Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate advocates are devastated that President Trump has pulled the budget of a project aimed at monitoring international compliance with Paris Agreement Pledges.
The Trump Administration Just Jeopardized The World’s Ability to Measure Carbon Emissions
You know, the stuff that’s causing climate change.
CARLY CASSELLA, SCIENCE AS FACT
10 MAY 2018
Apparently, withdrawing from the Paris climate accord wasn’t enough. Now, the Trump administration wants to restrict the world’s ability to measure carbon emissions.
According to a new report from the journal Science, the Trump administration has quietly killed NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) – a $10 million-a-year research project, which monitors the flow of Earth’s carbon.
The move jeopardizes plans to verify the national emission cuts agreed to in the Paris climate accords, argues Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University’s Center for International Environment and Resource Policy.
“If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement,” Gallagher told Science.
…
This doesn’t mean that all carbon monitoring and measuring is gone. It just means that leadership in this area will most likely be passed on to Europe, which has one carbon-monitoring satellite of its own, and more on the way.
“We really shoot ourselves in the foot if we let other people develop the technology,” said Duffy.
…
I don’t see why USA dropping funding for a programme which duplicates European efforts will reduce the world’s carbon monitoring capability, or cause any harm to US interests. The $10 million per year saving might only be a drop in the government budget, but one drop at a time eventually adds up to serious savings.
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Winning!
Now, the Trump administration wants to restrict the world’s ability to measure carbon emissions.”
The world can measure anything it wants, more power to them. Just don’t ask us to foot the bill.
Works for me
Go Trumpy – pull US money out of the IPCC for good measure.
Another good day for the USA!
Put the axe to the Endangerment Finding next!
Brutal and honest policy, at last ! Make the World Great again. I really like this.
And the equitoxicity assumption.
GOOD START !!!
NOW……………..STOP FINANCING THE CORRUPT UNITED NATIONS ORGANISATION TOO !!!
…and, pull out of UNFCCC, as required under US law.
Just be done with it and pull out of the UN. It’s proven itself to be worse than useless.
Now that’s an effective real world idea. It’s the money for Universities from the IPCC that drove the climate deceit of the academic CO2 lynch mob, so corrupt pols could justify taxing fossil fuels and create another trough of legalised taxes and ROcs with with poltical kick backs for politicians and lobbyists to wallow in. Money drives the BS (bad science) that enables the actual technical fraud on the facts of renewable subsidies. Take the money away from those two and the whole scam runs out of the fuel that motivates it most. Malfeasance. Why doesn’t somebody sue the US government for malfeasance re renewable subsidy laws, which make the supposed problems expensively worse in easy to prove science fact?
Bizarre bequeaths bizarre, apparently. The UN has or is in the process of morphing on the world stage into the kind of organization that the UN was originally conceived to prevent the development of on the world stage.
“This doesn’t mean that all carbon monitoring and measuring is gone. It just means that leadership in this area will most likely be passed on to Europe, which has one carbon-monitoring satellite of its own, and more on the way.
“We really shoot ourselves in the foot if we let other people develop the technology,” said Duffy.”
OK Duffy- I call bullsh!t!
The CO2 satellites are up there, and the data is SLOWLY becoming available.
The interesting thing is the serious problems we are having correlating highly industrialized areas as the sources of high concentrations of atmospheric CO2. Except for parts of China, the data just seems to NOT be supportive, and natural sources of CO2 seem to dominate the equation.
I haven’t looked at this data lately and would appreciate a credible update from someone who has.
Best, Allan
Post script:
This post is still worth reading:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/11/murry-salby-responds-to-critics/#comment-1388482
I thought that the IPCC themselves accepted years ago (buried somewhere in the supporting docs) that 95+ % of global CO2 emissions were NOT human caused. So what exactly are the CO2 monitoring satellites measuring?
They are measuring concentration, not emission rates. Concentration goes up when emission rates exceed sink rates and goes down when sink rates exceed emission rates, Concentration remains the same when sink rates equal emission rates. The IPPC knows that natural emission rates are about 20 times anthropogenic emission rates, but they falsely assume that changes in natural emission rates are balanced out by sink rates over time, but some how don’t fully balance out anthropogenic emissions leaving half to increase concentration. That is a physical impossibility. The polar ocean sinks have no way of telling the difference between natural and anthropogenic emissions. If the sinks are absorbing 95% of the natural, they will absorb 95% of the anthropogenic that improbably travels that far from their sources.
After looking at the NASA carbon monitoring site it seems like it is a complete waste of time and money. How are you going to be able to distinguish natural sources of carbon vs manmade? Especially since nature exchanges 10 times the CO2 with the atmosphere than man puts into it. The whole carbon monitoring project has been a dismal failure. Please note that the EU agency has had to revise CO2 figures put out by China almost every year because the Chinese cheat on telling us about their emissions. Until we can measure every smokestack in the world, any CO2 monitoring project will be a complete waste of money. Trump is right on this one. Now he has to get rid of GISS and fire all the top guys of NOAA and replace them with real scientists who realize that CO2 is not the problem. We need more CO2 NOT less and I see that Dr. Roy Spencer is now agreeing with me.
Observation has disproved CO2 as the world’s thermostat and endorsed water as the chief regulator of global temperature, absorbing and emitting heat to move it polward in a system so efficient, it had to be designed intelligently.
Why do just the upper latitudes see only in winter the warming which boosts the satellite temperature record?
It’s not just the sun, it’s the ways oceans run, and clouds (in complexity) forming.
The co2 monitoring project is useful because it allows defining CO2 concentration on a grid which changes over the year. The models assume energy is captured as a function of CO2 concentration, therefore the “greenhouse effect” can be fine tuned if they have actual data. I suspect this may be a current model flaw.
Allan
The OCO2 satellite images and data were first released in April 2016 as a set of 30 consecutive images.
Quite revealing. the problem was the NASA images did not fit people’s mental image. Mine is the only report in two years that has utilised these images with a description from my knowledge.
When you look at them in a time sequence movie you will see what is occurring. Your nine month delay is an atmospheric transport issue. Mauna loa is not a credible reference spot, it’s just been there the longest, that’s why folks use it. The images in the report in the link below are the originals, quite revealing, they have been altered now due to scaling issues.
I have spent the last twelve months identifying the thermal pressure cycle that records the atmospheric movement cycle southward. How do you measure it, that was the interesting part.
blozonehole.com.
Regards
http://blozonehole.com/blozone-hole-theory/blozone-hole-theory/carbon-cycle-using-nasa-oco-2-satellite-images
Ozone – I have probably done as much work as you on this subject, possibly a lot more.
FYI – I used Global CO2 in my 2008 paper, not ML.
I recently solved the 9-month delay of atm. CO2 after global avg. temperature – it is 1/4 of the approx. 36-month El Nino cycle – a function of the integral of dCO2/dt vs temperature.
ozone – my error – you have done more recent CO2 work that I have.
I will re-read your paper with interest. I have no opinion on it at this time.
http://blozonehole.com/blozone-hole-theory/blozone-hole-theory/carbon-cycle-using-nasa-oco-2-satellite-images
Thank you.
Exactly if someone else wants to spend money on monitoring they are welcome it’s just that America have decided to spend their money elsewhere .
What exactly are we losing if the US isn’t the country with most advanced carbon detecting sensors in orbit?
We lose the right to chant: “We’re number one. We’re number one”
Uh…we lose the $10M/year cost.
That means they won’t be able to monitor the 1600 coal fired power stations being built around the world outside the Western democracies.
The satellites are still in orbit; collecting, transmitting and archiving data.
What is discontinued is the bureaucratic organization dependent upon and feeding on the abundant CO₂ funds.
From “NASA Carbon Monitoring System”
Isn’t that a comforting money well spent statement?
All of those action words describing their objectives, e.g.:
Use,
Prototype,
Harness,
Rapidly,
Engage and contribute.
One of their ‘projects’: (reformatted to assist reading, Certain words are bolded to highlight them)
Models, data adjustment, manipulation, aggregating disparate sources, presentations and bureaucratic paper shuffling.
It appears that this organization is a pinnacle point relying upon forms filled by non-government entities and local government sources.
i.e. A red tape bureaucracy that produces models, reports and embedded bias as their products.
I think Donald Trump is doing absolutely the right thing.
Its no different from making the NATO countries pull their weight.
All the better when its wasted money as well. Let Europe waste their money:)
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
“…Let Europe waste their money…”
Oh, man, and do they:
1) Europe can’t manage or afford its own national defense
2) Europe can’t manage or afford its own banks
3) Europe can’t manage its self-inflicted immigration problem
4) Europe has great difficulty growing its economy faster than the population growth rate
5) Europe has great difficulty employing its own citizens
6) Europe, for the most part, does not allow fracking, forcing it to buy from Russia (or build windmills)
7) Europe can’t/won’t control diesel auto emissions (its car companies lied about emissions science & compliance)
8) Europe provides some state retirement pensions to (healthy) 50-year-olds (even earlier to some French railroad workers)
9) Oh yea, Europe is pissing away billions to drastically increase energy costs
Yup,
A lot of the things you mention apply to my country as well:)
Javert,
Thanks.
Your #7 –
“7) Europe can’t/won’t control diesel auto emissions (its car companies lied about emissions science & compliance)”
reminds me why in this household, we call a well-known German Peoples’ Car Company the Chief Chimp-Choking Cheats.
And now BMWs seem to stop for no reason on the road – per Jeremy Vine on BBC 2 radio today – and that’s the Rolls Royce owners.
And I can’t – or chose not to – afford Mercedes.
Guess my next car will be a bike! I live halfway up a hill climbing to perhaps the highest public park in London.
And that’s my non-public transport mobility gone.
[Yes. Other cars are available . . . .]
Auto
If these are truly ‘carbon monitoring satellites’ they should be used to locate new gas, oil, and coal deposits. If they can’t do that, they’re just not worth it. /s Yes, I know. They detect CO2, not ‘carbon’ as they are advertised to do. But what’s the point of monitoring plant food?
Hmmmm… They may have some value after all, if they can confirm the positive benefits of increased CO2 enhancing plant growth worldwide. The United States of America providing free plant food for a hungry world should be a real marketing positive at the United Nations! /tic (Not really /s sarcasm, more /tic ‘tongue in cheek’!)
Seattle spent $54 million on its homeless crisis in 2017.
Given my small town roots, Seattle is a big big city, but, in fact, it is not.
They want to spend a lot more by higher taxes on the companies that have spurred the growth of the local economy. I guess they don’t like those companies. In this context $10M seems like not a lot of money.
Anyway, I’m in favor of monitoring CO2 and other gases from a scientific point of view. We might learn something.
Regarding: “Carbon emissions” & “If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement,” . . .
. . . a farce of the 1st order.
Agreement? What Agreement? The Paris Agreement is not binding! The are no consequences for detractors!
John F. Hultquist
If you “might” learn something by monitoring CO2 and other gases, go ahead, pay for it yourself.
The issue isn’t “you might learn something”, it’s prioritizing the taxpayer-spend for more urgent demands to “learn something” (eg cancer cure). If you want to noodle around measuring CO2, then pay for it yourself. Don’t drag the rest of taxpayers in on your boondoggle.
Please please folks it drives me nuts when bloggers use the term “carbon” emissions or levels.
It’s Carbon Dioxide we are talking about here – not lumps of coal or pencil “lead”
Let’s not demonize plant food.
Well … since the EU Chief just declared that Europe should replace the US as the world’s superpower … https://dailym.ai/2I3HDt1
This is the PERFECT opportunity for them to start!
The EU can’t get out of their own way let alone ‘lead’ anything.
Europe’s military couldn’t defend against an unruly pack of Cub Scouts (let alone Russia or Iran).
Europe’s military could do something, if allowed. But top brass order are always the same: flee, and don’t hurt anyone in the process.
Same for police.
The first big warning flag:
CARLY CASSELLA, SCIENCE AS FACT
Science is a method.
Science is not a “thing”.
Science as a method is not something that needs defending.
The Left wants the naive public to think science is FACTS (a thing) and thus immutable and thus in need of defending.
This is Orwellian Neo-Marxism at its finest by CARLY CASSELLA.
Claiming science as fact is the politicization of science exactly as Dr Michael Crichton warned about in his Appendix I to “State of Fear.”
Dr Crichton wrote:
This nonsense of CO2 emissions monitoring by something that is not a treaty for the US, and thus has zero Congressional authority* for expenditure of taxpayer moneies must stop.
*Congress is the People’s voice in the Federal government. It is this fact, enshrined in the separation of powers in the US constitution, that the Left hates. They hate the fact that Congress can check both the Executive and the Judiciary. That is, they hates that the People can check their vision of an ever-expanding government power, aka Marxism. It is this reason why Obama and the Democrats have made a strategic goal to neutralize Congress in all of its constitutional duties of overseeing and putting the other two branches in check.
Not good news. Basic science and primary research is always important.
“I don’t see why USA dropping funding for a programme which duplicates European efforts will reduce the world’s carbon monitoring capability, or cause any harm to US interests”
Well, Eric, I can’t argue with that. The thing is, that’s not what is happening. You apparently read the article, or you would not be able to omit the important parts, like what a few of the 65 projects measure, so you know very well that you are misrepresenting what it says.
I’m starting to think Eric is a Russian plant … like a potato, perhaps.
or maybe…
Lacey Blue Russian Sage Live Plant.
Eric would probably like Blue Sage in his garden. (except it’s nearing mid-winter Down Under)
http://www.thetreefarm.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/l/a/lacey-blue-dwarf-russian-sage.jpg
Available from Amazon. $11.99
Free shipping for Amazon Prime.
Dang, busted, I like Borscht…
No Max………..Potatoes are SOUTH AMERICAN ……………..like CORN and TOBACCO I understand !
So, Kristi, tell us what important parts he left out,and what the few projects that measure stuff we need to know are?
SR
[Cue the crickets.]
Kristi
So, these magical Europeans, who want to replace the USA as a superpower, can’t figure out how to measure the other 65 things?
Europe can’t come up with $10M to measure 65 things? That’s only $154,000 per thing.
Exactly why does all this matter?
Someone needs to send Kelly Sims Gallagher the memo that the US is formally withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement effective November 2020. The notification of Intent to Withdraw was already sent in 2017 by President Trump, who controls US foreign policy. President Trump is not bound by any treaty because there is no treaty. The Worst US President Ever (#44) refused to submit his Paris Agreement signature achievement to the US Senate for ratification. So nullification by Trump is straightforward and quite legal. And expending taxpayer money on additional requirements of something your are withdrawing from would be Waste.
Someone should also send Ms Gallagher a copy of the US constitution as she is obviously lacking an understanding of Separation of Powers between the co-equal branches.
Much like the Iran deal. Subvert the Constitutional system in order to get around the people and states having their Senators reject it. Thankfully Trump has a pen too, and knows how to use it and in both instances I doub’t even the most leftist wacko justice can stop him. Endorsement by the UN or any other body but the Senate, a treaty does not make.
This was an excellent decision . NASA climate scientists have no one to blame but themselves .
They mislead through omission , just like the Comey play book that eventually comes back to bite them in the ass .
$10 million is nothing but a down payment on the $1 billion the Obama administration robbed tax payers of
in fraudulent disbursement to the UN Green Climate Fund .
An Executive Order is insufficient authority to pay out billions that have not been approved by Congress .
Otherwise President Trump would simply start writing Executive Orders to build a wall .
Pay the money back Green Climate Fund before you hurt the UN further .
Looking at the NASA website it appears that CMS is doing a lot more than just operating satellites and publishing the data. Rather it is an attempt to spin the data to a politically correct conclusion.
The CO2 monitoring satellite has been a huge problem for the nature deniers as it shows that CO2 concentrations are not correlated with industrial activity; rather man-made CO2 is lost in the variability of natural emissions.
Getting NASA back to its correct role of operating satellites and making the data available is a sensible move.
Well put.
“I don’t see why USA dropping funding for a programme which duplicates European efforts will reduce the world’s carbon monitoring capability, or cause any harm to US interests. The $10 million per year saving might only be a drop in the government budget, but one drop at a time eventually adds up to serious savings.”
A principled skeptical view of AGW would hold that we have no certainty about
1. How much warming C02 will cause
2. Whether or not we can safely cut emissions
3. Whether or not countries abide by their committments.
We simply don’t know.
When we have uncertainty one thing that helps is observations.
This is just another example of skeptics acting like believers. They Believe that there is no way C02 could
have bad effects. Consequently they see no need for observation. They trust Europe to do it right, consequently they see no reason for confirmation.
FFS.
You have missed/ignored the duplication part of that paragraph.
As far as I can tell, CMS is not doing anything that is not being done elsewhere.
Also CMS is about processing, not observations. OCO-2 is still going to be observing and, hopefully, the raw data will become available, without NASA’s spin.
Now that’s rich! Mosh telling skeptics what “a principled skeptical view” should be.
Consequently they see no need for observation. They trust Europe to do it right, consequently they see no reason for confirmation.
How long must we continue to waste valuable resources confirming that we didn’t beat our wife?
Nice deflection Mr Mosher.
Your 3 points are not consistent with the following:
“The move jeopardizes plans to verify the national emission cuts agreed to in the Paris climate accords, argues Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University’s Center for International Environment and Resource Policy. “If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the agreement,” Gallagher told Science.”
Since the U.S. is no longer a part of nor believes in the Paris accord, there is no reason we should participate in monitoring who is or is not adhering to it. Perhaps Mayor Bloomberg will replace the money with his own.
” Perhaps Mayor Bloomberg will replace the money with his own.”
There’s an idea! Just think how virtuous Bloomberg could appear to be! And for a measly $10 million. Pocket change when it comes to promoting his virtuous image..
Mosher,
FFS indeed.
Why don’t you give us your very own principled viewpoint about AGW (or what constitutes an appropriate, meaningful, and cost-effective program of NASA), rather than your projections about what a principled skeptical viewpoint would entail?
But this time, do make the effort to spell properly.
CO2, not (C02)
Commitments, not commitments.
FFS LOL.
oops, spell check corrected the misspelling of commitments (with tt). 🙂
“A principled skeptical view of AGW would hold that we have no certainty about
1. How much warming C02 will cause”
Oh, I think we do: There has never been a runaway Greenhouse effect on Earth even with atmospheric CO2 concentrations much larger than today and much larger than would occur if humans burned every fossil fuel available, and yet there has been no runaway Greehouse, no matter how high the atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been in the past, so I think we can safely say that atmospheric CO2 won’t cause a Runaway Greenhouse in the future, either .
A principled skeptical view of AGW is that the null hypothesis holds until proven otherwise. We’ve had more than 30 years and Trillion$ of dollars wasted with no verifiable results showing otherwise.
That’s enough! It’s past time to stop funding this crap.
While it is true that we don’t know down to a thousandth of a degree how much warming CO2 will cause.
On the other hand we can look to the past and see that CO2 levels more than 10 times higher than the worst case scenario didn’t cause any problems.
From that it’s easy to conclude that more CO2 in the atmosphere is incapable of causing any problems.
Why should we spend money to monitor compliance to an agreement that we are not a part of?
That rationale is why BEST exists. It too is a redundant effort that should be axed.
But then after a while you begin realize so much of what the US government pays for (for tax money) is effectively just a jobs program. A self-licking ice cream cone that exists for its own benefit.
Trump is inadvertently right to believe that the Paris Treaty is not a solution. Brutal geoengineering is needed immediately and introducing new technologies such as fusion or LENR.
That really does need an /sarc tag.
Brutal geoengineering is needed to prevent half a degree of warming? (At most!)
Geoengineering is a cure that is far worse than the supposed disease. Just say NO!
I’m wondering why it took so long ?
Why on earth should the US shoulder the costs of something they’ve rejected ?
The US hasn’t jeopardized the world’s ability to measure CO2 – it’s simply declining to pay the bill.
China and Japan both have CO2 monitoring satellites. link The problem is not a lack of satellites.
That $10 million could be used to plant a lot of hardwoods, couldn’t it? And clean out invasive species like buckthorn and kudz, and parasites like honeysuckle? Give fingerling trout a chance to grow up a little before they get sent to The Big Waters?
Just an idea: if it’s true that dread molecule Carbon, a very malleable soul that enjoys the company of many, many other molecules, is even vaguely responsible for a portion of warmth on this little planet of ours, isn’t it a sort of Guardian Against the Ice Again? (GAIA????)
What? Too early for puns. I like butter and strawberry jam with my morning puns and caffeine.
Niiiice!
“Carbon monitoring?” The article author never says “CO2”, just “carbon”, as if they are the same thing. Carbon is soot. CO2 is plant food.
Carbon is the elemental basis of all life on Planet Earth.
This doesn’t mean that all carbon monitoring and measuring is gone. It just means that leadership in this area will most likely be passed on to Europe
Go for it, Europe. Monitor & measure away. While you do that, the US will be building stuff that’s actually useful.
It’s all nonsense. There is already a NASA CO2 and Methane observing satellite in orbit, OCO-2. There is also the Japanese GOSAT and, indeed, ESA is launching the whole system, Copernicus, of Earth observing satellites, that will include one observing CO2 and Methane too. NASA, in the meantime, is reorienting its efforts away from the Earth orbit and towards deep space exploration. We have other agencies in the US that look back on Earth, e.g., NOAA.
It is simply no longer NASA’s job to do this kind stuff. NOAA can, if they want to, contract a launch of their own satellites, of which they have several, with SpaceX.
My daily email from the American Association for the Advancement of Science in America (AAASA)…
I’m pretty sure that fire would have been noticed without “NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a $10-million-a-year research line”… The photo about as moronic as photos of steam venting from power plant cooling towers accompanied by an idiotic caption about carbon pollution.
Something this idiotic is always irresistible click bait….
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/trump-white-house-quietly-cancels-nasa-research-verifying-greenhouse-gas-cuts?utm_campaign=news_daily_2018-05-09&et_rid=237382256&et_cid=2020743
Note to the pencil-necked geek jack-booted thugs at the AAASA… These tangentially United States are not a party to any climate treaties. Why in the Hell would we spend one dime of taxpayer money on monitoring a treaty to which we aren’t a party?
Note to “Kelly”… Who the frack cares? We aren’t a party to the Paris accord… Largely because the previous occupant of the White House refused to submit it to the Senate for ratification as a treaty. It was an agreement between Obama and whoever else was dumb enough to sign on to it. It was effectively null and void at the moment the greatest president since Ronald Reagan took the oath of office,
I just realized the headline is difficult to read in the original image from the email…
Actchally, the “agreement” is composed of many “promises” and no measures of merit or actual numbers except the promised ones.
No enforcement mechanism, ’cause after all, a promise is only a promise.
So my point is how in the hell are you measuring “compliance” of promises?
Gums sends…
David, what the *holes at AAASA say is ridiculous. How can “greenhouse gas cuts” be verified from a satellite? That’s been done for yrs by fuel-usage stats that are & have been commonly available.
How can you tell if the *holes at AAASA are saying something ridiculous?
Their lips are moving.
😉
“Our dependence on fossil fuel has created an environmental crisis and once again science will be called upon to find a solution. North Carolina, I say to you that the individuals who will develop the clean energy source that will help us break our addiction to fossil fuels could be in one of our classrooms, could be here today. So do not let the messages you’ve heard here today fade away. Contact your representatives and tell them to stand up for science. And if they do not listen, come November, vote for science!”
From March for Science talk by Sigma Xi Executive Officer and CEO. I seriously doubt that he understands thermodynamics or what he is standing up for. This is the longstanding Science Honor Society that recently joined with AAAS for advocacy purposes. I have been a member for some 4 decades and among an uncertain number have complained to no avail.
Get another patsy, commies.
If it’s that important of an endeavor, someone else will step up. The important thing for the US is to get NASA out of the climate scam business and back to focusing on their efforts to drop billions of dollars on Mars.