
Nasa's recorded reactions when the shuttle program went belly up about this really says it all... this is just their way of keeping their jobs alive at the taxpayer expense, since our society really doesn't give a **** about space exploration or colonization like it ought to. This is just another in a series of attempts to prove their usefulness by shoehorning a technology that has concerns about it into a satellite. Its not their first attempt at this.

Yeah I'm sure Caltech and JPL shop at Radio Shack to put this stuff together.

The shuttle program was shut down because of the expense, we could have easily gone back to a rocket based launch system if the priority was manned exploration, but it's not. It makes more sense to launch probes and telescopes to push the horizon of our knowledge.

Nothing is more important than AGW. Not a mission to mars, not hanging out at the space station. NASA has been given that mandate and it makes sense.

Of course the Repugnicans want to mange NASA's budget so they don't concentrate so much on climate change. I'm sure that involved a phone call from David or Charles Koch at some point.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astr...oid_mission_education_and_climate_change.html



Now comes the monkey in the wrench. About planetary exploration, the draft bill says:

Relying on the guidance of National Academy of Sciences Decadal Surveys, this bill restores proper balance to NASA’s science portfolio. NASA Earth Science is reduced to 2008 spending levels to provide better balance of funding for NASA’s planetary science programs. Thirteen different federal agencies fund $2.5 billion annually in climate science research, but only NASA has space exploration as its primary mission. NASA is still involved in climate change research—spending $1.2 billion annually. NASA must remain focused on building weather satellites for NOAA to meet our nation’s urgent weather-monitoring needs, as well as building LANDSAT satellites for the US Geological Survey.



They've been launching climate change satts. even before this became their mission, all the way back in 1999.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/

 

[PoloMalo43]

Wow, another thread on global warning, Pure genius. New Polo strategy.................if your old post fails miserably, then start a new one.

No I'm just adding to the conversation and don't want this to get lost on page 10 of another thread.

Someone else here who is a denier started a second thread on AGW so I guess by your logic they've failed in their arguments?

 

[Rod Farva]

Any scientist caught not agreeing with global warming spends a night in the box and doesn't get any grant money.

Another great quote from that movie (and thus its title) is apparently one polo has decided to use as her lifes compass "Yeah, well.....sometimes nothin' can be a mighty cool hand."

Someone else here who is a denier started a second thread on AGW so I guess by your logic they've failed in their arguments?

Nope. His shenanigans are cheeky and fun (and accurate). Yours are cruel and tragic......which makes them not really shenanigans at all.

(That's another movie quote. Any guesses? Bueller? Bueller.....?)

 

[PoloMalo43]

Another great quote from that movie (and thus its title) is apparently one polo has decided to use as her lifes compass "Yeah, well.....sometimes nothin' can be a mighty cool hand."



Nope. His shenanigans are cheeky and fun (and accurate). Yours are cruel and tragic......which makes them not really shenanigans at all.

(That's another movie quote. Any guesses? Bueller? Bueller.....?)

Not one of you has posted anything on this topic even approaching accuracy. I get attacked for cutting and pasting the truth and deniers on here cut and paste nonsense from this guy and others yet get a pass.

I have a feeling Lord Monckton is genetically connected to many of the double digit IQ's on here......just a hunch.

Watch very carefully especially around the 6 minute mark when the Johannessen paper is referenced. These are the tricks/lies and absolute nonsense the deniers here get from people like Monckton and repeat endlessly.

 

[madinsomniac]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...litics-planetary-science-funding-exploration/

Tried to find you an article from a source you wont dismiss right off the bat... there are like hundreds more of them stretching decades back... Nasa has been fighting a losing war on the budget front and when they started to get pressed a few years back on why they should be funded at all... this suddenly became their agenda... this isn't the first CO2 sat they have launched, and the first had the same issues. You don't have the option of filtering things like moisture and other gasses that reflect at the same bandwidths when you are firing your laser through miles of space. so what then... more bias adjusted data based on speculative concentrations... futile... again they will be adjusting the data to what they think it should read... it will be close, but not accurate enough to make predictions or even really know if concentrations are growing or not. Same as last time.

 

[PoloMalo43]

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...litics-planetary-science-funding-exploration/ Tried to find you an article from a source you wont dismiss right off the bat... there are like hundreds more of them stretching decades back... Nasa has been fighting a losing war on the budget front and when they started to get pressed a few years back on why they should be funded at all... this suddenly became their agenda... this isn't the first CO2 sat they have launched, and the first had the same issues. You don't have the option of filtering things like moisture and other gasses that reflect at the same bandwidths when you are firing your laser through miles of space. so what then... more bias adjusted data based on speculative concentrations... futile... again they will be adjusting the data to what they think it should read... it will be close, but not accurate enough to make predictions or even really know if concentrations are growing or not. Same as last time.

What your saying doesn't make any sense to me, granted I don't build satellites.

Please answer this for me though. Why would this satellite not be able to communicate with NOAA, other satellites,etc. and using GPS not be able to constantly receive moisture data(and other atmospheric conditions), triangulate that data to its position and re calculate its measurements to compensate on the fly? I would think NASA could do this 15 years ago....

Something about your claims of having knowledge in this field just rang very hollow to me.

 

[Ron Burgundy]

Something about your claims of having knowledge in this field just rang very hollow to me.

Something about climate expert Al Gore saying ten years ago that the polar ice caps would be melted by now rings hollow to me.