Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The NASA Transition Act 2017 has just been passed by the Federal Senate.
In the words of Congressman Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science Committee, this act refocusses NASA away from climate, towards space science.
Lawmakers eye shifting climate research from NASA
Scott Waldman, E&E News reporter
Climatewire: Friday, February 17, 2017
Lawmakers are remaking NASA in order to leave parts of the agency’s earth science program untouched but remove its climate change research.
It’s still unclear exactly how lawmakers plan to transform NASA’s mission, but Republicans and Trump administration officials have said they want the agency to focus on deep-space missions and away from climate change research, which is a part of its Earth Sciences Division. That has created uncertainty about the fate of the Earth Sciences Division, which accounts for about $2 billion of NASA’s $20 billion budget.
At a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing yesterday, Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said he wants a “rebalancing” of NASA’s mission. The lawmaker told E&E News he wants the agency to reprioritize its mission because the Obama administration cut space exploration funds.
Specifically, that could mean NASA’s work on climate change would go to another agency, with or without funding, or possibly would get cut. Smith and other Republicans avoided laying out specifics but acknowledged that earth science at NASA would likely face some significant changes in the near future.
“By rebalancing, I’d like for more funds to go into space exploration; we’re not going to zero out earth sciences,” he said. “Our weather satellites have been an immense help, for example, and that’s from NASA, but I’d like for us to remember what our priorities are, and there are another dozen agencies that study earth science and climate change, and they can continue to do that. Meanwhile, we only have one agency that engages in space exploration, and they need every dollar they can muster for space exploration.”
…
Read more: http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060050245
The text of the bill passed by the Senate is below. The bill is very long, and I haven’t read it all in detail. But one point which stood out in my mind is the need for America to have its own space transport capability, rather than having to rely on foreign space services to transport crew to and from the International Space Station.
What does this new bill mean for climate science?
House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith is clear that he expects NASA to continue to support other agencies with space based Earth Science services, but he doesn’t expect NASA to conduct climate science.
I suspect maintenance of the NASA GISS temperature series, NASA’s best known climate product, will be transferred to NOAA.
The NASA GISS series has long been a favourite of climate alarmists, because the way it handles temperature measurements produces the most exaggerated official warming trend.
The issue is the way the GISS series handles geographically sparse temperature readings.
Some areas of the world are not well covered by temperature monitoring stations. There are two ways of handling this, either you ignore those regions when computing the whole, or you use infilling – you attempt to infer the temperature in regions which aren’t covered by using readings from the nearest stations (nearest being defined sometimes as 100s of kilometres away).
Neither approach is a good solution – both have their disadvantages.
NASA GISS uses infilling, but this likely produces some serious temperature artefacts. Poor quality readings from a handful of badly sited temperature stations in a geographically sparse region, such as airport or urban temperature monitoring stations in the Arctic, can be amplified through infilling to have a grossly disproportionate impact on estimated global average temperature.
The WUWT post GISS Swiss Cheese is an excellent discussion of some of the problems with the GISS approach. There is strong evidence of a substantial difference between temperature readings from urban Arctic stations, and isolated Arctic stations.
Despite the problems, I hope the GISS series is maintained in its current form, though possibly by a new agency. The GISS temperature series is of historical interest, and deleting it would simply feed hysterical accusations of climate coverups.
But to provide some balance, I would like to see more effort to reconcile GISS with other series, maybe new series published alongside GISS, based on better data or methodology. I would like to know why GISS and the satellite measurements have diverged so badly. Satellite measurements theoretically address the problem of sparse coverage by sampling atmospheric temperature readings from most of the Earth, so the divergence between satellite measurements and GISS is a serious problem which should be investigated.
If the main culprit turns out to be a few rogue urbanised temperature stations running too hot in the Arctic, skewing GISS temperatures upwards, it would be fascinating to see an open discussion by government agencies of how to handle this, and the production of better quality global temperature estimates.
[UPDATE] I trust Eric won’t mind that I downloaded the PDF of the NASA Authorization he linked to above … then I OCR’d it to make it searchable. The link is below:
Searches for “CO2”, “Earth Sciences” and “climate” didn’t find anything …
Regards to all,
w.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Folks let’s not fault nefarious motive before we examine the human tendency to see what we believe we will see. Religion requires it. Dictatorships force it. Only republic forms of organization foster individual right of thought. Cling to the right to examine evidence for yourself regardless of who is in charge.
To wit, I declare myself hammered! And have reached my limit of puter screens and fffffthththtttttt for the evening per the above mentioned limits. But on second thought I was sober enough to type mini IPAD instead of mini pad in reference to my use of technology. Nother round!!!!
HA!
Nother round? Aye, lass!
That’s an order my Scottish ancestry knows how to follow….
Now, where did I set that Dewars jug…..???
Please enjoy it has been a long hard road to get where we are
Cheers
“Religion requires it.”
In your imagination, apparently . . about which I’ll take your advice ; )
“are remaking NASA in order to leave parts of the agency’s earth science program untouched but remove its climate change research.”
Complete waste of time. This is proverbial throwing good money after bad and shoveling sand against the tide. NASA is to far gone, it is a lost cause.
Time to dissolve NASA and start over from scratch. Only NASA people that should be allowed to apply, would be those involved with highly successful Mars Rovers.
I am a Taxpayer, and I approved of this opinion…
😉
It’s about time. NASA GISS was just Hansen’s mess.
I’m ready for Mars(or something).
It all matters nought, Swanson, your collective subsidy shaped snouts are being forcibly removed from the trough with a blunt axe!
“Quote: Some areas of the world are not well covered by temperature monitoring stations. There are two ways of handling this, either you ignore those regions when computing the whole, or you use infilling ”
NO!!
There’s a simple third option: you install purpose made temperature stations to get rid of the holes.
It really is incredible, Americans are talking about the incredibly expensive and risky problem of going to Mars – but they can’t even get their head around the simple & relatively low cost problem of building a truly global network of temperature monitoring stations on earth
Forrest … that’s what is so appalling about all the junk science we’ve had. The emphasis should have been on making a global network up to the job back in the 1990s.
But let’s not hand on to the next generation the same useless system we had which was so easily abused by the GEC (glassy-eyed cult).
The simple fact we all know is that the climate will continue changing. Most of that will be entirely natural and some human caused. As the global cooling scam of the 1970s and this latest warming scam have shown, if we don’t have the most robust data we can, another group can easily twist the data to fit the next scam.
That’s why I’d much prefer Trump’s legacy, not being to go back to the Moon or on to Mars … but to have properly got to grips with what is happening on planet earth. For a fraction of the cost he is proposing, we could get both a truly global network of land based measurements, plus sea buoys plus start to get detailed 3D measurements of ocean temperature and currents. These are essential to understand medium term weather. These will be hugely important for us, save many lives and give us a real insight into what is actually happening on our planet.
Whereas going to Mars is really only useful for the plot line of a few movies.
simple solution would be to find some handful of quality stations around the world with long term records. That would give a very accurate long term trend.
Still I am asking why this nobody has done yet.
“Still I am asking why this nobody has done yet.”
Because up to now, those entrusted with collating the data had been instructed that political expedience took priority over scientific probity.
At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
Up to now, that has been the agenda of Government climate science agencies – and not just in the USA, the British – especially UEA CRU – have been equally guilty, as have other European agencies.
Maybe not impossible, but maintaining permanently fixed stations in areas of shifting sea ice would at least be problematical.
That would be U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN),/a>
their shiny new toy, but they will not use it because it doesn’t need adjusting on an annual basis.
Scottish Skeptic,
Our host Anthony Watts is an authority on climate monitoring stations. He instigated a ‘citizens audit’ of the NOAA climate monitoring sites across the United States and published the results. On the main menu at the top of this web page, click on ‘About’ and then find ‘Surfacestations.org’.
I think you will find that at least one American has ‘gotten their head’ around this topic.
It’s over
The fat cat corruption boss hog fat lady Climate Change treering fake data sang Irs last out of tune song!
Go. Home and soak you lying heads ye of the 97% cult!!!
@Ian Macdonald February 19, 2017 at 8:21 pm
God has always had issues with peer review, anyway.: I guess that was a reason for organising a Son and his Mother. Any dad can tell you, that yakes care of peer review, and how.
Well the proper scientist on climate could have a new office and a secretary and still have very little to occupy the day.
Spring has truly sprung early here in England.
It is amazing that there was a time when satellite data did fit to the surface data.
Possibly they needed other data.
So NASA will get applause when it details the planetary atmosphere of Mars, Venus or Titan and when it publishes research on how that atmosphere influences the planetary climates…
But dare to use the exact same science on Earth’s atmosphere and they get sacked?
Individual scientists could transfer to NOAA, or cooperate with NOAA scientists to create a multidisciplinary environment. The idea is to avoid duplication of effort.
The GISS technique could be used within NOAA, and eventually improved using kriging, which in turn can be based on fine grid reanalysis of regions with too few measurement stations.
Wrong. The solar/planet orbit parameters determines the conditions on the planetary surface that then give rise to the atmosphere.
http://www.astrobio.net/alien-life/rotation-planets-influences-habitability/
And the planetary atmosphere then drives the climate conditions on the planet…
Total buffoonery, as usual.
You know damn well what the problem with NASA and their fraudulent tampering with the temperature databases is, don’t pretend you don’t.
Even you can’t be that stupid. Utterly dishonest, clearly; but utterly stupid, not quite.
Have you apologised to Dr. Crockford for deliberately lying about her professional credentials to attempt to discredit her yet, Skanky?
A certain polar bear blogger is not an expert on polar bears, according to actual polar bear experts. Representing yourself as an expert when you aren’t and publishing information contrary to the science… is that OK?
NASA is not lying. No climate scientists are lying and the temperature series are utterly accurate, with legitimate adjustments .
If the only argument against the science is ‘they are lying’ when there’s no evidence at all of it, then I think that’s a denial of science for political ends.
“Griff February 21, 2017 at 4:42 am”
Can you back up that accusation with fact?
Griff has NEVER backed a single one of his accusations up with fact in his life, and you can bet the farm he never will. He is far and away the most egregious source of misinformation, disinformatiopn and outright lies on a number of climate blogs.
He is a propagandist for the Renewables industry, posting from a corporate IP during working hours and paid to obfuscate, frustrate, deflect, mislead and attack the scientific qualifications of anyone who threatens the sacred “Consensus” such as DR Susan Crockford and Willie Soon, as a quick inspection of Dr. Crockford’s publishing history and the documented truth about the attack on Dr. Soon will readily demonstrate.
“Griff February 20, 2017 at 3:59 am
So NASA will get applause when it details the planetary atmosphere of Mars, Venus…”
Already done.
With $2Bn, you could establish a truly global temperature sensing network, no holes, and if in the right hands, trusted.
No thanks… we already got one.
And what network would that be?
Gavin updating his CV 🙂 Glad to see the back of that little troll.
“The GISS temperature series is of historical interest…”
Why? It is only one day old. They have an algorithm that keeps recalculating the past. As Mark Steyn noted at a Senate hearing, how can you be so certain what the temp will be in 2100 if we don’t know what it will be in 1950?
All good algorithms recalculate or re estimate the past. Its the bad ones that dont.
“All good algorithms recalculate or re estimate the past”
That depends on your definition of “good”, which is vastly different – diametrically opposite, in fact – to the generally accepted version.
You really are totally shameless, aren’t you?
how can you be so certain what the temp will be in 2100 if we don’t know what it will be in 1950?
Correct.
I love how Tony puts these ….. again and again on display:
https://realclimatescience.com/2015/12/a-closer-look-at-giss-temperature-fraud/
GISSTEMP doesnt have to transfer anywhere.
code is there.
anyone can run it.
Takes about zero budget from NASA less than 1/4 man year
If, as you claim, NASA GISS has so small a climate effort then it makes sense to integrate it into part of a larger org that is focused primarily on climate; like NOAA. NASA is a space mission org.
John
Right. And get less then 1/4 man year budget for it as Steven above says, it should be enough.
I think anything with the name Goddard in it should be concerned about rockets, atomic drives, etc. How’s progress on that EM drive? Any news?
http://www.sciencealert.com/china-is-claiming-it-s-already-started-testing-an-em-drive-in-space
NASA to focus on space.
Boy, here I am, on a board surrounded by scientists, doctors, etc. and all I can come with is ‘Well, Duh!”
Have had the same thought Forrest mentioned above. Simply look at individual surface monitoring stations in isolation and determine localized trends. Flag obvious outlier sites and compare the remainder directly… no corrections, no fantasy infill assumptions. Still would have decent coverage. Surely this has been done?
That method is in fact the worse kind of “infilling”
basically, mathematically, there arent any methods that do “infilling”.. except CRU which does an implicit infilling in areas they dont compute. That is why they have a bias.
Every other method does prediction.
Say what? They predict what the temperature would be if there WAS a station there? Predictions from the National Weather Service and Wunderground are usually wrong for the area I live in and we have weather stations!
“That method is in fact the worse kind of “infilling””
You mean unlike “making stuff up” it doesn’t cool the past and warm the future, hence it doesn’t support the AGW scam and as a result, will put you and your ilk out of business?
My thought was to simply ignore all non measured input with the expectation changes in regional temperature anomaly be largely reflected in individual profiles. From browsing here and elsewhere I was under the assumption infilling was common to global surface estimates because of paucity of coverage. Will have to dig deeper. By prediction do you mean prediction for non measured sites?
My thought was to simply ignore all non measured input with the expectation changes in regional temperature anomaly be largely reflected in individual profiles. From browsing here and elsewhere I was under the assumption infilling was common to global surface estimates because of paucity of coverage. Will have to dig deeper. By prediction do you mean prediction for non measured sites?
I challenge anyone to comment about the need for climate science to be cut here.
The challenge it getting by the spotty faced millennial disqus moderating w@nker, utterly frustratng the drones that run it, no anti agw tolerated.
Try…..http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/senate-passes-2017-nasa-transition-authorization-act
Gavin Schmidt of NASA’s GISS will whine as his position is eliminated.
Sayonara Gavin.
Dear Gavin- I hear that Marvel comics is hiring.
John
We aren’t the only country in need of idiot trimming. Germany plans on letting a ship get stuck in Arctic ice on purpose for an entire winter to study climate change. What could go wrong with that?
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/02/21/scientists-plan-to-trap-ship-in-arctic-ice.html
”’their” nonsense that the planet radiates to space at 255k, the average temperature of the whole earth system’s long wave radiation a fraction of which is temporarily held up at the speed of light in the earths system, thus warming it, is laughable,.
Since when did a surface with an average temperature of -18c .i.e. the atmosphere, warm a surface below it radiating at +15c average along it whole lenght,….
Infact how can any molecule operating at a lower frequency add and frequency to any higher frequency molecule below it in a gas column of the atmosphere,……it doesn’t, it is simply reflected or deflected, take your pick,……it certainly isnt absorbed,…..cold doesnt heat warm,…..
Apologies.
Infact how can any molecule operating at a lower frequency add any frequency [work] to higher frequency molecule [warmer] below it in a gas column of the atmosphere,……it doesn’t, it is simply reflected or deflected, take your pick,……it certainly isn’t absorbed,…..cold doesn’t heat warm,…..