Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Providing climate data to the world is apparently a top Californian government spending priority.
‘We’re launching our own damn satellite’ — Gov. Jerry Brown says California will go to space to fight climate change
By EVAN HALPER
Gov. Moonbeam is finally sending California into space.
Jerry Brown closed his climate summit in San Francisco on Friday with a dramatic announcement: California will launch its own satellite into orbit to track and monitor the formation of pollutants that cause climate change.
“With science still under attack and the climate threat growing, we’re launching our own damn satellite,” Brown said in prepared remarks. “This groundbreaking initiative will help governments, businesses and landowners pinpoint — and stop — destructive emissions with unprecedented precision, on a scale that’s never been done before.”
…
The state will develop the satellite with the San Francisco-based Earth-imaging firm Planet Labs, a company founded by former NASA scientists in 2010. The state may ultimately launch multiple satellites into space, according to the governor’s office. The California Air Resources Board is in the process of developing the monitoring technology used by the satellite. No date has been set for the launch; the process is expected to take several years.
…
Brown’s announcement came in quickly delivered remarks at the close of the three-day gathering and received a standing ovation from many in the audience. Two activists who stood up on their seats saying Brown is “not a climate leader” were carried out of the auditorium by security.
…
The suggestion that the satellite will “pinpoint and stop destructive emissions” seems a bit ominous, given that the satellite’s capabilities have not yet been finalised. But I guess on the positive side we should all be happy California has so much spare cash they can spend millions of dollars on global projects which provide minimal return to Californian taxpayers.
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Every time I start to think Governor Moonbeam can’t possibly do anything loonier, the crackpot goes and proves me wrong.
Perhaps someone will break the news to him that there’s already one up there?
https://oco.jpl.nasa.gov
Don’t confuse him with facts – his mind (whats left of it) is already made up.
You mean his mind is settled?
quick, give it another shake to stir it back up
Yeahbut, he can’t hype the data on a NASA satellite. This one he owns.
Why bother? No matter what the satellite actually finds, it will prove global warming and it will hurt, women, children, minorities and illegal aliens most.
High speed train to space (SHTTS).
We need to figure out a name where the acronym can be SHTSTRM because that’s all that can be expected from this propaganda stunt.
I, O left out of the acronym because that part goes to the California taxpayers who foot the bill.
When politicians near the end of their political careers they start telling you what they’ve really thought and believed all along. There’s no political penalty. It’s not senility. This is what Jerry Brown has always been.
“This is what Jerry Brown has always been.?
Senile?
This morning, I really miss the vote-up/vote-down module that Anthony had working!!
Plus 100 John!
One of those curious thoughts flitted near.
The other day, someone complained about the inability to see “whom” voted comments up or down.
Then WUWT gets takes a hit, and Anthony loses his novel wonderful comment vote-up/vote-down.
Did one event trigger the other?
A few months back, I watched a Johnny Carson rerun.
Where a young guv moonbeam made noises that sounded remarkably like conservative government.
Guv moonbeam’s public funds parasitism was strong that day, as moonbeamy announced running for public office, again.
Millions to billions of California dollars spent on duplicative technology.
God help impoverished Californians, as moonbeamy wastes their excessively high tax dollars.
A rocket program will need:
A) Ever increasing Government or contractual oversight
B) Technology research, development and construction… Anyone else suspect musky whispers here?
C) Launch and recovery facilities
D) Monitoring teams to forever track their satellites and capture data for analysis and presentation.
E) A larger government public communication department that will endlessly release “make work” press releases.
California is rapidly becoming a “Princess Bride” “Pit of Despair”; sucking the life out of inhabitants.
PAt Brown conyinually surprises us all with the boneheaded ideas that flow from his thick skull.
For taxing e cigarettes (an impossibility – very few vapists use e gigarettes) and encouraging smokers to keep smoking tobacco, I deem his to be an accessory to deaths caused by tobacco. He is worse than any tobacco company. He also has lied about e -cigareetes, claming they pose a substantial health risk.
There is no logical reason to think that and certainly not a shred of evidence to support that argument. Pat Brown may have claimed nicotene is deadly. In the first place, many vapists, like myself, do not use nocotene, not because it is harmful, but because the nicotene in the e -liquid of an e cigarette cannot be transported into the vapist’s lungs. That was proven years ago in a controlled experiment at the University of Maryland, andd I myself can testify that you can’t get a nicotene high from an e-cigarette. Want nicotene? – buy some nicotene gum and chew it while you vape. Nicotene is NOT a carcinagen, now or ever.
Again, someone has to throw in extraneous comments that have zero to do with the article above.
Maybe such satellites would exist if not for the fact that NASA’s priorities shifted to things like “Muslim outreach.”
Maybe he’s unaware of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_Carbon_Cycle_Observatory
The project will ultimately likely be scratched, but not before his CA cronies make lots of taxpayer-funded $$$.
At this point, he has suckered Jeremy Grantham out of some of the money for seed money.
Well, speaking of non scientists…and space cadets…
https://mobile.twitter.com/johnpodesta/status/1040678260101636096
Read the repies…
Pat Brown was Moonbeam’s baby-daddy
Wow, Brown is angry now. The TDS and CCDS are causing him to swear. He has gone way past “moonbeam” status now, to full on, stark raving lunatic. Where’s a strait jacket when you need one?
Moonbeam is becoming more unhinged over Climate Change as time moves on. It’s clearly developed from a concern to an unhealthy, for all, obsession. The amount of money he’s spent and has earmarked to support this demon could have housed all California’s homeless people and put a dent in its’ water shortage problem.
To give you an idea of how radical the loony bin left alarmists are; They think Governor Brown has sold out and protest him at every opportunity.
Is it just a coincidence that the illustration makes the satellite look like the Star Wars Death Star or do you know something we don’t? Moonbeam as Darth? Now who could possibly be Jaba the Hut?
Life following fiction yet again
I have a muscovy duck male named Darth Vader. You’re insulting my duck. My duck is smarter than Moonbeam.
OK,
Do you have a second one named Princess Leia????
How did you come up with that deducktion?
I apologise to your duck 🦆
It’s using a black hole as a tractor beam … that, or it’s got a very prominent refuse compactor.
I’ve always suspected Jerry Brown was a space cadet. Now there is no doubt.
if only you could make him one in reality
send him up with the sat!
Crackpot senile Totalitarian Governor(s) launching SPY satellites … what could possibly go wrong?
I guess the Fireplace Polizia, enforcing “no-burn days” wasn’t quite Draconian-enough.
And how much emissions will the rockets spew that will carry his satellites?
None if the rocket uses liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen as propellants.
Water vapor.
Dave, is that a greenhouse gas?
You realise the dihydrogen monoxide exhaust is a much more potent green house gas than carbon dioxide?
How was the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen made?
Liquid hydrogen is usually made by cracking light hydrocarbons, emitting CO2 in the process. Electrolysis of water is more expensive, especially with the direction electric rates are going in deep blue democrat toilets. LOX is made by fractional liquefaction of air.
Maybe his choo choo to nowhere can deliver the satellite(s)…
Maybe his choo choo to nowhere can be put to good use…
good grief…when you have NASA, NOAA, 97% of climate scientists, and every other money sucker..
…pimping for you
Why in this world would you want to rock the boat…
Maybe it can find their missing water……….
So… will Moonbeam’s satellite “pinpoint — and stop — destructive emissions” from every breathing human in the state?
Did I miss something? Don’t we already have a satellite monitoring atmospheric GHGs? Although I suppose a Mexafornia satellite will likely be much more capable.
Yes, it will get the “right” results.
Now we need one to monitor aerosols. They are the climate driver.
And I thought our UK politicians were loonies.
Like the old joke. A naked man was arrested outside Downing Street shouting “the Government are a bunch of lunatics”. He got £ 50 fine for public indencey and 30 years for revealing a state secret.
Wish I could be sure that was a joke.
It will never be built or launched. He will be out of office in the near future and it will quietly be forgotten.
It’s like Elon Musk and Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago announcing grandiose plans to bore a hyper-loop type tunnel between block 37 in downtown Chicago and O’Hare International Airport. All to be completed in two years. For one billion dollars and it won’t cost the tax payers a dime. To date, six months later there is still no signed contract, no agreed right of way, no geological studies and no business plan. In Spring Mayor Emanuel will be out of office and Elon Musk may be bankrupt. In all likelihood the tunnel project will quietly be forgotten. But it made for wonderful television.
If you will indulge me a moment, I’m going to recklessly over-generalize here. This non-sense about launching a satellite is symptomatic of Liberalism’s greatest weakness. Most liberals are just plain gullible. A lot of them are children or naive adult-children who never grew up. They have a tendency to be taken in by fancy words and a fine speech . They listen to what their leaders say – not to what their leaders actually do. President Obama talked a good game but he did very little. It didn’t matter. He is a candidate for sainthood. Donald Trump communicates poorly but he has done more to create actual jobs for poor people than Obama ever did. Doesn’t matter – he doesn’t talk like their sociology professor so they think he is a fool. The satellite of course is ridiculous and will never be built or launched. But it sounds nice. It doesn’t matter to liberals that it will never actually be built and that their leaders are playing them for fools.
Although there were two activists thrown out of the room by security. Presumably activists against Brown’s purported) cosy relationships with oil companies.
… and yeah, he’s out soon. Will be replaced by Gavin Newsom, so expect more of the same.
Newsome’s likely a complete zero. Never done ANYTHING beneficial or important. Jerry. at least, has had experience running the “machine” if ineptly. And has evidence of, at least, a partial brain, as evidenced by some of his vetoes. So, watch out. It’s gonna get much, much worse under “pretty boy” “zero” Newsom.
“He is a candidate for ainthood”
Fixed it for ya!
Wow, you got that right.
Here in Southern Vermont, on Sept 8 they had a”Windham County Rise for Climate Rally”, where at least 100 bike riders were joined by as many walkers to protest the blasphemous use of fossil fuels, which of course cause climate change.
Here’s a quote from the rally, sponsored by our friends at Brattleboro350:
“A single cyclist feels alone on Brattleboro’s busy roads,” said Abby Mnookin.
“Add 100 riders to the lane and it feels so different and really empowering,” she said.
There was a “bike petting zoo” as well as the obligatory face painting
“Climate change is a justice issue,” said Mnookin, pointing out that while it impacts everyone, it does not impact everyone equally and most hurts people living on the margins of our society.
All this means is that the local bicycle riders will become more aggressive in challenging the multi-ton vehicles threatening their lifestyle.
They just don’t understand that after all the rallys and speeches, nothing about the climate is doing will have changed, no matter what what they do.
God help them all, they mean well, but are totally deluded.
Full mind blowing article here: http://www.commonsnews.org/site/sitenext/story.php?articleno=28986
One wonders how these folks got their bikes to Brattleboro. It’s not exactly the center of the universe. In fact, it’s along way from anything except Dummerston. My guess is that somewhere between 95% and 98% of them drove fossil fuel powered vehicles with bicycles hanging on the back or tied to the roof.
“The strongest argument for socialism is that it sounds good. The strongest argument against socialism is that it doesn’t work. But those who live by words will always have a soft spot in their hearts for socialism because it sounds so good.” – Thomas Sowell
>>
Thomas Sowell
<<
One of the smarter men on the planet. His “Basic Economics” is an excellent read.
Jim
Today’s liberals are programmed to believe that anything authoritarian in good and must be imposed.
True liberalism which seemed to have reached its best in the late 1900s understood “The unexamined life is not worth living”.
Now it is “The coerced life is not worth living.”
Bob Hoye
To a liberal, intentions are what matter. Results are just a distraction.
I really hope Governor Brown gets permission for the his launch and notifies all concerned parties. It would probably be for the best to simply engage governor Brown’s space launch from the ABM site in Alaska, it is important to prevent the Russians and Chinese form seeing something on their radar screens and over reacting. Or, lord forgive the Indians and Pakistanis for that matter.
michael
The illustration looks a lot like the star wars death star the emperor was building before his untimely demise. With California’s debt load and ridiculous anti business economic/free sh*t/ socialist policies under gov moon beam the cost of launcing this satellite might be the death star for California. But then I’m sure he will expect a bailout from the rest of the country once he and his policies are flushed down the drain.
Hey, this is great news! It represents jobs for many of my former students who now work in the aerospace industry. Three cheers for Governor Moonbeam!!!
USA’s governor Brown makes Australian politicians look like they have some degree of intelligence.
Such a relief to see your comment Geoff. I was beginning to feel very lonely whenever Oz was mentioned anywhere because our whole group of pollies are so unhinged. Mind you South Australia is taking about a space port or was that before the last state election.
South (East) Australia would be an interesting launch point point. Due south (for polar orbits) is possible – without the limits and expenses of Vandenburg!) and a due east flight path could be flown from the east coast over open water.
Closer to the equator would favor east-shooting launches => Northeast coast site.
Due north is then possible from a north-east coast launch site, since the Ozzies have no nuke ICBM’s a north-facing launch doesn’t trigger the automatic “OH SHIT WE’RE GETTING ATTACKED!” warnings of a US-UK-French missile launch over the pole.)
What does it matter if a polar orbit is started by launching north or south from Australia? Nothing gained by having a south-east launch site.
SR
The point was that they could launch due south over water. Launching over water is a good idea in case the booster goes boom. The pieces only bother the fish when they hit.
A south east coastal launch site has no land (other countries) north or east of it. Makes aborted missiles, missile debris, falling stages and air clearance zones much, much easier. Easier scheduling (because you don’t need such permissions from other countries and have no liabilities to those other countries) means much less trouble with schedules – more important unexpected delays.
A north-to-south polar orbit is not sensitive to east-west speed advantage of being closer to the equator.
A southeast coast launch site is, most important, closer to the people and ports and cities where the “launch site stuff” (and the stuff to build and support the launch site itself) have to be purchased. Hervey, for example, is over three hours drive from Brisbane, itself not very large.
A launch north (from the SE coast) would go over the middle desert – which makes tracking radars and sites easier to support.
Now, launch eastwards are far better coming from the NE coast line. Such as Brisbane.
If California actually builds a satellite, they’ll surely pay someone else — NASA, SpaceX, Russia, China, etc,etc,etc to launch it and also to provide ground station services. Since it’s not clear WHY they want the thing, it’s hard to guess what sort of orbit they’ll want.
My guess is that they’ve heard a really spiffy presentation from some set of high-tech bandits or other and don’t yet understand the real world problems they will face. e.g. Unless they want to look at California from geosynchronous orbit 24000 miles out, they’ll likely only get only two short passes over the state each day, lots of nifty sensors can’t see through clouds, etc, etc, etc.
Most likely thing is that as the problems become clearer, the notion that a satellite is an answer to their problems (if any) will fade. If they actually need to sense stuff that existing services and satellites don’t handle, they may end up paying an airline a few 100K per year to bolt a sensor package onto scheduled airliners flying over the state. Or maybe they’ll put a sensor package into state vehicles that are on the road anyway — CHP patrol vehicles for example.
OTOH, assuming rational decision making in California may be a bit of a stretch.
Yeah and launch it with Moonbeam on it .
Really is the guy that mental ?
What has happened is the train to no where and the imminent California melt down have pushed the earth has a fever priest over the top .
Ready for Launch, Captain Moonbeam!
https://youtu.be/-pGOIIwY12I
There is ZERO chance this isn’t political BS. Moonbeam is on his way out – term limited – and the timing of these phantom satellite launches won’t possibly be until 2021. Once the costs are made clear to the legislature they will NEVER fund the work – even under Gavin Newsome. And Gov Brown knows all this.
Dear God, will we NEVER be rid of this POS? He has driven the state into the poorhouse and yet he still believes California is rich enough to have both a $100 billion dollar slow bullet train to nowhere, PLUS a useless satellite.
I’ve never wished someone dead … but with this congenital idiot, I’m working my way up to wishing him GBH …
w.
Careful Willis, Brown might target you with his new satellite… 😉
Now now Willis , no violence in WUWT. On a happier note the Chinese are still the leading country that is forcing the Guardian climate carbon dioxide emission clock to run at 1000 tons of CO2 per second . Go China Go . In 43 days it will hit 75%% of the POINT OF NO RETURN of 2.9 trillion tons of CO2 emitted since the caveman days. Sadly we will have to wait another 18 years for the actual point of no return. I have no idea how they calculated that 2.9 trillion tons of CO2 is the runaway point of no return. Somehow I get the impression that as we near the so called point of no return, the infield field workers will dig up the goalposts and move them further apart.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2017/jan/19/carbon-countdown-clock-how-much-of-the-worlds-carbon-budget-have-we-spent
Moonbeam is leaving next January. For the next month and a half your energy would be better spent trying to defeat New-scum. If we’re lucky, very lucky, we can get 4 years with California goobernment in legislative gridlock and someone halfway sane heading the Executive.
Still it’s just a Drop in the bucket compared to the amount being wasted by Gov Moonbeam on the low-speed train to nowhere from nowhere. He’s already put some of the carbon tax money to that albatross of massive debt.
The satellites (microsatellites) would not even be a rounding error on the train budget.
Gov Brown’s final gesture will be to sign an order compelling all radio telescopes in California to start more focused searches for extraterrestrial life signals, so that he will know where to aim the rocket his state builds to send a message to those beings to help California find a new source of non-fossil fuel, non-nuclear energy that WILL work.
… more California dreamin’ going on here. I’m sure the tax payers won’t mind their money being spent on off-planet pursuits. Let’s see now, we have streets getting painted white, regulations compelling all renewable energy, and now a state-built satellite to monitor the magical molecule. What I want to know is who will be cast as Gov Brown in the movie made out of all this. First we have to come up with a good movie title. Then we have to decide whether the movie will be a comedy (my vote) or something more serious, like an end-of-the-world thing.
The comedy would be called Gettin’ Down With Brown. The serious movie would be called Hot Hell California, using the Eagle’s song, Hotel California as the theme song.
‘Gone with the Mind’ ??
Just saying’ – and I think it has not been done before. Not quite.
Auto
I hope Gavin cancels the ‘bullet’train and this satellite.
‘The suggestion that the satellite will “pinpoint and stop destructive emissions” seems a bit ominous, given that the satellite’s capabilities have not yet been finalised.’
I’m thinking big laser. Operated by Schwarzenegger.