Guest essay by Eric Worrall
US and Overseas scientists have accused the Trump Administration of criminal obstruction of climate research, because the US government has not immediately stepped in to foot the bill for a replacement satellite.
Donald Trump accused of obstructing satellite research into climate change
Republican-controlled Congress ordered destruction of vital sea-ice probe
Robin McKie, Observer science editor
Sunday 5 November 2017 19.00 AEDT
President Trump has been accused of deliberately obstructing research on global warming after it emerged that a critically important technique for investigating sea-ice cover at the poles faces being blocked.
The row has erupted after a key polar satellite broke down a few days ago, leaving the US with only three ageing ones, each operating long past their shelf lives, to measure the Arctic’s dwindling ice cap. Scientists say there is no chance a new one can now be launched until 2023 or later. None of the current satellites will still be in operation then.
The crisis has been worsened because the US Congress this year insisted that a backup sea-ice probe had to be dismantled because it did not want to provide funds to keep it in storage. Congress is currently under the control of Republicans, who are antagonistic to climate science and the study of global warming.
“This is like throwing away the medical records of a sick patient,” said David Gallaher of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. “Our world is ailing and we have apparently decided to undermine, quite deliberately, the effectiveness of the records on which its recovery might be based. It is criminal.”
…
Such losses have serious consequences, say researchers. “Sea-ice data provided by satellites is essential for initiating climate models and validating them,” said Andrew Fleming of the British Antarctic Survey. “We will be very much the poorer without that information.”
US taxpayers have been footing the bill for the Defence Meteorological Satellite Programme since 1973. A thank you would have been nice.
If the three aging satellites were past their use by dates, why didn’t Obama fund their replacements. He could have used the $500 million dollars he diverted to the NGO Green Climate Fund.
+10 … That
I am actually a luke warmer and the politics of this is my problem. There seems to be a concerted effort to not deal with anything except some stupid political agenda.
The European Union has competent space technology.
Russia has competent space technology.
Japan has competent space technology.
China has competent space technology.
India has competent space technology.
The world has many millionaires and billionaires, many of whom are on the global warming bandwagon.
Private space launch companies would be happy to put another satellite into orbit.
Why look to the United States and President Trump for a new satellite?
If it isn’t already in orbit, there is no good reason to waste anymore taxpayer dollar$ on launching 30 year old technology. The US Air Force did the right thing by not spending another dime on this 90’s tech ‘clunker’.
Think of it as an improvement on Obama’s Cash for Clunkers (ugh!) program….
By 2013 there won’t BE any Arctic sea ice to measure so problem solved
Who needs satellites when we have tree rings?
OK. I guess we do need military satellites.
But do we have to make the data spin?
Andrew November 5, 2017 at 1:51 pm
Touché
Not sure why they even need them , after all ‘models ‘ can give them all the data they ‘need ‘ and as they already ‘known’ its worse than we thought they already have an idea of what the result will be .
The Guardian article is pure rubbish. Filled with outright falsehoods and blatant inaccuracies, with unsourced undocumented claims asserted as fact.
The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) was created in the 1960’s. The current satellites were all built in the early 1990’s including the remaining operating ones and F20, the unused one that was stored for many years.
These are US Air Force Dept of Defense, not weather satellites. The weather information is simply a byproduct.
The USAF acknowledged at least as far back as 2012 the DMSP satellites were “outdated” and of nominal use.
http://spacenews.com/air-force-secretary-calls-dmsp-satellites-out-date/
It cost $40 million per YEAR to store in its climate controlled clean room environment. It would cost $50 million more to launch. For a technology conceived in the 1960’s and built in the 1990’s.
A USAF study in 2014 concluded that the major costs of storage, launch and operation did not justify the minimal benefit and end of life status of the program and recommended termination of the program and launch of F20.
Congress took their recommendation and in December 2015 voted to end the program and decommission the 1990’s built F20 satellite.
http://spacenews.com/senate-spending-bill-backs-house-recommendation-to-shelve-dmsp-f20/
The failure of the recently launched F19 in March 2016 caused Air Force officials to postpone decommissioning in order that DoD, Congress etc could review their decision on F20 if they chose.
http://spacenews.com/with-dmsp-19-sidelined-by-glitch-air-force-orders-stay-of-execution-for-its-twin/
The Guardian article is error ridden and full of their typical falsehoods.
F19 did not fail “a few days ago” … it failed in Mar 2016. They lost all access to the satellite but have continued to monitor its telemetry.
http://spacenews.com/dmsp-19-weather-satellite-dead-after-air-force-ends-recovery-effort/
F16, F17 and F18 remain in operation, although F17 has one channel that has been problematic.
It is an outright falsehood that the US Congress “this year” insisted that a backup sea-ice probe had to be dismantled. Congress – both the House and Senate – voted in December 2015 to end the DMSP program and decommission F20. There is no evidence I am aware of that the Trump administration or Congress have in any way acted regarding the DMSP or the F20 satellite decisions.
There is ZERO evidence to support the claim Trump is “obstructing satellite research into climate change” … the evidence shows the opposite … both Trump and Congress have done the exact opposite. This claim is an outright lie.
The Trump admin DID propose a funding cut to the Polar Follow-on program (funding for JPSS 3 and 4). This cut was responding to NOAA who stated they want to “re-plan” the program to “take into account other polar orbiting spacecraft, cost-saving measures and potential partnerships.” As a result the Trump admin proposed $180 million for this program compared to $419 million for the Polar Follow-on (PFO) program for FY 2018.
Congress said no: “In light of the critical role that these satellites play in protecting American lives and property, the Appropriations Committee finds it perplexing that the Department of Commerce and NOAA would propose to cut this program,”
Congress and the White House/Trump are on the same page regarding other key weather satellite programs, with Senate and House appropriators approving the administration’s budget requests of $775.8 million for the JPSS program and $518.5 million for the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R ( GOES-R) program.
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2017/08/07/noaa/
That is not the whole story either though …after Congress rejected the NOAA request to reduce Polar Follow-on funding for FY 2018 as included in the Trump admin budget earlier, the Senate Appropriations Committee later approved $419 million for PFO in its markup of the FY2018 Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill in August 2017.
https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/noaas-polar-follow-on-gets-reprieve-from-senate-appropriators/
On Sept 14 the House passed a bill that fully funded the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite R (GOES-R) and the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) programs, but reduced funding for the Polar Follow-On program of future JPSS satellites. The bill provides only $50 million for that program, compared to the administration’s request of $180 million.
The House earlier said: “The request proposes a dramatic and incipient re-plan of this program. Yet the request fails to assess the purported new mission design’s impacts on constellation availability, or provide an updated gap analysis, or new annual or lifecycle cost estimates.” Which is why it approved only $50 million.
NOAA and Congress are determined to avoid gaps in either polar or geostationary weather satellite data. The House indicated they might reconsider its decision if NOAA was more forthcoming in how they plan to address those concerns.
Bottom line the claim the Trump is “obstructing satellite research into climate change” is directly refuted by the clear evidence
The Trump admin DID request and Congress approved … fully funding for the most important major satellite programs … including the JPSS 1 and 2 and the GOES-R satellite programs.
The reduction in funding was for the Polar Follow-on program – for the future JPSS 3 and 4 satellites. As noted above the JPSS 1 polar satellite is scheduled to launch in days – Nov 10, 2017. JPSS 2 is currently targeted for 2021 and is funded.
JPSS 3 is not targeted to launch until 2026 (and presumably JPSS 4 until around 2031). The Trump admin and Congress delaying funding for these satellites to get better information from NOAA is in no way threatening or obstructing satellite research on climate change.
It makes perfect sense that funding for missions that far out require more detailed information from NOAA. There is NO threat to or obstruction of satellite research into climate change as a result of requiring NOAA provide more detailed plans on how that money will be used.
[Sobering corrections. Thank you. Sources? .mod]
Great summary and from what I know is totally correct. Here’s a link to information about NPP, the pre-JPSS satellite.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/mission_overview/index.html
You can view daily NPP imagery here along with imagery from the older Aqua and Terra satellites:
https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/?p=geographic&l=VIIRS_SNPP_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,MODIS_Aqua_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor(hidden),Reference_Labels(hidden),Reference_Features(hidden),Coastlines&t=2017-11-05&z=3&v=-131.69301440575796,31.275274093690403,-111.44903525216289,43.66632566138797
“F19 did not fail “a few days ago” … it failed in Mar 2016. They lost all access to the satellite but have continued to monitor its telemetry”
Not quite. They lost the ability to control it about then. But it did transmit some data. However, on Oct 5, 2017, The Air Force announced that data transmission had ceased.
Assuming the validity of the information provided by Mr. Scott, what justified the blathering nonsense provided by a supposed public servant: “… David Gallaher of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. “Our world is ailing and we have apparently decided to undermine, quite deliberately, the effectiveness of the records on which its recovery might be based. It is criminal.””
Should someone employed at the National Snow and Ice Data Center be aware of his/her data sources/providence? Or is Mr. Gallaher a CAGW activist first, and public servant second?
Maybe this will lead to a surge of unemployment among climate “scientists”?
We can only hope.
No just means you can have more models that can’t be tested. Once the satellites down you can claim the Sea Ice is at any level you like and even say it is all gone, and you can have models to that effect. As pointed out this has been known was going to happen for a long time and could have been dealt with by Obama. He had a spare $1B which he managed to push into the green fund but couldn’t find the money to fund a new satellite.
Wait a minute. If “the science is already settled” on climate change, why do they need to do more research?
Satellites are calibrated and certified before they are launched.
Climate models should be calibrated and certified before they are ‘launched’ as well.
If you have to create ‘ensembles’ of individual climate model runs, you are overtly acknowledging that the climate model produces highly variable, unreliable results and is not valid for any predictive usage. By logical conclusion, neither is the ‘ensemble’.
What do these researchers have in mind when they talk about global warming? Who is the one who can warm our planet to global warming? Is it the sun? The sun is the most powerful heat source in our solar system and how much we know the history, the sun has never been the norm of such a disturbance. What then could be the cause of this GH? Is something that does not produce heat, can heat any part of matter? These “specialists” convince us that CO2 warms the Earth, but that CO2, it seems, raises the “credit” of the sun with high interest rates and we are returning it as consumers who must listen to the gentleman and ruler CO2. STUPIDITY.
From the current nebulous stories and the claims of such “researchers”, it seems that they do not know the processes that take place between the planets and the sun. If science were to know the structure of the universe, many riddles would have been much easier to solve. Thus, science has asked for “help” from its “smart products” such as various instruments, models, mathematics and think that these helpers can be smarter than scientists, even though they have been made by scientists.
What do scientists think: is their head, moving around the Earth, receives various signals, that it is so incapable of deciphering these signals, and that these instruments are much more capable to do it, because they have “raced” above us in the atmosphere and see more than we do? When this is explained to me, I think it will find other, but true causes of climate change, because CO2 is only falsely accused of causing global warming. It is, perhaps, a new type of ISIL, which has the intention of destroying both itself and everything around it.
Oh, intercourse the satellites – just make up the data from scratch, they’ll be adjusted and tortured anyway….
Here’s a link to the status of all the NOAA and MetOp (our European partner) weather satellites.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Operations/POES/status.html
NOAA-18 and NOAA-19 are the operational PM satellites and MetOp-A and MetOp-B are the operational AM satellites.
NPP is the bridge between the older generation of satellites and the new JPSS series. JPSS-1 is scheduled to launch in 4 days.
There is no lack of low orbiting weather satellites.
DMSP was ended because the satellites were an old design and didn’t do much that the NOAA satellites didn’t do. It was basically a duplicate program. No point paying for a duplicate program. No point in launching old generation satellites when we have a new generation. As long as any of the old ones work, data will be collected.
Calling the Guardian article “fake news” would be putting a positive spin on it. /sarc
Funny how these greenie-types always go for criminal charges.
Just imagine the squealing if what comes around finally ends up going around.
I may have missed someone else pointing this out but I think Roy Spencer has a few interesting comments on this topic at his web site. It is his latest article titled ‘Trump wrongly blamed for destroying sea ice satelite’.