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.
Does Jerry Brown even know how to fly a lite? I seriously doubt it.
Sorry, typo “kite” not “lite.”
Nail dem cows, Moonbeam, track down dem farters!
Hopefully this satellite has lasers. Jerry can sit in the command center and shoot the emissions. Pew pew…is that a laser sound?
— more like: sizzle, sizzle — as when you fry an insect with a magnifying glass concentrating sunlight.
Way Kewl!
“the process is expected to take several years.”
Taking a satellite from concept to launch can take 20 years. We can shorten the time frame a bit because the OCO and OCO2 birds have already done this. Then lengthen the time frame because CARB are moonbats with no comprehension of reality.
“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.”
These ex-NASA guys have hopped onto the Global Warming Gravy Train *BIGLY*.
Imagine, getting a fat Govt. contract, with guaranteed renewals, no set end date, specs changed on a whim, and only a vague mission statement. All funded by a bunch of left wing ideologues and outright moonbats spending other people’s money like it is going out of style.
These ex-NASA guys are going to ride this one to riches and all the way to retirement.
Anybody wonder why Global Warming just keeps going and going and going ……
Like the Energizer Bunny?
This is exhibit A, it pays, Big Time.
He’s not going to like the data coming his satellite.
Much of it will be highly inconvenient.
He’ll need a workforce of ‘adjusters’.
But I think what he’s proposing is ok in context.
It’s no more a waste & duplication than most of what NASA/NOAA and the majority of science/academia do day-in-day-out with our money.
Science is heavily into fraud & deception normalised by administrators, governing bodies and politicians.
In the days before modern electronics Kings of old had Court Jesters. So Trump needs such persons in his “Kingdom”.
MJE
But the court Jesters did a good job in showing up the dafter policies of the King, while his more submissive Ministers were afraid of their jobs – or the loss of their heads.
The Jester was more sensible than the King. Not so Governor Moonbat.
Sorry. Moonbat or Moonbeam? Does it matter?
Jerry Brown’s actions as governor of California are consistent with the Platonism that he presumably absorbed while living at a convent in studying to be a priest. Like modern global warming climatologists, Plato held the anti-scientific view that abstract objects were real. Platonism was instilled in the minds of global warming climatologists via the notion of “radiative forcing.” A radiative forcing “forces” the global surface air temperature at equilibrium to rise but as the global surface air temperature is not observable this is not a “scientific” conjecture.
Oops. Please append “at equilibrium” to “global surface air temperature” in the last sentence of my post.
The TDS that Brown suffers is surely just a manifestation of his own mind. And like his climate religion, his TDS hallucinations are as real as the hallucinations he had when he was dropping acid in 1960’s. Moonbeam probably still has flashback episodes from his days on the MagicBus.
Terry Oldberg
September 15, 2018 at 4:20 pm:
“Like modern global warming climatologists, Plato held the anti-scientific view that abstract objects were real.”
What is “anti-scientific” about it, Terry? I am at a loss to understand you.
Like the old angels dancing on the head of a pin. A question for Californians. Is the production and consumption of marijuana carbon-neutral?
I think I can guess who’s been using. Maybe they plan on paying for the satellite from the taxes of the weed.
This entire “climate summit” is nothing but climate alarmist hype. There is no plan whatsoever as to how or when the purely political schemes floated at this “summit” will produce any results that actually reduces the increasing global emissions path that is so clearly present world developing nations.
The so called California satellite is just more hype. No launch date, no design details about the satellite, its systems or how it fits into a non existent plan related to the “summits” unspecified goals, timetable and objectives.
Just phony climate alarmist political gobbledegook fabricated by a media devoid of any real world relevance or significance.
Because clearly California is just rolling in money and can’t imagine what to d with all the resources.
more satellites for settled science? surely not
will it have an onboard adjustment engine to ensure Moonbeam and his successors see what they expect to see?
should build his own damn EVs as well, I hear there is an opportunity right now
and maybe a CO2 wall?
With CO2 levels above the Amazon forests among the highest – I guess that will have to be the first to go. Oh well, at least it will be for the common good.
From the summary at the start of the above article: “The state will develop the satellite with the San Francisco-based Earth-imaging firm Planet Labs . . .”
Uhhhh . . . I thought all State-authorized construction projects in California required open and competitive bidding and objective evaluation of submitted proposals, or at least presentation of overwhelming reasons as to why a sole-source bid is acceptable.
It appears to be time for filing for records disclosure under California Public Records Act (Statutes of 1968, Chapter 1473; currently codified as California Government Code §§ 6250 through 6276.48) as to why Moonbeam Brown has already selected Planet Labs to build the satellite for California.
Regulations were meant to keep conservatives from wasting state money.
Since liberals know themselves to be perfect, they aren’t bound by anything as trivial as laws or regulations.
So Jerry Moonbeam is going to launch his own satellite? There is NO WAY that Jerry Brown or the State of California will be able to launch their own satellite on their own.
However, I’m certain that Elon Musk and SpaceX will be delighted to do that for a nominal price. They’ve gotten pretty good at that stuff over the past few years.
The newest thing are these shoebox size microsatellites cost only $50K or so apiece. They have GPS chipset for accurate position information, a small solar array that deploys after ejection from the launch bus to keep their small battery charged, and and a data communications transmitter not much more than an iPhone/qualcomm spread-spectrum transmitter in the S band downlink spectrum.
The idea is to deploy a dozen or so for about $1Million as an add-on to an already launching vehicle, a piggy-back ride to LEO. EjJected by a timer during a coast phase on the bus. They continually take pictures with whatever imagining sensor with wavelength filter they were equipped with. No moving parts. No sophisticated maneuvering thrusters or stabilization system (no flywheels), just a gravity-gradient to stabilize them. If they malfunction, no big loss. They are in orbits below 225 miles so they re-enter and completely burn-up in less than a year so as not to clutter-up higher orbits. Then they are regularly replaced.
Joel,
Could we not just piggyback Gov. Brown into low Earth orbit, so that he could monitor CO2 for a year before burning up on reentry? Granted he’s bigger than a shoebox.
The Moonbeam has been a Space Cadet long enough. Time to put him to work, I say.
Just great. But shouldn’t there be a specific purpose for deploying such an array of satellites (above and beyond duplicating data already available from US sensing satellites.
I haven’t heard any unique data that Moonbeam’s satellites are designed to obtain, just some generalities . . . a classic case of putting the cart coming before the horse.
What exactly does Gov. Brown want to monitor. The reality is that the climate change we are experiencing today is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. Despite the hype there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific rationale that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. The climate sensitivity of a gas is the temperature change that would result from a doubling of the amount of that gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. The gas in the Earth’s atmosphere with the greatest climate sensitivity is not CO2 but rather N2.
“What exactly does Gov. Brown want to monitor.” He doesn’t know but he knows there’s something he can find that proves if/where man is using fossil fuels and it jeopardizes earth’s environment worse than nature does.
You might want to explain that one a bit further, with some math WH. I think I know where you’re coming from (almost doubling of surface pressure), but it’s not so clear.
UNFCCC
UN Climate Press Release / 14 SEP, 2018
“Global Climate Action Summit Brings Surge of New Commitments and Calls for Increased Government Action”
“Top UN official welcomed the outcome of the Global Climate Action Summit that concluded today in San Francisco, …”
More attention should be paid to the UN / UNFCCC role in this Summit?
https://unfccc.int/news/global-climate-action-summit-brings-surge-of-new-commitments-and-calls-for-increased-government
UNFCCC
ANNOUNCEMENT / 14 SEP, 2018, San Francisco
“Revamped UN Climate Action Portal to Capture and Drive Climate Action”
Re: the NAZCA Climate Action Portal
https://unfccc.int/news/revamped-un-climate-action-portal-to-capture-and-drive-climate-action
Um, what about NASA’s OCO-2 (Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2)? They launched that monstrosity in July of 2014, released one ‘picture’ from it, and then nobody ever heard about it again. My guess is that NASA quickly learned that the popular Co2 narrative was a crock of BS and proceeded to bury anything/everything related to OCO-2. If you look it up on NASA’s website most of the links regarding it lead to 404 errors and ‘content not found’ errors.
Mr. Moonbeam might want to consult with NASA before he commits any CA taxpayer dollars to another space-based fiasco….
Artiem2112, yeah I mentioned that satellite at the top of this comments section.
Did anyone keep those images and videos of the original data showing increased CO2 over and close to warm waters and not over industrialized regions? Have they all been disappeared?
OCO-2 files are available. It’s supposed to operate until next year, to be replaced by OCO-3:
https://co2.jpl.nasa.gov/
But you’re right that its inconvenient observations haven’t been ballyhooed.
Thanks John Tillman.
What’s funny is that despite these products produced – NOBODY ever published anything for general public consumption. What I mean by that is that nothing from OCO-2 ever made it to the MSM, and nobody – NOBODY – in the general population really even knows it exists. OCO-2 never had any sort of a ‘eureka moment’ because it never found anything worthwhile to report. No ‘smoking gun’, no ‘stop, look, and listen’ data, and nothing worthy of reporting in general – period. For the most part, OCO-2 was a NASA-hyped affair when it launched, but ultimately ended up buried in the same warehouse as the Ark of the Covenant as per Indiana Jones.
In other words – much ado about nothing – because it found nothing….
I was wondering what California was going to do with all their extra money.
Headline: Rocketman moonbeam launches spaceforce to detect methane coming from streets of San Francisco.
Jerry Brown can’t make the DMV function, fill the potholes or any of the basics. Who thinks he can successfully launch a satellite?
What? The DMV is functioning exactly as intended!
It’s registering illegal aliens as fast as possible (actually, faster than possible) to vote (democrat-socialist).
Bingo!!!
California would be better off if it just launched Moonbeam into space (along with much of the Legislature).
[This website does not condone sending trash and contaminates (including politicians of any kind) into near space orbits. .mod]
Just launch them toward the sun. Keep the solar system clean of garbage.
+10 to the mod
Hey, something has gone terribly wrong.
Tons of papers, diplomas, grades, recommendations are required for even the lowest position in a company. Interviews and evaluations follow.
A politician just needs to get elected. No qualification requirements whatsoever.
In other words, would you feel safe if an airline made the following pre-flight announcement:
-And now Ladies and Gentlemen, we will proceed to the election of our Captain and First Officer amongst the passengers of this flight.
What follows is already part of the statistics.
I doubt restricting elegibility to the kind of academics many of today’s universities mass produce would lead to a better outcome.
What if we restrict it to people who have held real jobs and paid real taxes?
California has the distinction of being the worst in many respects: the highest poverty rate of all 50 states, the highest number of illegal aliens, ranked 46th in education, has the most human poop and drug needles in the streets of any state, criminally insufficient water resources, the largest homeless pollution in the US, collapsing infrastructure, the highest state/property taxes in the US, the highest state corporate taxes, the highest state regulation compliance costs in the US, some of the highest rents of any state, huge lack of housing availibitly due to insane zoning/environmental laws, etc., etc., etc.,; it’s and economic and social disaster area…
All these collasal problems are a result of Loony Leftist policies that have bankrupted California and made life miserable for most Californians…
Rather than addressing any of these real existential threats, Governor Moombean wants to launch a CO2 Death Star Satellite to address the Fake CAGW ho@x..
The Left has gone completely insane…
Rather than addressing these
Soooo – this satellite is going to pinpoint the sources of destructive CO2 emissions so that they can take action. Maybe it will spot that Europe and the USA have reduced their CO2 emissions and then focus their calls to action on China and India who are responsible for by far the majority of the increases.
Walking the walk…:
How to fly to a climate change summit? In a private, carbon-spewing jet
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/How-to-fly-to-a-climate-change-summit-In-a-13231466.php