Guest ridicule by David Middleton
Update: “Scientists in the United States are bracing for impact”!!!
This is what happens when Trump Derangement Syndrome is combined with hallucinogenic drugs …
CNN: Undetected Asteroids Could Threaten Earth During Government Shutdown – Breitbart
by KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ
21 Jan 2018
Two CNN correspondents claimed during an episode of The Lead with Jake Tapper that an asteroid could potentially threaten the Earth if the government shutdown continues.
CNN correspondent Tom Foreman recalled the time NASA could not monitor “potentially dangerous asteroids” for over two weeks, implying that NASA would not be able to prevent an asteroid attack if it hit Earth while the government shut down.
“In space, that same year, for more than two weeks, NASA reportedly stopped monitoring potentially dangerous asteroids. A big one, by the way, is expected to brush by Earth on February 4th,” Foreman noted.
[…]
Foreman added that if Congress does not reach a deal on a funding package and DACA amnesty negotiations, illegal aliens would be “thrust into a dangerous legal limbo.”
“If there is no deal as these negotiations stand right now, nearly 800,000 undocumented immigrants who came as children, the so-called DREAMers would be thrust into a dangerous legal limbo,” he said.
[…]
Nature gets in on the act!
Update: “Scientists in the United States are bracing for impact”!!!
Scientists in the United States are bracing for impact after lawmakers in Congress failed to agree on a plan to fund the government, triggering its indefinite shutdown on 20 January.
As a result of the impasse, thousands of federal researchers have been ordered to stay at home, barred from accessing their government e-mail and phones. That will leave many science agencies staffed by small numbers of ‘essential’ employees, interrupting government research on everything from winter snowpack in the western United States to the inner workings of the brain. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will stop processing grants, depriving some academic researchers of crucial funding, and NASA may be forced to delay the launch of spacecraft that have spent years in development.
But worst of all, many researchers say, there is no clear sign when the shutdown will end.
[…]
They are reporting the government shutdown in the same way that they report the wrather (climate change)… Unprecedented and worse than previously imagined!!!
I also heard they won’t be able to repel a Borg attack either.
And what’s really gonna bake your noodle, is when you learn that a DACA Saviour has already been born who is capable of repelling asteroids just through the power of their knowledge of the matrix. Yet, they are in danger of being deported because Donald Trump won’t make all the Dreamers and their entire extended families legal citizens. Please Donald, swallow the blue pill … or was it the red one? I’ll have to ask CNN
It seems that CA is getting ready to register illegal aliens to vote.
http://www.wnd.com/2018/01/major-state-to-register-illegal-aliens-to-vote-automatically/
O.M.G. However, I am hopeful that the Federal Elections Commission will simply THROW OUT all of CA’s Electoral College Votes in the next Presidential election. Sadly, we Californians will be subject to Reconquista RULE. I expect the new ILLEGAL overlords to appropriate my home … because it could houzz 6-Illegal Alien families.
It’s not like CA was going to vote for anyone other than a Democrat any time in the near future.
The problem is when all those illegals get CA another seat or two in the House of Representatives.
The best part is that even if operating fully, NASA “… would not be able to prevent an asteroid attack …” anyway. And how good would that prevention be if “… if it hit Earth”? They can tell you when it might occur, but can’t do anything more then that. I guess that the precautionary principle hasn’t required any investment here.
They want to be able to scare the people to death in advance like that button pusher in Hawaii.
What they mean is there will be an asteroid size impact on the income of government climate alarmists during the shutdown. OMG! The End Is Nigh! Thermageddon will happen immediately without them wasting taxpayers money to make $hit up!
The Cacophonous Numbskull Network…
CNN = 0 credibility
“That will leave many science agencies staffed by small numbers of ‘essential’ employees”. Here’s my question: Isn’t the term essential rmployees in conjunction with Government Bureaucrats and oxymoron?
I’m concerned that if DACA isn’t funded and supported, 800,000 “Dreamers” won’t have the opportunity to develop a practical system for implementation by NASA to thwart asteroids hurtling at 76,000mph towards earth that could decimate all human life.
Those same Dreamers can stop climate change too if they are just given a chance. They can’t do this in their native countries, which is why their parents brought them here.
But all that aside, it’s Republicans that will be responsible for asteroids hitting the earth because they voted for the spending bill..
( I grant HuffPo full use of this logic )
With our current level of technology it doesn’t matter if we see them ahead of time or not. We have nothing in place to prevent an impact.
It does matter if the event is large enough to matter, but small enough to be mitigated in some way (like: being far enough, say, being in Moscow instead of at Tunguska )
I don’t think we can predict the impact point that precisely. To be effective it would have to be within 100 miles to evacuate, not move 1/2 the planet from one side of the world to the other.
I’m sure Bruce Willis would be willing to still go out and deflect the asteroid and trust that he’d get retro pay. No worries.
America’s best deep core drillers!
https://youtu.be/iq6q2BrTino
Bruce, as an ex oil driller, incensed by lawsuits against the companies that pay his pension, would do nothing of the kind and tell the governors to issue arrest warrants instead.
Don’t forget the strength of the Chuck Norris Effect — [fill in desired outcome here]
They are really running out of material……and no longer report the news anyway
Uh Huh! So somehow the asteroids that have been tracked will change course without US funding support. Sounds familiar somehow…Besides that the NEO program is still supported by numerous state college observatories. I’m sure that they will be on the job “protecting us”.
Just a bit of “sarc”
There’s nothing we could do to prevent an asteriod from hitting us anyway. The likelyhood of something like that happening in the next few weeks is low.
Shumer won’t be able to hold out too long. Some States are going to run out of money for children’s health care real soon, money that is made available if the funding of the U.S. government takes place, and those States are going to put pressure on Schumer to make a deal.
The DACA deal has a deadline in early March, which President Trump has already said he would be willing to extend if necessary, so there is plenty of time to fix this situation.
The NEO surveys continue through the shutdown so no new discoveries will be be missed.
However, if one of those new discoveries is on target, the skeleton staff at JPL’s Planetary Defence Coordination Office may not be so well equipped to react quickly as they usually would be.
I read somewhere that the survey people weren’t sure whether their communication line to JPL and from there to senior administration officials would be compromised. Obviously if it’s serious that would probably get sorted pretty quick. But with a few days’ notice, every hour counts for evacuation procedures.
So it seems CNN are technically right. But the chances of anything coming in during that time are vanishingly small.
Evacuation – do you really think we can calculate the point of impact that precisely? I have my doubts. You can’t move everyone from one continent to another, because you think an asteroid will hit somewhere in
North America +- 1000 miles (1609 km for you metric freaks – note sure why calling 1000 miles 1609 km is so much easier 😛 ) Even if we could narrow it to an area – say the state of California – how do you evacuate 40 million people in a week or so? The roads/trains/airports couldn’t cope.
When several hours worth of observations are in, an automated orbit characterisation can be made. As the hours and (hopefully) days go by, that orbit becomes very accurate for the short distance, circa 5-10 million km (sorry), to impact. This has been done before with an impact location predicted within hours of discovery:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_TC3
This rock, 2008 TC3 entered the atmosphere over Sudan and was predicted to do so hours in advance. The wiki article doesn’t give the error ellipse but I seem to remember it was around 100-200km long, maybe less.
2008 TC3 was very short notice because it was small (~4 metres). It wasn’t a threat for that reason. However, it proves the location accuracy and timeliness of the warnings is efficient. Larger rocks that would trigger a warning (15 metres plus) would be seen several days out and 100 metre ones about 10-12 days out depending on approach velocity. This means the bigger the rock, the more time we have and the more accurate the target area.
There’s a whole bunch of disaster experts out there, including FEMA, waking up to the idea that if they plan ahead they really can evacuate. They’ve done drills for it in association with NASA. Yes, it could get messy and panicked but they’re trying to factor that in too.
The only problem is that they’re all obsessed with the long-notice rocks that do a few orbits before hitting us. I know from monitoring the close approaches that it’s just as likely the first big one on target will be one of these 10-12 day notice rocks.
But given the fact that hurricanes Harvey and Katrina gave us circa 10 days notice and Houston/New Orleans did a fairly good evacuation job, there’s hope yet. For 20-30 metre rocks even knowing what to do when sheltering in place can save thousands of injuries from broken glass, ‘sun burn’ and flying debris. Schools can close, hospitals move patients away from windows etc. for these smaller rocks or any somewhat bigger ones predicted to hit ~200 km (sorry) away.
PS Kilometres are really useful for calculations because of their relation to the SI unit of the metre. Things like gravitational parameters for calculating orbits have metre or km units. So if I think in km, I have a better feel for it.
Wouldn’t it be the sh!ts if they determined that it would strike south coastal California. I can just hear it now….”quick, ándale everyone, back to Mexico before Pena Nieto builds a wall and tries to get Trump to pay for it.”
I’m trying to figure out why you would want to evacuate California
If climate “scientists” can accurately calculate global temperature anomalies within 1/100th of a degree precision, I’m sure they some equally intelligent bureaucrat could precisely figure out where a huge space rock will land.
I’m thinking that with a little work and expansion, the OP would make a marvelous article that “The Onion” would be proud to publish.
Let’s have Hawaiian government officials look after this.
+10
Okay but we do have the staffing to rename the latest flyby threat as the Schumer Comet, followed by the CNN Meteor Shower, and the NYT Asteroid Belt.
You would think the Dem’s would support deportation, think how much lower these people’s carbon footprints would be without modern 1st world convinces in the USA.
The bottom line is that the vast majority of the Dreamers, and the ‘chain’ of their families, are likely to vote Democrat if ever given the chance, and that is the only reason the Democrats are concerned about them. When Trumped allegedly asked: “Why do you want immigrants from these S$!thole countries?”, everyone in the room knew the answer: ‘Because they will vote Democrat!’ That is why the question was ignored, and the left focused obsessively on Trump’s language, like 5 year olds. The democrats don’t want anyone to focus on Trump’s question. or the fact that they use immigration policy to stuff the ballot box in their favor.
There is a great deal of hypocrisy in arguing that we can’t send back the Dreamers because it would be cruel to return them to such awful countries, and act totally offended when the President agrees with them that these countries are awful.
If these immigrants were likely to vote Republican, the Democrats would be calling for an embargo!
Considering (I’m guessing), most of these ‘dreamers’ would already be living in area’s considered Democrat strongholds, would these additional votes have any effect whatsoever in election outcomes? I think it has to be more than this but what exactly could be debated (resist Trump, out of better idea’s, etc).
That is why California is planning to register them to vote. When they apply for a driver’s license they will automatically be registered. We really need to nuke that whole state.
===> Duncan Smith: Excellent point! It beats the argument that DREAMERS should want to return to their native countries, because of the racism and xenophobia pervading the United States (who would ever want to come to a place like this?). Climate change is the top ideological priority of the left!
This one trumps them all. Perhaps we should send Katherine up there with a butterfly net.
“A big one, by the way, is expected to brush by Earth on February 4th,” Foreman noted.”
So 2.6 million miles is now a “brush” by. Cosmologically perhaps but of course it sounds much scarier when phrased that way.
2.6 million miles is about 11 times the average distance between the Earth and Moon, and over 300 times the diameter of the Earth. On a comparable scale, if Earth was the size of a baseball, sitting on home plate, the Moon would be a marble about five feet away, and the asteroid would be the equivalent of a dust particle passing over the pitcher’s mound between first and third base. Hardly a near-miss.
Anything passing outside the orbit of the Moon can safely be ignored, because it wouldn’t even be affected by the Earth’s gravity.
If there was a large asteroid on a collision course with Earth, it might be possible with today’s technology to shoot it with nuclear bombs in order to blow it into small enough pieces to reduce the damage. But we would have to detect it a few days before impact, and try to engage the Russians and Chinese to help us save the planet.
Technically the earth’s gravity affects everything within about 4.7 billion miles of the earth.
Practically speaking, by the time you get out a few million miles, the impact is small enough to be ignored for most calculations.
4.7 billion light years, not miles.
“If there was a large asteroid on a collision course with Earth, it might be possible with today’s technology to shoot it with nuclear bombs in order to blow it into small enough pieces to reduce the damage. But we would have to detect it a few days before impact, and try to engage the Russians and Chinese to help us save the planet.”
I doubt that. Most of the destructive force of nukes on Earth come from an initial blast wave propagated by compression and rarefaction in the atmosphere followed by extreme heating of the atmosphere. The rest is just the radiation pulse. In space they are virtually useless. If you glommed one directly onto the surface of a massive chunk of rock you might just about spall off a small chip and melt a small shallow crater but that would be all.
Considering no gov’t has EVER (to my knowledge) issued an evacuation warning due to an incoming asteroid, what is the likelihood that it will happen in the VERY short comparable time the gov’t would be shut down? I can’t believe anyone even half seriously brought this up in a news broadcast.
If an asteroid impacts, it will be detected. Duh!
+1000 Megatonnes !!
No, because once they enter the atmosphere they become meteors, and then meteorites upon impact. So an asteroid impact can never occur. There! We’re saved!
Will this government shutdown lead to government collapse down?
The Democrats have apparently changed their minds and are going to vote to fund the U.S. government.
After this happens, Congress should pass a law forbidding the shutdown of the U.S. government. The American people should not be held hostage by the likes of Chuck Shumer. Currently, during a government shutdown, many things continue to be funded like social security and medicaid. We should have a law continuing all funding while Congress tries to get its act together to create a new budget. Operate on the old budget until a new one is passed.
The U.S. military needs funding help. The Obama adminsitration, along with the Democrats and Republicans in Congress have seriously crippled the U.S. military over the last eight years through the “sequester rule” which doesn’t provide enough money to maintain the U.S. military much less improve it.
Now here we are with a war with North Korea looming and only half our military aircraft are fit to fly because of lack of spare parts and maintenance.
The rest of the U.S. military is in equally bad straights.
If your enemies think you are weak it may cause them to take actions detrimental to the U.S. that they might not have taken if the U.S. was at full strength. It’s liable to make a fat, little, manical dictator miscalculate and do something real stupid.
The problem with this is if one party or the other likes the current budget better than the previous budget, all they have to do is refuse to vote on a new budget and the existing budget continues forever.
Exactly what does CNN propose to do if an impacting asteroid is somehow detected? Lecture the rock on the immorality of destructive behavior?
Gosh, there must have been no asteroids around in 1995-96 when the Clinton’s Govt. shut down twice for a total of 27 days.
Nor in 2013 when Obama’s Govt. shut down for 16 days.
Science survived all 19 funding gaps and 8 shutdowns from 1976-2013… but, but, but, TRUMP!!!!
Is that poor, distressed creature wearing a blue crystal lady’s bracelet?
Democrats are often gender confused.
Or they want people to think that they are.
It’s just like in baseball, when the visiting team hits a homer toward the foul pole. NASA just waves that asteroid off.
Course they have to know one’s coming first.
@ papiertigre
Speaking of baseball;
In the baseball World Series of 1960 the NY Yankees scored 55 runs and the Pittsburgh Pirates scored 27. If one does not understand the game, one might think the NY team won. The Pirates became the champions that year.
Why?
The Pirates won more games!
Hillary lost.
Terrible how I haven’t been keeping up with the game. Pittsburg won? Serves New York right, sneaking all them illegals into the lineup
Great analogy… Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of the 7th game clearly should have been awarded to the Yankees based on the Popular Runs Scored.
Does this mean we will have to shut down the political pseudoscience departments at Penn State, Columbia, Yale, and U. of Arizona?
I can hope
Hmmm, drugs are bad, OK?
Where exactly did you see this quote??
If only the Chelyabinsk meteor had landed on the roof of CNN’s building….
What!?? I can dream, can’t I?
Superman will save us, or Wonderwoman, or Tremendoustransperson.
Hulk smash puny meteor
The budget for near earth object cataloging was authorized by Congress back in 2005 and was going to be something like $800 million over 20 years looking for objects over 460 feet in length but it was later downsized by like $500 or $600 million by democrats in order to pay for “climate change”. The catalog effort increased the minimum from 460 feet to over 3000 feet.
So under the change enacted by Obama and democrats the asteroid coming ‘close’ to us now doesn’t qualify as a concern.
https://www.wired.com/2009/08/neoreport/
Without a realistic plan for dealing with the thing once detected who cares?
There is a plan…
“As a result of the impasse, thousands of federal researchers have been ordered to stay at home, barred from accessing their government e-mail and phones.” says Nature.
Well… no. I’ve been though a number of these shut-downs (now retired) but always had access to my government e-mail and phone during these periods. The e-mail was simply accessed via my private home
computer (which was contained government software providing protection and allowing accesses to my e-mail). As for the government phone, it was only supposed to be used for official purposes anyway – so why would it matter? In my case the phone was simply left on in case I was declared “essential” and called in. Alternatively, they could reach me on my private phone. And, anyway, nothing stopped me from working at home. I mean it’s the federal government… their is always paper work to catch-up on. Nothing stopping one from doing that at home.
Moreover, I doubt the pubic is in any danger. During one of these shut-downs, I was managing a federal emergency response team that specialized in destroying unstable or armed chemical weapons – the nation’s only team. (While on loan from my parent agency to the U.S. Army – another story).
Anyway, the public was never in any danger during this period. I as I had my bags packed and was on constant stand-by… meaning I was to be on the road within 15 minutes of being called. My response would have been no faster had I been in the office and I could call any member of my team within seconds from home. In fact my home was closer the airport than the office on the base in which I was stationed… so my response time would have been much shorter.
As for Natures concerns over “federal researchers”… I spent 20 years working in or with various National Laboratories. Believe me there was rarely anything we were working on that couldn’t be delayed. Furthermore any project that was “essential” continued during shut-downs.
No big deal.
I think the folks at “Natures” real problem is realizing that most academics really aren’t “essential” to the primary functions of the federal government.
So tell Schumer and his delinquents to sign the bill!
They already are in legal limbo!
What the alleged leftist politicians and the looney MSM want is for legislators and the POTUS to ignore public opinion and cave into leftist demands; otherwise asteroids will destroy the Earth!
Just what is in that Kool-Aid they drink!?
Progressive leftist absurd demands remind me of a “National Lampoon” cover where NatLampoon threatened to “kill this dog”, if their demands were not met; “Buy this magazine”
So if an asteroid was detected heading for California would the Meat Head protesters, including Brown evacuate with their third world servants? Just imagine the density of carbon spewing private jets in the Meat Head evacuation.
What about the government supplied jets for VIPs?
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2857672&page=1
https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-uncovers-new-documents-detailing-pelosis-use-air-force-aircraft/
http://abc7chicago.com/news/fleet-of-luxury-jets-costing-taxpayers-millions/389610/
How about some real news…..
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-audi-recall/germany-confirms-audi-recall-due-to-illicit-emission-control-device-idUSKBN1FB1CU?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FbusinessNews+%28Business+News%29
So does that mean that if US scientists are looking at asteroids, that’s all it takes to get them to change course?
These idiots seem to be desperately scraping the bottom of the barrel in order to find something, anything, to demonize Trump.
All the close encounters are first detected after they passed.
http://spaceweather.com/
Brings to mind memories of the movie “The Fifth Element”.
I hope that wasn’t a typo. I like it.
I wouldn’t be surprised to it show up on TWC.
“Ma’ Gaia is expressing her anger for dumping Paris. Weather is now her Wrath-er!”
Now Elon Musk is complaining about the government shutdown:
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/01/22/spacex-claims-it-cant-test-fire-rocket-due-to-government-shutdown-despite-billions-in-taxpayer-funding/
SpaceX Claims it Can’t Test Fire Rocket Due to Government Shutdown Despite Billions in Taxpayer Funding
Elon Musk is the Hitler of wellfare fraud. I’d call him the Stalin or Chairman Mao of welfare cheat, except there’s General Electric, and the Rainbow Coalition way out front (due to their headstart).
The little big-headed grey men who inhabit Planet Nibiru are clearly aware of the Government Shut-down in the US and are already re-directing asteroids and meteors so that the will hit the Earth. It is probable that they are targetting the West Coast of America, in particular, California and more specifically Hollywood as they are very upset at the false depiction of Nibiruans in Hollywood Dramas.
You mean, they’ll beat Kim Jong-un and his rockets, after all?
“…implying that NASA would not be able to prevent an asteroid attack if it hit Earth…”
You’re kidding right? Do these bozos actually think that even if there is an asteroid headed on its way to hit Earth in the centre ring, that there’s anything that NASA can actually do to prevent it – with or without funding? They’ve been watching too many movies.
The one on 4th Feb is on trajectory to miss us by some 10 Earth-Moon distances, it’s already identified and tracked. The one that does eventually get us will be unannounced, and most likely unseen until the ultimate “oops” moment.
It’s the image of asteroids lolly gagging around the system … just waiting for a government shutdown to speed off towards Earth …. undetected!!!!
Yep. Those sneaky asteroids keep a close eye on the US government.
the ones watching CNN. They put the as in asteroid.
On a slightly different tack —
I find it interesting that American Meteor Society (AMS) and the International Meteor Organization (IMO) reports goes from less than a hundred per year in 2005 to over 5,000 per year in 2017.
Why the BIG increase? — better reporting, or more verified reporting in recent years, or maybe just more fireballs? Who can say?
https://www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/fireball-report/
and
http://fireball.imo.net/members/imo_fireball_stats/
All I can say is if you see one of these rare fireball events , please report it to
http://www.amsmeteors.org/members/imo/report_intro
or
http://fireballs.imo.net/members/imo/report_intro
Asteroids never impact… nothing to see here
What is the next course of action?
WTF?! Setting aside, for the moment, the ridiculously small risk of this actually happening. If you’re going to bring up the possibility of THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WHOLE FREAKING PLANET AND SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE ON IT, you don’t get to switch, in the same breath, to the “dangerous legal limbo” (not life-threatening, just legally threatening) of 0.01% of those seven billion people. If the life of EVERYONE ON THE PLANET becomes a serious concern during a shutdown, then who gives a damn about whether 800,000 people in the US illegally have to go home? Both the place they live now, and the place they came from, will be totally destroyed, as well as the illegal immigrants themselves.
Also, I read somewhere that the budget for watching the sky for potential earth-collision objects is only enough to cover 1% of the sky. So there’s only a 1% chance we would find it even if the government wasn’t shut down. But more importantly, if you’re going to get on this “precautionary principle” high horse, seems like you should advocate increasing the budget for this project by a factor of 99. But of course, we can’t afford that. Or at least, we can’t afford that AND all the socialist wealth-redistribution crap the government does. Which puts the lie to the applicability of the precautionary principle to real-world, budget constrained decision-making. So, given that the precautionary principle does not (in the eyes of our nation’s leaders) warrant full coverage of the sky to detect potential earth colliders (and the enormous expenditure required to achieve that), what the hell makes you think they’re going to compromise their principles on real-life, serious, immediate, 100%-probability issues, so we don’t have to give up a few days of reducing by 1% the probability of the Earth getting impacted?
Also, what the hell are we going to do about it if we DO detect a certain earth collider? Movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact notwithstanding, last I heard, we don’t really have a working plan for averting such a disaster, even if we do detect it in time. Sure, we can launch a bunch of missiles at it and PRAY, which has a slightly higher chance of working than prayer alone. But here’s the thing. In the BEST CASE scenario, the GOVERNMENTS of the world, using STATIST principles, save humankind from total destruction. That is an enormously huge victory for statism. One that anti-statists will NEVER be able to match. It will be a campaign ad in every election, at least until the statists, under the guise of protecting the planet from the next collision, just do away with elections. The statists will NEVER relinquish their hold on the governments of this planet, and freedom will be out the window forever. I don’t want to live on a planet that was saved by statism. I’d just as soon let the asteroid hit.