Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Bob Walker, senior campaign adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, has re-affirmed Trump’s commitment to NASA focussing on space exploration, by stating that NASA’s Earth Science Division would be stripped of funding as part of a Trump crackdown on “Politicized Science”.
Trump to scrap Nasa climate research in crackdown on ‘politicized science’
Nasa’s Earth science division is set to be stripped of funding as the president-elect seeks to shift focus away from home in favor of deep space exploration.
…
Bob Walker, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said there was no need for Nasa to do what he has previously described as “politically correct environmental monitoring”.
“We see Nasa in an exploration role, in deep space research,” Walker told the Guardian. “Earth-centric science is better placed at other agencies where it is their prime mission.
“My guess is that it would be difficult to stop all ongoing Nasa programs but future programs should definitely be placed with other agencies. I believe that climate research is necessary but it has been heavily politicized, which has undermined a lot of the work that researchers have been doing. Mr Trump’s decisions will be based upon solid science, not politicized science.”
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Climate scientists at other organizations expressed dismay at the potential gutting of Earth-based research.
Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said as Nasa provides the scientific community with new instruments and techniques, the elimination of Earth sciences would be “a major setback if not devastating”.
“It could put us back into the ‘dark ages’ of almost the pre-satellite era,” he said. “It would be extremely short sighted.
“We live on planet Earth and there is much to discover, and it is essential to track and monitor many things from space. Information on planet Earth and its atmosphere and oceans is essential for our way of life. Space research is a luxury, Earth observations are essential.”
…
I remember growing up, reading science fiction authors like Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn, about the great battles for funding, about how Senator William Proxmire (D-Wisconsin) did everything in his power to kill American space research.
His reason for doing so? Like Climate Scientist Kevin Trenberth, Senator Proxmire believed Space exploration was an unnecessary luxury, a waste of taxpayer’s funds. Proxmire wanted to strip the NASA budget to fund welfare programmes.
I never imagined back then that the true enemy of NASA’s original deep space mission would strike from within, slowly eating away an ever increasing share of NASA’s internal space budget like a raging parasitic infection, leaving the original shell intact, but quietly transforming NASA from a space exploration agency into a glorified weather programme.
Perhaps Trump will make NASA great again.
Correction (EW): h/t South River Independent, Jon von Briesen – Senator Proxmire was D-Wisconsin, not D-Illinois, he was born in Illinois.
The Guardian article is very very vague on who said what when. They quote Walked as ” said there was no need for Nasa to do what he has previously described as “politically correct environmental monitoring”.”
When and under what circumstances Walker said other things quoted., as “told the Guardian” is not clear.
I’m not all that sure that this is news.
the Space Shuttle was a program without a real mission and a waste of money. the Space Station is a marginal science research facility with little payback. If 5 people make it to Mars and back by the end of this century I would be surprised (although long gone). Mars will never be colonized. Man will never travel to any other solar system. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with believing there are real limitations in space travel and exploration. The NASA/climate science link is an attempt by vested interests to keep it relevant and the budget growing.
I tend to agree with you dave……we’re not that advanced
Face it….we got to those places by strapping an explosion on their butts
Before Mars, they should set a prize for how long a bunch of people can live in a sealed capsule in Antarctica with strictly limited resources and no hope of quick re-supply in the event of an emergency. That is, unlike Biosphere 2, that silly experiment in a greenhouse in the Arizona desert where the wild excursions in imagination quickly came up against reality and they were effectively able to ask for pizza deliveries.
@ur momisugly Michael hart, I believe they did try something like that in Russia. That had people live in isolation for one year I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARS-500
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with believing there are real limitations in space travel and exploration.”
The main thing that’s limiting us today is the danger and economics of chemical rockets, reusable or not. Once we figure out how to use EM energy to manipulate space-time, the economics will change dramatically and the danger will drop as well. While it’s fine to be skeptical about whether or not this is practical physics tells us that it’s a theoretical possibility. Even General Relativity infers some kind of relationship between EM energy and space-time curvature. If only we knew the stress energy tensor representation of a photon. Oh wait, we do …
I agree, it’s possible. For example the speed of light is not an absolute, light travels at different speeds depending on permittivity of the medium it travels through. Think of permittivity as a drag/friction on energy. The permittivity of free space ε0 = 8.8541878176.. × 10−12 F/m. If there was a way to reduce the permittivity of free space then you would theoretically speed up any electromagnetic wave travelling through that space. (Compress space), by successively compressing space, moving through it and then expanding space (even a mm at a time) one can warp from place to place. Do it fast enough and you have a space compression (warp) drive.
Now how can we lower the permittivity of space, well I propose that if you can suppress the zero point flux in a space then that space will collapse (compress) under the pressure of the zero point field outside the void. Can that be done, YES, there are known ways as this is what is currently thought to cause the Casmir Effect.
As surprising as this sounds it has some logic support, when we add mass to space then we bend it (stretch it), removing mass/energy from space then should logically compress space. The only mass/energy to remove is the Zero point virtual flux.
This theory (speculation) does lead to an odd thought, propagation of energy can be represented as waves and particles, what if the whole of existence is particle based, and the movement of energy is actually instantaneous through the voids between the particles of the zero point flux, that is the voids don’t exist in a traditional sense, then light impinging on the beginning of a void emerges instantaneously out the other side, the speed being reduced by the drag of the zero point field. That is the density of the particles in the zero point flux is what sets the maximum speed of light. Near a black hole however gravity clears out the zero point field and light can warp across from the event horizon causing a “Black hole” in space.
Of course this is somewhat theoretical and is probably completely wrong but it gives me hope of a viable warp drive some day…
bobl,
“Now how can we lower the permittivity of space,”
Photons seem to do this, although its accompanied with an equal and opposite increase in the permeability and the amount that it’s changed by is the fine structure constant. The permittivity is about 1/a (137) times lower, while the permeability is about 137 times larger than the equivalent free space occupied by the photon, thus the speed of light is unchanged 1/sqrt(e0u0) and only the characteristic impedance sqrt(u0/e0) will change. In effect the ‘Q’ of a photon’s equivalent resonant circuit relative to the space-time it’s occupying is 1/a.
To derive this, model a photon as a resonant LC circuit, constrained by E=hv and the unit charge. Given that the resonant frequency is 1/sqrt(LC), the energy stored in a capacitor is q^2 / 2C and the velocity is c, the required L and C are easily determined and the resulting impedance at resonance is sqrt(L/C). This tells us that the fine structure constant the ratio of 2 impedances. One is the impedance of free space and the other is the resonant impedance of the aforementioned LC circuit model of a photon. This is about 52K ohms and calculated exactly as, Zp = 2h/q^2 = sqrt(L/C) where the fine structure constant is calculated as, a = Zo/Zp.
Since L and C are functions of geometry, e0 and u0, the only way to modify the resulting L and C so that it conforms to the requirements of Maxwell’s equations (a resonant LC circuit) is to modify the geometry, which effectively requires both curving and un-curving the space-time occupied by the photon relative to the space-time the photon is travelling through and a scalar metric of this curvature is the fine structure constant.
It’s also kind of cool that the importance of the fine structure constant as it unites mass and charge jumps out when you create a system of natural units where the distance unit is the Compton wavelength, the time unit is the Compton period, the charge unit is the charge of an electron and the mass unit is the mass of an electron, the physical constants, u0, e0, c, Z0, Zp, Me, q, h and the Compton frequency, wavelength and period are all either 1, 2 or functions of the fine structure constant. This is not completely surprising since the fine structure constant is a function of h, q and c and u0, but what is interesting is that Me is in the mix and that while we often consider the fine structure constant to be a measure of the strength of EM interactions, it also units EM to mass and space-time curvature.
The counter argument is that photons modelled as a point in space-time don’t obey Maxwell’s equation precisely because of the aforementioned inconsistency with the required L and C. This is really a consequence of when you take a snapshot of a photon at a point in space-time, there’s not enough information to determine its frequency or wavelength. You must look either across time or space. If you consider the photon a 4-d object that spans time and space as a smear proportional to its period and wavelength which is projected into our 3-d perception as a point and explain the inconsistency as a manifestation of the space-time curvature representation of a photon, it all makes perfect sense.
With this model, the photon propels itself by falling into a local curvature gradient, which is one way some have proposed that warp drive might work. If you can make your craft produce a bubble of space-time curvature and fall into a space-time curvature gradient, you have warp drive and it seems that the photon is the existence proof that this is possible and indicates that the energies required are manageable. In other words, warp drive makes your craft look like a photon to the rest of the Universe.
This hypothesis also results in an a few interesting symmetries, one is that the strong force is complementary to the force of gravity (weird, but not unexpected). Another is that matter curves space while charge curves time (negative charge is curved into the past while positive charge is curved into the future, both by half a Compton period), but since space and time are connected through the speed of light, both curve space-time. A corresponding model of particles, where the curved space is on the outside and the un-curved space is on its inside and where anti-particles are the opposite can explain what happens to the space-time curvature (gravity) of matter when it’s annihilated. It’s still there and simply reorganized into photons.
“once we figure out how to use EM energy to manipulate space-time” is like saying
“once we learn magic”. There is no experimental or theoretical evidence that such a
thing is possible.
“once we learn magic”
What is technology to some would be magic to a less technologically advanced civilization. Cell phones, tablets, pc’s and even the Internet as we now know it would have been considered magic just 50 years ago and much of the technology we have today wasn’t even in the realm of the science fiction of the day.
You are wrong about the theoretical possibility, but on the experimental side, nobody’s been able to conceive the definitive experiment yet, not that there aren’t some ideas out there …
bobl, I like your thinking, I am no good at that sort of hard science but I have always been fascinated by the same thoughts about light, quantum particles and even our thought process. That thought process is instantaneous, all we do is look at a picture and there we are. Keep it up, I like it.
@ur momisugly asybot
November 23, 2016 at 6:04 pm: Stalin did a lot of that sort of experiment to scores of millions. Their bones are on the Steppe.
co2isnotevil, A rather interesting treatment though what you write fits with what we see, That mass can only increase impedance and not reduce it. That is we can only slow light we cant speed it up. From this I imply that mass (and per your discussion photons) can only stretch space where as for a warp drive we need to compress space – this would require anti-energy or antimatter. We know from Quantum mechanics that it is possible that the universe is seething with particle-antiparticle pairs which is the implied zero point flux, so only on average space is empty. What happens if we suppress the particle-antiparticle flux? Well the Casmir Force implies that there is a force created between the objects, a space-time distortion (compression) occurs that creates a gravitational well forcing the two plates together. I’d wager that the geometric symmetry was broken and the impedance lowered.
Just a little theory of mine.
bobl,
“From this I imply that mass (and per your discussion photons) can only stretch space where as for a warp drive we need to compress space – this would require anti-energy or antimatter.”
My hypothesis (speculative) is that photons both stretch and compress space-time in equal and opposite amounts consequential to a space-time resonance quantified by the Compton frequency and the fine structure constant. For a warp drive, you compress and expand space-time locally around your craft and fall into the compressed space-time in your future leaving the decompressed space-time of your past in your wake. In effect, you make a tiny wormhole that connects a point in time a small amount in the future to one a small amount in the past and ‘tunnel’ through space-time bypassing most of time as you traverse through space while dragging this little wormhole with you.
The requirement for large negative energy/negative mass arises from the singularity model of particles (QCD) relative to space-time curvature (GR) which implies that warping space-time requires you to act on the entire Universe. If instead, the particle singularity is stretched into a surface of space at a single point in time (similar to how string theory works), where the uncurved space is on the inside, the infinities go away, the ‘negative energy’ is already there, neither GR nor QCD breaks, it explains what happens to gravity (curvature) when particles and anti-particles annihilate each other and to warp space-time, net energy only needs to applied locally instead of to the entire Universe. GR now becomes the unified field theory that Einstein thought it could become. With this model, particles contain equal and opposite amounts of curved and uncurved space-time, where the curved space-time on the outside overlaps with the curved components of everything else (gravity) and the uncurved space on the inside is isolated from all other uncurved space (except within atomic nuclei) and which seems to manifest the strong force (anti-particles flip the roles of curved and uncurved). Forces and energy arises because space-time intrinsically resists being curved or uncurved and because curved space-time and uncurved space-time are separated in time, they can not trivially cancel each other out. Photons present curved and uncurved space-time equally to the Universe and as a result are massless relative to the containing Universe. Charge introduces a caveat where negatively charged particles are curved a bit into the past, while positively charged particles are curved a bit into the future (in both cases by half a Compton period). Since photons exist both a little in the past and a little in the future, they can effectively manifest both a positive and negative charge.
The boundary between the curved component and the ‘uncurved’ component that stretches a point in space-time into a surface of space at a point in time can trace its origin back to the nothingness that preceded the Big Bang. The arrow of time originates at this boundary, where the past is outside and all possible futures are on the inside. In this model, the arrow of time is an irreversible filter that selects one future from all possible futures and operates independently for each particle, where the force of charge keeps all the time lines in local sync. In the beginning, a 1 dimensional proto-universe was randomly curving and uncurving as space-time fluctuated around zero. At some point it was inevitable that a random fluctuation would make the original proto-universe so curved it curved in on itself, time separated from space as the arrow of time became committed to a single direction and inflation began. The resulting 2-d Universe (mass) expanded and eventually curved in on itself and a 3-d Universe (EM) arose. After this one expanded and curved in on itself, our 4-d matter Universe (particles) arose and gravity took over. Inflation stopped because the uncurved space-time became isolated from the curved space-time by the resulting 3-d boundaries at a single point in time and that defines particles. I call this hypothesis Dimensional Evolution.
What a warp drive based on this hypothesis must do is to construct one of these nullification boundaries around a craft which effectively isolates it from the space-time of the containing Universe allowing it to slip right through it without regard for SR limitations and then construct a local curvature gradient on top of this for propulsion. In effect, the craft is inside of a photon.
There is some discussion of EM Drive, which may be possible and allow exploration of the solar system, at Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor.
Too bad you weren’t around in 1492 to explain why sailing around in the world in wooden sailing ships just didn’t make sense.
I’m sure this opinion was not in short supply at the time regardless.
You are quite correct. How many sailors who believed that the world was round went out and fell off the edge of the world?
Sailors and scholars in 1492 all knew that the world was round, Washington Irving’s fable notwithstanding. The issue was the size of the earth, not its shape.
By that time, Europeans had already sailed farther south than Columbus proposed to sail west. His crew were concerned about the steadiness of the wind from the east, not the distance that they had sailed. They didn’t know, as Columbus did, that at a higher latitude the wind blew just as steadily from the west, to carry them all safely home.
Never say never, Dave.
NASA’s space expenditures did not have to be a waste of money. A lack of vision caused the meager progress. We could aleady have people in orbit around Mars had we handled our resources properly.
Maybe Trump will find a visionary for NASA, and we can get this right this time.
Dave,
I spent 23 years launching Space Shuttles. It wasn’t a waste of money to me.
as Donald Trump noted- the asteroids are the goal, not Mars. the Asteroids are the next frontier- hollowed out for colonies- easily sealed up from space- gigatrillions of money waiting on the exploitation of nearly limitless resources that only need a little shove to fall into near-earth/ lunar orbits. As far as man never traveling to other solar systems- do you really want to state, like the british royal society nebbishes over a hundred years ago that we now actually really no kidding know EVERYTHING about physics and all that science stuff?
“as Donald Trump noted- the asteroids are the goal, not Mars. the Asteroids are the next frontier- hollowed out for colonies- easily sealed up from space- gigatrillions of money waiting on the exploitation of nearly limitless resources”
Speaking of limitless resources, there looks to be a pretty good source of nickel-iron in the asteriod belt, the asteriod 16 Psyche which scientists think might be the exposed core of an ancient planetary body. It’s about 200 kilometers in diameter, and contains all sorts of useful materials.
NASA is thinking about sending a probe to visit 16 Psyche.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche
There are lots of resources in space just waiting for humans to come get.
It may be easier to build an artificial habitable “asteriod” rather than hollowing a real one out. Both are viable options. One or the other is necessary for humans to live safely in space for the longterm.
Humans *must* have Earth-equivalent gravity and protection from lethal radiation. Large rotating, thick-skinned habitats, first in Earth orbit and then beyond, will give us this protection, and our main space program goal should be to develop the infrastructure and the activities that will get us to the point of being able to build these habitats.
Once the first one is built, there will be no looking back for the human race.
We almost have everything hardware-wise that we need to start doing these kinds of things. We just need NASA’s leader to decide that’s what we ought to be doing, and keep everyone focused.
There are any number of unsolved problems in physics — quantum gravity, dark energy, dark matter
just to name a few. But none of them are likely to lead to human sized faster than light spaceships. For
that to be possible much of what we know today would be wrong and not only slightly wrong but fundamentally wrong. Plus why choose “EM energy to manipulate space-time” rather than say “once
we learn how to wave a stick about to manipulate space-time” Both would require most of our current
understanding of physics to be wrong before they would be possible.
And in 1492 there were a lot of astronomers who knew the correct circumference of the world and
who therefore could predict that Columbus would starve before he would reach China. Which is why
Columbus has so much trouble getting funded for his trip. And the astronomers were correct but of
course Columbus got lucky. And a more accurate analogy would be explaining why sailing to the moon
in wooden sailing ships didn’t make sense – since that describes the level of improbability better than
sailing around the world.
“Both would require most of our current understanding of physics to be wrong before they would be possible.”
Not necessarily so. Any advances in understanding along these lines will undoubtedly build on what we know and converge in some limit to what we think we know. General Relativity didn’t obsolete Newtonian gravity but just gave is a better understanding of how gravity worked under a wider range of conditions and converged to Newtonian gravity in a limit that at one time we thought was all there was. It’s absolutely certain that any discovery which enables non chemical propulsion sufficient to get us to the stars will be absolutely consistent with General Relativity which already has the analytical richness to support things as crazy sounding as wormholes and warp drive.
Geronimo,
IMO Columbus didn’t get lucky, but knew that land lay within sailing distance of Europe. I don’t know whether he really believed that Asia extended as far to the east as he argued or that earth was as small as he claimed, but his experiences in Iceland (Greenland) and the Azores (“non-Christian” bodies washed ashore), plus perhaps secret Basque knowledge of the Newfoundland cod fisheries, told him that land was out there, within reach.
@co2isnotevil
Agreed, Even the notion that time is a dimension implies that there are solutions for negative time ( we currently ignore negative time solutions to maxwells equations because we don’t have a meaning for negative time). Even a conventional drive can travel instantaneously if the motion in time can be decoupled from motion in space. As I pointed out before classical EM and Quantum mechanics differ on whether space is empty or whether Maxwell was right and there is an ether (in Quantum mechanics the zero point flux). The idea that space is empty is an assumption promulgated by Einstein that is possibly/probably wrong. Space might be only be empty on average, a mix of photons and antiphotons that are on average nothing.
Indeed it can be shown that an em wave can indeed transit a region that has zero energy – 273K, that can’t happen if there is no energy in the region of space. There is too much we don’t know and warping space over small regions is one of the unknown things that might just be possible.
David Andrews, NASA developed space drive technology capable of powering a starship in the 1950s, so it is simply wrong to suggest we don’t have the capability.
Project Orion
People are too quick to forget the benefits to all mankind that space exploration brings. I believe we received battery operated tools for one, every household (western society) probably has at least one. I think another was silastic. If that is true then every car and every house (western society) has some. NASA, get off climate and onto what your mandate is. Leave climate to those who are (dare I say it) qualified. In Australia we lost the world renown CSIRO to climate junk. Every blessing Janice!!
How could you leave off your list Corning Ware and the single most important gift to man since duck (from duik, Dutch for linen) tape, WD-40?
From a canvas-like waterproofing material known as “Cotton Duck”, used in huge quantities during WWII.
“Repels water like water off a duck’s back”
It’s spelled “Duct” tape, I believe…
Yep, Duct tape. For taping the seams in heating and air conditioning ducts (the big sheet metal pipes and boxes that the air is blown through.
One of the relatively few things duct tape DOESN’T work well on. >¿< Which is why we now a days use metal foil tape for that. But Duct tape has proven to be so useful for other uses that it will continue to be produced for decades to come.
Truly one of Mankind's greatest creations.
How could we live without Tang?
The poon kind?
😎
I remember when I was a kid we begged our parents to buy us some “Tang”.
They finally did.
We stopped begging them.
or freeze dried ice cream???
How about the advances in computers alone? But that said since we stopped going to the Moon a lot of advances have stopped being as drastic as that last “boom”. Even today’s rocketry has basically stagnated. Yes there are advances in materials but until we make huge steps forward with new propulsion we will not advance very fast. (anti gravity anyone?). Even the next generation “heavy lift” systems are only slightly more advanced than a Saturn V , remember? the late 60’s are now almost 60 year old teck!!! ( of course I like the stationary equatorial elevators I see that as the one way to get asteroid harvesting started)
Moderation standards here have relaxed somewhat over the last 12 months.
Joel,
Today it would appear so, but pictures of naked female chancellors and their communist youth comrades are streng verboten.
…. must have the poon kind …..
What gets me is that it is not NASA that has the satellite or balloon based temperature record but the earth based, UHI polluted or canvas/wooden/metal bucket based thermometer record, the substantive and most contextual part of which record well and truly precedes space exploration. GISSTemp is a joke and its maintenance within NASA is utterly ludicorous. Its something you might expect in the script of an absurdist, spoof movie or play…. or Animal Farm Revisited.
I’ve always thought it absurd that the U.S. had two different “official” temperature records.
Now that really is ludicorous. Term attributable to M Seward. I claim “fair use” under Copyright to avoid an unnecessary lawsuit.
“I’ve always thought it absurd that the U.S. had two different “official” temperature records.”
It doesnt. there is no such thing as an official temperature record.
And are either of them the real data or are they both massaged to fit the message?
“GISSTemp” requires about a 1/4 manyear to maintain.
You could defund it and I could still run the code.
1. NOAA produces the data.
2. Giss Ingest that data.
3. The code just runs
Oh that’s good news.
But defunding had one profound effect. The head of GISS could no longer speak as the head of GISS. So lets defund.
(In my opinion, Best has done good work and you are personally much more credible person than the head of GISS. However it would help if you just mostly ignored the fake skeptics instead of complaining so often about fake skeptisism. You know, there are crackpots, potheads and regular people, you don’t need to send a oneliner for each of those, right?)
My nomination for word of the year folks – “ludicorous” – I claim all copyright.
It means a chorus of craziness, a la GISS excuses for their pause busting NEW, IMPROVED DATA SURFACE TEMPERATURE SET WITH ADDED TRENDINESS AND EAU DE PARIS.
You may substitute ‘ludicrous’ at your leisure to avoid a law suit.
🙂
The word, “ludicrosity” is mine, though. ;-P
“Climate fearosphere” is widely misunderestimated.
Trumpocalypse!
Can’t believe no one’s posted https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DoApAdwuqtn8&ved=0ahUKEwjQ5Ymnr8LQAhXnxVQKHdGdCcsQtwIIHzAB&usg=AFQjCNHuh6qvDzDjbg5t7-7ak1YxKX4Cwg
Oh, honestly. >¿< the problem with trying to post from a phone. Nothing works the same. Let's try that again.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oApAdwuqtn8
Glorified FAKE weather program is what the place is. It’s fraud, all of it. The science of refusing to properly calculate the temperature of the atmosphere is not ‘basically sound.”
Doesn’t NASA fund UAH and RSS for their earth atmospheric temperature profile work? Will that funding go away when the earth science funding goes away? I really like the NASA WorldView webpage. Is that going to be dropped as well?
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
Be careful what you wish for.
Maybe it’s gone already, lol. Won’t load the page for me!
If they fund UAH should they not use them instead of their adjusted temperatures?
they measure two different things
They don’t fund UAH but they do fund RSS partially with NOAA and NSF. I would drop RSS. With UAH and STAR (NOAA) they already have two data sets.
Maybe Dr Roy Spencer is the best to answer that question;
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/18/rss-resets-former-pause-length-and-2016-record-race-now-includes-september-and-october-data/#comment-2345641
Doesn’t NASA fund UAH …
Yeah, I thought of that too. Looked it up, though. UAH microwave sounding satellite funded by NOAA.
As I type this there are 38 replies and no mention of President Eisenhower’s farewell address.
It happened.
You’re right – it happened because we weren’t listening. It seems we really aren’t very good at listening.
To paraphrase one of the European scholars of the last century [I think it may have been Churchill]: ‘The United States tries every possible wrong solution to a problem before (usually) selecting the correct one.’
I think it was Churchill, but he could easily said this as well‘ The United States tries every possible wrong solution to a problem before using the only one left over.’ But the one nice thing is that mostly the USA gives them to the rest of the planet ( after a tidy profit) except for Chinese they just steal them and Russia who out of principal didn’t buy them.
Ah, no. It is not the United States that “tries every possible wrong solution”, it is the political left in America that has done that. Democrat or Republican, leftists are the problem.
Steward,
Would that be a chorus of Luddites?????
I do not see this as nearly the positive as many of you here do.
Funding is restorable. when the dead wood drops then growth can begin anew (in a better direction).
MattN
Just a guess – you have never been accurately accused of over-communicating.
“Space research is a luxury, Earth observations are essential.”
Sounds like he’s throwing the rest of NASA under the bus to keep from getting eliminated for being redundant among Earth observers.
I wonder if he and Gavin are getting that “Lysenko-ing” feeling, yet?
We’ll remember this next time we’re looking to cut the fat.
Oh dear. The climate gravy train appears to be running out of steam. What a shame.
“Mr Trump’s decisions will be based upon solid science, not politicized science.” says it all. Trump is probably already counting on the redirected funding from AGW to fund national infrastructure programs. Just how many organizations do we need to be studying climate? There’s going to be some people looking for work with few available openings in the near future if they aren’t already. I’m also guessing there will be some bitter whistle blowers coming out of this mess claiming they were forced to comply with the AGW meme or lose their jobs.
What many people fail to realise, is that once we have people and craft in space, setting up a colony on the moon or mars is free. just like wind and solar power is free
Nothing of value is free.
It’s not free, it’s just a whole lot easier.
railgun launched craft to the asteroids from luna/ lunar orbit is easily within reach with our current technologies. bring back jerry pournelle and larry niven!!! before they are gone !!!
Space Studies Institute has all sorts of good information on making it possible to live permanently in space.
SSI.org
Sorry, but your comment stirred up visions of wind power on the moon. 🙂
Gavin was evidently not well enough funded to respond to any number of standard journalistic queries from yours truly about matters climate over the course of the past 10 years. He or a minion or a like-minded colleague at Real Climate was able to take the time to make a file indicating me as a problem on their delightful realclimatewiki page, however. So, I guess I got that for my tax dollars. He would never, ever adjust a climatological record, although the GISS record for Reykjavik in Don’t Sell Your Coat correctly shows no warming since the 1940s and the one on the GISS website today shows impressive warming. So, I guess I got that for my tax dollars, too.
I would love to see NASA extend it space programmes Hopefully it will never be undermined by politics in the long run. However, talking of politicised science, this is probably the most politicised science website I have ever come across. For eight years we have seen Obama run down, now we see Trump promoted. I can’t count how many times I have seen daft terms like “warmisist and left wing fanatics mentioned about about the most middle of the road politicians. I’ve seen solid right wing politicians idolised and old Tory Lords like Monkton using the site to promote traditional rural class systems and colonialism.
I agree politics and science should stay apart, but people in glass houses should not throw stones (Or people in greenhouses!) Apologies in advance for the apoplectic fits.
The whole CAGW topic is 97% politics. Where is your head?
..there is a YUUUUGE difference between a non governmental blog and a taxpayer funded research facility…Of course, you knew that didn’t you….Oh look, a squirrel !
http://s21.postimg.org/7vjbz56uv/squirrel_suicide_mission.png
The image is too hard to read so here’s some text to go with it.
Sorry to enjoy someone else’s misfortune but LOL.
“However, talking of politicised science, this is probably the most politicised science website I have ever come across.”
You mean you don’t consider all those alarmist websites to be politicized? But this one is?
Old Tory Lords created all classical Western Science, you maroon. Newton and pals? you may have heard of them- So whose system is better- rich aristocrats funding actual, real science hobbies, or social justice affirmative action “research” which produces pre-determined “findings” for the global elite, as they collect taxpayer dollars?
Not true.Many academics came from humble backgrounds. The aristocracy tend to go to Oxbridge because they have a better start in life At Eton or similar. A child with a medium level intelligence will do much better in life if he is from a wealthy background than a poor child who is extremely bright.
By the way, Newton funded his studies by working as a valet during his studies at Trinity College. He was from a middle class background, but hardly aristocracy.
I’d say that was the point you lost all credibility, but frankly you didn’t have much to begin with. ~¿~
COLONIALISM. Much like reactionist or counter-revolutionairy, the Leftists don’t actually know what it means. They just know they’re supposed to shout it at people the don’t agree with.
There is a strong correlation between political beliefs and global warming beliefs. It is therefore unsurprising to find many right wingers on this site.
The thing to note, though, is that bad science will get shot down no matter which side of the debate it supports. In other words, bad science that supports the skeptics does not get a free pass. There are enough engineers, scientists, meteorologists, statisticians, etc. that someone will call out any errors, omissions, incompetence, or just plain fraud.
CommieBob, yours is about the only sensible response I had from my post. Many thanks. The point I was trying to make is I know this site is biased towards Conservative and right wing politics, I accept that. But it just seems strange to rage against the politicisation of science, when that is exactly what large section of this site are about.
The community that gathers here is quite diverse. In that light, I think it’s laudable that conflicting opinions get posted.
Commiebob-san:
One’s political ideology is simply a manifestation of one’s epistomolotgy– not the other way around.
Conservatives are, by nature, empiricists, curious, skeptical, individualistic, and have a heathy distrust of government… Leftists, in general, are driven more by emotions and feelings, are group oriented, tend to accept authority, are altruistic, and think the government can solve all problems.
The CAGW ho-x should never have occured. When communism started to implode, the CAGW cult was developed take over the task of destoying capitalism and limited government ideologies.
It was quite sucessful in getting governments to waste $10’s of trillions of taxpayers’ money but its days are numbered…
Leftists don’t realize the blowback the CAGW demise will have against them… Hardworking taxpayers will not be pleased that Leftists wasted so many $trillions of their hard earned money for no reason whatsoever….
That unfortunately is precisely what has not happened.
You have to face the fact that science research has many flaws and among them is a politicized peer review system, where half the science articles are fraud intentional or not and cannot be reproduced. Where funding for science corrupts science itself to promote certain outcomes.
There are dozens of ways to attack the science of global warming it is easily proved that something is horribly wrong with this “science” that the scientists in this field use unscientific methodologies and base falsity upon falsity to build a mountain of garbage that has to be unraveled piece by piece.
A nit pick: Senator Proxmire was from Wisconsin. Famous for his Golden Fleece Awards.
Hopefully now we can get NASA’s “prime mission” changed from informing the arabs how much they contributed to the space program, back to actually launching missions to space. And get away from constant politically correct “training” (social PC indoctrination) and back to real mission and work related training.
..I think this means we’re not going to be sending any muslims to the moon
…I think this means we’re not going to be sending any m u s l i m s to the moon……..
@ur momisugly Latitude, I am glad my mouth was empty ! LOL ( BTW I wonder what the Quran, Koran? says about the “nearer to Allah” thing?)
Latitude, you reminded me of a fun song on that subject (sort of):
Who really believes, based on Trump’s many “promises” before the election, that they know for sure what Trump will actually do on any one of them? Trump emulated P.T. Barnum, quoted as saying that there is a sucker born every minute. How many of his “promises” are implemented will depend on the persons he appoints to run his various departments and agencies, and how much “freedom” he gives them in that.
Well, so far. he seems to be batting 1,000 ! IMHO…
That’s odd…..Hillary lost for those exact same reasons
I thought I saw a post here at WUWT a while ago from Jerry Pournelle. Maybe it was just “Jerry Pournelle”.
Michael Flynn and Alex Pournelle (Jerry’s son) posted on the Fallen Angels story in 2013.
Here is the ABC article mentioned above about mr Schmidt and claims he manipulated data , he seems to contradict himself .
Print Email Facebook Twitter More
NASA director debunks Malcolm Roberts’ theory on climate data manipulation in polite letter
Updated about an hour ago
From left to right: Malcolm Roberts and Gavin Schmidt
PHOTO: One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts (L) and NASA’s Gavin Schmidt (R). (ABC/Twitter)
RELATED STORY: Behind the scenes with Australia’s newest One Nation senatorRELATED STORY: Q&A showdown: Brian Cox takes on Malcolm Roberts
MAP: Australia
In a politely worded letter, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has addressed One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts’ concerns that the organisation’s data on climate change has been manipulated.
In a rare occurrence, director Gavin Schmidt personally wrote a letter in response to Senator Roberts’ request for information about the NASA GISTEMP analysis of global surface temperature history.
The GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP) is an estimate of global surface temperature change.
In the letter obtained by Fairfax Media and circulated widely on social media, the NASA scientist directed Senator Roberts to a number of links on the NASA website that published the entirety of NASA’s raw data and the code they use to analyse that data.
“However, you appear to hold a number of misconceptions which I am happy to clarify at this time,” the letter went on.
The first “misconception” noted by Mr Schmidt related to a graph that Senator Roberts had included in his request.
The graph, as Mr Schmidt pointed out, originated from the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN), a project run by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“Perhaps you might not be aware, but NOAA is a different US Govt. agency than NASA, and questions relating to their activities or products might be more usefully addressed to them,” Mr Schmidt said.
The second “misconception” pertained to Senator Roberts’ comments on the effect of homogeneity adjustments on Arctic temperatures “from whatever source”.
The NASA climate scientist continued his letter to Mr Roberts by explaining homogeneity adjustments.
“The claim that GISS has ‘removed the 1940s warmth’ in the Arctic is not correct,” he said.
Mr Schmidt explained that temperature records were homogenised.
This, he said, was a “necessary task to ensure that non-climatic influences in the analysis are minimised as much as possible”.
Mr Schmidt urged Senator Roberts if he had any remaining questions, to perform his own analyses.
“Finally, might I suggest that you avail yourself to the resources provided by the Bureau of Meteorology or CSIRO in Australia for further details on this topic,” the letter concluded.
This out-of-the-ordinary step taken by the NASA director was not the first time Senator Roberts has come up against a scientist over climate change.
In August, particle physicist Professor Brian Cox took on Senator Roberts on the ABC’s Q&A program.
Their exchange involved claims by Senator Roberts that climate data had been corrupted by NASA.
So what’s the difference between homogenised and removed ?
Roberts is just wrong about what NASA does as opposed to NOAA
Just wrong.
We fought hard to get the NASA code released .. it would help if folks actually looked at it
@ur momisugly Steven Mosher
November 23, 2016 at 4:32 pm: Unlike Gavin and Mosh, Malcolm is a skilled practical Physicist/Engineer. I back him in the long run…..
Homogenised is just a Euphamism for Corrupted.
The Homogenisation is a model of how the world is thought to work, they unbelievably think that thermometers over 1000km apart are somehow related. On the whole they are not. So the “data” that the climate models feed from is not the actual grid temperature but a model of temperature smeared over the surface of the planet. Climate models are the model of the output of a model. Because a chosen few reference thermometers represent a substantial chunk of the earth’s surface, cherry picking the right set of references can inflate the temperature trend of a huge chunk of the earths surface for example you can smear UHI from Darwin over a quarter the area of Australia. Indeed the minute you make an adjustment say for station moves, you are making assumptions and the set becomes “It’s a model stupid!”
I call all these “datasets” modeled temperature sets, so one can be scientifically accurate about what they are. GISTEMP is a modeled temperature set RSS and UAH are also modeled temperature sets although the assumptions are much more objective (orbital decay is a pretty good model). Only the raw data is a dataset though. All these modeled sets should always be referenced to the raw data (they should never be displayed without raw data).
Anthony: I think maybe you could take up this on principle – accurate representations of the origins of the various temperature series are important!
“are also modeled temperature sets although the assumptions are much more objective (orbital decay is a pretty good model). ”
Wrong
Lets take RSS
Since Satillites measure difference places at different times all the measurements have to be homogenized for changes in time of observations ( just like TOBS)
To homogenize for this RSS uses a GCM !!!
Second
The satillite reads a return that comes from both the SURFACE and the atmosphere. To Eliminate the surface return both groups have to make an assumption about the emissivity of the planet. They both assume a CONSTANT emmisivity over land..
Third.
in order to invert from brightness at the sensor to temperature at altitude UAH employ a radiative transfer model.. Here is a clue… radiative transfer physics is the physics that ALL of climate science
rests upon.
the structural uncertainty in satillite records is huge.
NOW, NASA has a new satillite that will help to calibrate existing satillites to a single standard.. launches in 2017 and a second bird in 2020.
Of course, skeptics dont like observations so cancel that shit.
Steven,
“The satillite reads a return that comes from both the SURFACE and the atmosphere. ”
It’s much easier to separate then you seem to think. The LWIR sensors are tuned to transparent regions of the emission spectrum and sense photons emitted directly by the surface (or clouds). Separating atmosphere emissions from surface emissions is simply a matter of determining the presence of clouds.
The only parts of the atmosphere that can emit energy in the transparent regions of the spectrum are clouds (and perhaps particulates) since O2 and N2 emit nothing into space. Since the sensors largely ignore absorption bands and in the clear sky, the only emissions originating from the atmosphere comes from GHG’s , atmospheric emissions that don’t originate from clouds are not even measured. The only exception is the water vapor channel which is tuned to a specific and relatively weak absorption band of H2O where the sensor voltage becomes proportional to atmospheric water content. The radiative transfer model (not a full blown GCM) is used to estimate temperature at altitudes other than the surface and to determine total planet emissions whose long term averages can be cross checked to the incident energy which is more directly measured.
Point taken Stephen, RSS is a model too. That is what I said anyway.
“but quietly transforming NASA from a space exploration agency into a glorified weather programme.”
Hey, those are my words. Make up your own sentences.
Well, I guess great minds think alike.
😉
@ur momisugly Steven Mosher
November 23, 2016 at 6:49 pm: ” Of course, skeptics dont like observations so cancel that shit” Frankly Mosh, you are getting a bit over the top again. But that is your problem, not ours. As time is revealing..
I agree with Speaker Newt Gingrich’s prior proposals to build a big, honkin’ permanent base on the moon. Once we have boots on the ground up there, we can study anything we want. Keeping an eye on the Earth is a damn good idea, but a moon base paves the way for deep space exploration, advanced manufacturing in low gravity, and who knows what else. http://www.space.com/14411-newt-gingrich-moon-base-cost.html
100% agree climate and earth monitoring are not NASA’s job.
Now they need to clean up the other areas whose job it is, so that their results are actually good scientific research based on non-biased data.
The Liberals are going to have conniption fits…
And please clean up the EPA!
“earth monitoring are not NASA’s job.”
Huh,
Landsat has been running since the early 70s
I didnt vote for Trump, and agreed with him on very little -except with regards to anthropogenic climate change (or whatever it’s called nowadays). After all is said and done, NASA should thank him for restoring their focus to their original purpose.