Trump White House quietly cancels NASA research verifying greenhouse gas cuts, Science
“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.”
Why no, of course the Congressman who has opposed climate research won’t harm climate research if he’s made head of NASA, he said so at his confirmation hearing.
Actually, this seems like a perfect opportunity for the newly minted administrator.
By putting his support behind this program’s continuation or, better yet, overriding the decision and providing the needed funding for it (although I don’t know if he has the requisite authority to do that), Bridenstine could provide a clear signal (and example) that his recent embrace of climate research is not just talk and is, indeed, real. He could begin to build support (and good will) among a group that still hold a high degree of skepticism towards him, all by continuing a well regarded program for a mere $10 million. Seems like a good deal all around.
But I’m afraid I won’t be holding my breath…
He has. This was it.
That’s what I’m afraid of…
Just another example of the naive ignorance that abounds in this administration and is growing in society in general. I am betting money that by 2045, with 2 billion more people on this planet, it is going to look like a dystopian scifi movie, because nothing will force humans to change their behaviors unless it causes direct financial or physical pain. And the richer you are the greater the pain threshold and by then correction may be impossible. But who really cares anyway?
Well fair points im sure , but there is the religion that is climate science on the other side that means anytime someone changes anything to do with it they are always wrong. Is it possible this research should be done by someone else like mmm the weather bureau ??
If “climate science” is a “religion”, what other forms of science are also “religions”? Quantum mechanics? Evolutionary biology? Astrophysics?
The “weather bureau” (BTW, there is no such thing; I think you mean either the National Weather Service or the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) has no capability of designing, manufacturing, or launching satellites to research climate science.
Please stop watching Fox News.
I have never watched fox news ever , I was just pointing out when you say “Climate Science” suddenly a great deal of emotion is unleashed. You kinda proved my point. I do think it would be better research done by a climate based organization like NOAA who have lots of statisticians etc to draw on. Getting a satellite built for you is not really a big issue surely !!
You are clearly unfamiliar with how research has been done here in the U.S. for half a century whereby NOAA and NASA cooperate at many levels.
The guy who now runs NASA, when he was in Congress, wrote legislation aimed at preventing NOAA from studying climate change.
You can’t have it both ways.
To be fair, astrophysics might be on the list, depending on how you define religion. Astrophysics is entirely based on the belief that the laws of physics are the same everywhere in the universe. Personally, I believe that and it is a reasonable assumption. But Newton included that principle in his “Fundamental Laws of Natural Philosophy” because it is an underlying assumption which can’t be proven and must be accepted on faith. What would call a description of the universe which is based on assumption which must be accepted as a matter of faith or belief? A term in use during the seventeenth century was the “cult of science.”
Absent any evidence to the contrary, it’s a reasonable assumption that “the laws of physics are the same everywhere in the universe”, IMHO.
And I’ll place my bet on the “cult of science” over pretty much all of the other cults that drive peoples’ decision making. Science at least changes and evolves over time based on the best evidence to date. For reasons I cannot fathom, other cults cling to beliefs that have been disproven.
I’m not disagreeing, I’m simply pointing out that science does have underlying principles which are accepted without proof. In effect, it has articles of faith.
When you write, “Absent any evidence to the contrary, it’s a reasonable assumption…” that is also expressing one of those articles of faith. That the simpler, more straight-forward explanation is the most likely one.
(Excepting those alternate Universes, of course, and that part of our own Universe that is forever beyond ever observing, right?)
“science does have underlying principles which are accepted without proof”
As others have pointed out, yes, this is true, but science is constantly on the watch for such because they make scientists very twitchy, as they should.
But you have to start somewhere. Earth-centric systems come to mind as a simple example of supposition later discarded.
I know I won’t see the day: but I also know that big kludges like ‘inflation’, or ‘dark’ this, or ‘dark’ that, will someday become the basis for a true understanding of this place we find ourselves inhabiting.
Not really. Astrophysics tests that assumption whenever it’s possible, and, if it tests, it means it doesn’t take it at face value, as a dogma. For instance, astrophysics verify whether or not gravity works the same way up to the cosmological scale, and results in particle accelerators are compared with cosmic showers to see if they hold up to the same laws of nature. So, it began as an assumption, but it is not something astrophysicists are willing to go with without challenging. You do not see this in religion.
If memory serves, astrophysicists have to invoke dark energy to make gravity work on cosmological scales. Also, if you look carefully, many religions do debate and change theology. Old established religions are less likely to do so, but that’s also true in physics (people are less likely to challenge conservation of energy than string theory.)
Not really. What they include to make gravity work os dark matter. Dark energy accounts for acceleration of expansion. And both are at this point working hypotheses, that have a lot of evidence behind them, but they are not scientific established fact. In effect, you will find many more respectable papers dealing with alternatives to dark energy and matter than you will find questioning climate change.
Religions do change, but those are societal changes, unlike scientific changes, which have to do with objetive measurements in experiments and observations.
Acceleration of the expansion of the universe is all about gravity. It’s a general relativity sort of gravity, but I think that’s nit picking.
In any case, my point was that the whole idea of dark energy is about adding something to the things we know about (material in the universe and the laws of physics) to make the theories match the predictions. Instead of adding a new constituent to the universe, it would be equally valid to add spatially-variable laws of physics. Except that contradicts an underlying assumption of the scientific method.
And, before someone says people have tried that and it didn’t work, I’ll suggest limited imagination. Once you throw the door open to fiddling around in that way, there are almost an infinite number of things you could do. If you can’t come up with something that matches the data, you aren’t really using your imagination.
Not quite. Gravity is gravity. Dark energy works against gravity, it is a repulsive force. What happens is, after Einstein created his theory of general relativity, then applied it to the whole universe and discovered he couldn’t have an static one. This was way before Hubble finding out about the expansion. So, to have a static universe (he thought that was the case with our universe), Einstein added a term to his equations, the so-called cosmological constant, to act against gravity and keep the Universe static. After Hubble, he regretted this move and classified it as a big mistake.
Fast-forward to 1998. Saul Permutter, Adam Reiss and their guys were studying supernovae as standard candles for distances and foind out the universe was expanding at an accelerating rate, not a deccelerating one, as would be expected by the first version of general relativity (the one that has only gravity as its ingredient). At this point, Einstein’s modification comes it handy, so that you can treat this kind of “anti-gravity” as a cosmological constant, interpreted as the repulsive energy of the vacuum itself.
This story doesn’t follow religion practices at all. And they are hardly classified as a patch, because you had all previous experiments showing the part about gravity in general relativity actually works as described in the original theory.
This is using nature as a guide to better for our theories, so that when new effects are observed scientists don’t pretend they are not there (as in the childish denials of climate change), but do their best to explain them, EVEN if it means sacrificing their previous understanding.
And that IS the case with dark energy. The effect is there. Maybe it is not operating as Einstein’s cosmological constant. Maybe it is dynamic. There are alternatives that work out this idea. Who will be the judge? Nature. New observations will help discriminating between models of dark energy, promoting a further understanding of the phenomenon.
Having said that, the gravity part of general relativity (field equations minus cosmological constant) is being tested and challenged for a hundred years, and at this point can be considered rock solid. Just have a look at the discovery of gravitational waves, a very subtle effect that followed precisely the form given by general relativity. It is astonishingly precise. So, I would be very surprised if our understanding of gravity changes a lot in the next hundred years.
But nothing is sacred in science. In fact, some scientists are betting against general relativity and working on modified theories of gravity that eliminate the need for dark matter. Again, there are observations that suggest that general relativity, as it is, is right, and in fact there is extra invisible matter in the universe (such as the distribution of the gravitational field of the Bullet cluster, as measured by gravitational lensing), but the Jury is still out.
In science, there is no such a thing as a sacred theory. What exists is a theory that is respected because it works. Nobody disses Newton’s theory of gravity. In fact, it is used for all our space mission calculations, since it is a terrific approximation of general relativity for the case of a flat spacetime and much simpler to deal with in terms of math. But no doubt general relativity is an improvement over it, and we certainly are looking for an improvement of general relativity when we look for quantum gravity theories. GR won’t cease to be amazing when and if we have a deeper, quantum understanding of gravity. It will still be applied to black holes, and gravitational waves, and the expansion of the universe (in one form or another). But that’s because it works, not because is sacred.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and posit that Dr. Crary has a better handle on relativity/gravity then the denizens here about.
I don’t feel we should pull up credentials when discussing science. But, should that be the case, I published last year a book on Einstein and relativity (https://www.amazon.com/Para…, which was read and reviewed by several physicists and astrophysicists here in Brazil before going to press. That doesn’t mean anything to the discussion, really, but I suppose the fact that Crary is a Dr. doesn’t either.
Curiously, and relevant to our discussion, Einstein did feel science had a deep connection with religion, but the religious aspect of it, according to him, is the underlying belief that nature can be understood by rational means. There is nothing that assures us of that, and yet that is the basis of the whole scientific enterprise. I tend to agree with him that this is the only dogma of science, really. All the rest is based on reasoning and empirical tests, not beliefs.
“If you can’t come up with something that matches the data, you aren’t really using your imagination”
I’m in a field where imagination is unfairly lionized— unfairly because imagination applies to any endeavor to understand the unknown.
But they also examine other theories. (As well as variants of hypotheses of what dark energy is.)
For example, when they observed that the matter in a galaxy didn’t explain it’s gravity, there were a variety of suggests, most under the broad term “dark matter”, but some were pure change-gravity theories, like MOND, Double-Special and their variants. Over time, research eliminated the altered-gravity theories, or any theory that suggested the dark-matter effect could result from ordinary matter, by showing that galaxies could vary in their quantities of ordinary and dark matter. Even “dark matter galaxies” with little ordinary matter. And recently, ordinary matter galaxies without dark matter (which was thought to be impossible. Consensus was growing that dark matter was the seed for galaxies.)
Generally only to keep up with changes in knowledge due to science. Other theological changes are generally schisms, splitting off a new sect that accepts the new theology, or splitting off the conservatives if the original sect tries to change. Those are considered fairly traumatic events for religions. But science is built on schisms, that’s its whole MO. When there isn’t a good schism happening in a field, it tends to stagnate.
“..any theory that suggested the dark-matter effect could result from ordinary matter, by showing that galaxies could vary in their quantities of ordinary and dark matter.”
That isn’t at all clear. We know there is a normal sort of dark matter. Specifically we know (or are fairly sure based on simulations) that a sizable amount of matter is ejected from a solar system in the process of forming. How much is very uncertain, but there are lots of comets, planetesimals and other small but ordinary matter objects floating around in interstellar space. And completely undetectable, and therefore “dark mater.” I would not be at all surprised if the amount of such material, relative the the mass of observable stars, varies from galaxy to galaxy. The environment (dust-to-gas ratio, homogeneity of the interstellar medium on unresolved scales, etc.) is probably different. I’d say there is a ordinary matter component to dark matter. Other lines of evidence say it isn’t the only one, but that’s a different issue.
Wow, no. You are really out of date on this.
I think you’re missing the point. We know, as certainly as we can, that there is some amount of non-luminous, ordinary matter floating around. Yes, we can definitely put limits on it, and it isn’t enough to account for _all_ the dark matter required to match observations. I think most lines of evidence suggest under 15%, and some under a few percent. More to the point, this stuff probably wouldn’t be relevant to many of the observations requiring some sort of dark mater.
But that’s still more than zero. More to the point, if it can explain (or partially explain) one particular set of observations, e.g. the galactic rotation curve, then it changes the constraints on what the other sort(s) of dark matter have to be.
I guess that’s related to my original point. Scientists have a fundamental belief that a simple answer is better than a complicated one. So it looks like there is an unconscious tendency for astrophysicists to think in terms of _one_ sort of dark matter which would explain _all_ the relevant observations. It’s quite likely there is more than one. Is there a good reason to say non-luminous, ordinary matter isn’t one of several sorts of dark matter? A minor one, possibly a very minor one, but you seem to say this sort of material doesn’t exist at all.
OK. Now I am fully understanding your point: an almost religious tenet that, in science, simple is probably a better explanation.
That’s a human characteristic writ large, in my view. But also true.
A theory that baryonic matter ejected from galaxies explaining the effect we see? That’s a new one on me.
It would require large amount of matter that would, at the least, be detectable as light passes through it, unless it is incredibly homogeneous, for one; the effect would vary with frequency or energy, among other factors.
(Check behind the door for my degree in cosmology, please).
Gas or dust definitely wouldn’t work, a significant amount of mass in them would be detectable. The bigger you make the non-luminous objects, the easier they are to hide. And you couldn’t hide enough mass this way to account for all the unseen matter than has to be out there. My understanding is that this could be a few to twenty percent contribution.
I’m objecting to a particular line of reasoning: That, if we can prove something doesn’t explain100% of the data, then it can be dismissed and we need to continue searching for something else. Closer to home, where we have more data, things tend to be complicated and result from a combination of different things.
Now I am following you.
Disallowing an hypothesis as an incomplete explanation for observation is rudimentary scientific method, though of course in the process one modifies the explanation thereby sharpening the understanding. Yes.
True. And let’s not forget “inflation”, another awkward kludge. There’s also the Universe beyond the observable, a place we can never test. (My own view is that our understanding of the Universe is quite primitive, that a serious and accurate understanding of dark energy and related kludges will remake everything).
Still, it’s the attitude towards testing that separates the argument.
These days Highschool students design, manufacture, and launch satellites.
NOAA designs, manufactures, and launches weather SATs the same way NASA does, they contract Boeing, Thales Alana, or whoever for the satellite bus, put work with NASA and others to design and integrate sensors, then hire ULA or SpaceX to launch it. What’s the diff?
I am not a US Citizen we call NOAA the Bureau of Meteorology catchy you will agree BOM for short. Not all folks have the US flair for Acronyms! We don’t get FOX news here by the way, its against our law to provide political opinion as part of new coverage, although it is done. As I said previously lots of folks can design and launch satellites for you. Australia has a number of satellites and yet not a single national body to design and launch them mmmm. Before you say it we also have some of the best research in the field due too how much it will effect us as a nation.
This website is called “NASAWATCH” – it covers NASA, America’s space agency and other U.S. agencies that have space-related activities. If you want to talk about Australia then please go find a website that covers Australia.
We just got a complete fake space agency with funding of 50 million to pay for salaries – no actual programs – just salaries and office space.
The new head of the Australian Space Agency will be the highest paid space agency head on the planet. They will be paid at least 2-3 times the NASA Admin.
Australia is now 5 years into the dismantling of many climate science programs. It is a relentless process with lots of smoke and mirrors to deflect from what is going on. The current US Admin could learn much from Australia on how to dismantle climate science and get away with it.
But Keith don’t we talk here about Russia, for instance, all the time?
We do, however, have a Murdoch dominated press that does exactly the same thing. We “invented” the Murdochs, after all.
So you are suggesting that climate experts should not study climate, but weather forecasters should?
Nope just saying maybe climate forecasting and study should be with a department that is already geared to analyzing statistics. Which after all is what most of climate science is !
You clearly don’t understand what climate science is.
You know that NASA has the world’s largest collection of experts on planetary science?
If you think climate science is about analyzing statistics, you are not knowledgeable enough to contribute to this discussion.
If you desire a political result that minimizes the possibility of a future Congress passing any regulations affecting the fossil fuel industry, then the most economical strategy is to cancel the program entirely and do nothing.
If you are going to go down the “religion that is climate science” rabbit hole you are going to have your posts deleted.
Not at all I just note a lot of emotion enters things when we say “Climate Change” , clearly trump thinks its not an issue. Hopefully the next admin will either give it back to NASA of to another agency that can do a good job. I have seen an argument put forward that NASA should be made into 2 Departments Science and Research and Aeronautic and Space and that does make some sense i think. Given that its not my government I just like to keep an eye on things space and nasa
Big Tedd wrote: ” clearly trump thinks”
Well that is your mistake right there. You clearly do not read trumps speeches, if you did you would know he doesn’t … ever . If that is not enough to convince you then read what every person who has every worked with him have said.
When an entire field of research finds itself under attack from well-funded political foes, it tends to get a little twitchy. You seem oblivious to the history of the attacks on climate science.
You should be aware, for example, that the proposal to “move” NASA’s climate research to NOAA comes from people who have a history of trying to undermine climate research. It’s not an honest suggestion, it’s a trap. So when you come in and naively regurgitate the same line, even if you meant well (the argument is, after all, intended to sound reasonable) people will assume you are aware of the true nature of the proposal, and are part of the attack against science.
Likewise, “science is a religion” is a common argument by Creationists. (If you can convince people that science is a religion, it makes it easier to convince them to teach religion in science classes.) So when you use that specific phrase, again, people will assume you are that kind of bomb thrower. (And there’s a weird overlap between Creationists and climate change deniers.)
“”science is a religion” is a common argument by Creationists.”
Or someone honest and logical enough to admit that (1) there are certain, unprovable assumptions behind the scientific method and (2) anything based on an unprovable assumption is, in some sense, a matter of faith.
Of course creationists use whatever they can as rhetoric. And some things are too good to pass up. That doesn’t mean the basic point is invalid.
No. Religions are built upon the idea of received wisdom. They are sometimes forced to adapt, but change goes against the core assumption of religion. Science, OTOH, has change built into its core. Indeed, “science” isn’t really the things we know, it’s the method for acquiring new knowledge.
(Which is probably what leads to confusion. In order to learn the knowledge accumulated by science, you have to take a class called “science” (or “geology” or “chemistry”…) in which you memorise the received wisdom of the elders. You learn science as you learn religion, but you practice science in a way that’s unique to science.)
We’re clearly talking about scientific method, not the “science” (which might be called the outcome of applying the scientific method.) And there are a wide variety of opinions on what, exactly, the scientific method is. I suppose that’s another similarity to theology…
But I disagree with you about religion and received wisdom. You may be thinking of western religions. Outside of Europe and the Middle East, it’s a mixed bag. For example, I can’t think of any received wisdom in Daoism.
Daoism is less theistic than most religions, but it still has “received wisdom” with the various texts and teachings, including the pantheon with the Three Pure Ones.
The version in the West tends to focus less on the religious aspects (holy texts, temples, priests, deities) than the philosophy of living. It’s like being taught Christ’s teachings by someone who doesn’t think Christ was a deity, just a really cool dude.
We knew this was going to happen.
Isn’t NOAA already doing this with their “Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network”?
The Carbon Monitoring System is one of the sources of funding for the Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network
Aren’t several European organizations also doing it? Nothing wrong with some overlapping reaserch though.
No, I disagree. In work in NASA and that money could be used for something else if it’s redundant research.
Please demonstrate that Carbon Monitoring System is redundant.
If you read the original comment “Nothing wrong with overlapping research…”. My point is that overlapping research, mainly redundant research in the same government is wasteful considering NASA is always saying they don’t have enough money.
Please demonstrate that the Carbon Monitoring System’s contribution to NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network is redundant and wasteful.
NASA is not one of the funding sources for the Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. It does provide 2 data sources out of 191. The LA Megacities project data hasn’t been updated in 2 years. The NASA Terrestrial Ecology Program has the same problem.
It isn’t a matter of overlapping work or research. It’s overlapping in the sense that more than one government agency can fund that sort of research. We are talking about research which involves a few thousand scientists. They aren’t all doing the same thing, and having some paid by NASA and some by NOAA isn’t redundancy. The same applies to measurements. Lots of them are necessary, and if NASA and NOAA overlap in the very broad field of climate science, it doesn’t mean one’s spacecraft are merely repeating the other’s.
Indeed, that’d be the quickest way to get your proposal deselected.
I recently came across a case where it repeating past work might be funded. It’s a waste, but there are a huge number of old papers with results that can’t really be used.
Before the days of open access data, you got a figure in a paper and the numbers behind it were on the authors’ computer (or in a notebook, for even older papers.) Much of that data has gone away. The authors retired, or left the field, or the information is on a CD which is no longer readable, or lost because it wasn’t properly backed up when the computer died, or just plain lost because the author doesn’t remember where he put it.
So there are actually some funded proposals to repeat old work, as in “X did some really nice work twenty years ago and explained all the steps in his calculations. But most of the results are no longer available. So pay me to repeat his work, reproduce it, and then put the results into a durable archive.”
Predictable madness. Call your Senators and Representative and tell them to override the President and direct NASA to continue the Carbon Monitoring System:
https://www.usa.gov/elected…
Well, everyone here who knows me saw my upcoming reply coming. I don’t want to disappoint. So here it comes.
Whine, whine, whine. I’m pretty sure the U.S. Prez doesn’t have quite so much power over NOAA as he does NASA. Trump will be Trump, but Obama, who believes in the research, of course didn’t preserve it from eventual partisan upheaval by doing the right thing by the program. Obama had the power and opportunity to move control for that program over to NOAA, where it belongs, with bipartisan support, and did not do so.
And please don’t give me the poor picked on NOAA routine. $10M a year is chump change, even for them.
Except the politicians and lobbyist who call for the centralising of climate research, or Earth science in general, to NOAA are the same politicians who call climate change a lie/conspiracy. And they are the same politicians who have tried to reduce NOAA’s ability to do climate research.
So forgive me if I’m not convinced by the argument.
And so of course, knowing that that research has political enemies, the politicians who support it left it with the agency most influenced by politics.
Everyone in this thread UNDERSTANDS that data, understands the IMPORTANCE of that data, understands the importance of the CONTINUITY of that data, and CARES about that continuity more than any elected official on either side of the isle. To Washington it is just another bullet point in a campaign speech.
NASA studies the density of planetary atmospheres every time any of their spacecraft passes behind a planet because it bends the frequency of the telemetry (or something like that). Nobody knows about it except scientists and space geeks, nobody asks Congress permission, no President gets briefings on it. I doubt if it even has its own line-item in the budget. It is just part of the routine of business doing. That is how continuous data is gathered across long enough periods of time to be statistically relevant to climate change studies and that is how NOAA can and should gather climate data.
Continuity and Congress don’t belong in the same breath.
I agree, but I’m afraid NASA’s planetary missions aren’t quite as good as you suggest. They don’t get a radio occultation of a planets atmosphere every time a spacecraft goes behind (or comes out from behind) a planet. Some spacecraft don’t have the hardware to do it well (to do it well, you really need to transmit at multiple frequencies), some spacecraft are doing something else (the sun going behind the planet gives a different sort of occultation, and that takes pointing a telescope not a radio) and that sort of thing just isn’t the mission’s bread and butter science.
The best, most continuous measurement of this sort I can think of is almost an accident. When you use the GPS satellites to measure your location, there is a slight error caused by the number of electrons in the ionosphere, between you and each of the GPS satellites you’re system is receiving. It not a big deal, and I think most GPS systems ignore it. But it’s there and some systems can pull it out. Some clever person realized that noise can be used to build up a map of the ionosphere. With many GPS satellites sending and many ground stations receiving, that’s a frequently updated, high resolution map.
Nice twisting. Those enemies wanted it in NOAA. They weren’t trying that in order to protect it from their own attacks, but to make it easier for themselves. Fake outrage at those who opposed the plans of the bad guys just makes you look stupid. Stop it.
Un-twisting something that you twist it in the opposite direction.
To clarify, the NASA Carbon Monitoring System coordinates data from a wide range of space-based sensors which are not associated with climate per se, but rather with monitoring the changing distribution of carbon in the Earth’s rock, soil, oceans, and atmosphere, and most critically, with developing predictive models for this process. https://carbon.nasa.gov/mis…
This is not science that falls within the usual spectrum of NOAA, though there has always been close collaboration between the agencies. As with many forms of Earth monitoring, it involves a surprising number of new spacecraft and space-based sensors, many mounted on the ISS. Moreoverf, the Trump Administration is not transferring the effortt to NOAA. The entire program is being cancelled.
Those who reject climate science believe that it must be wrong because it is not consistent with their political principles. This misconstrues the nature of science itself. Science is discovered, not decided. The world is what it is, not what we might believe or wish it to be.