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In recent years [...] satellite and aircraft instruments have begun monitoring carbon dioxide and methane remotely, and NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), a $10-million-a-year research line, has helped stitch together observations of sources and sinks into high-resolution models of the planet's flows of carbon. Now, President Donald Trump's administration has quietly killed the CMS, Science has learned.
Source: sciencemag.org)
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Trump White House Quietly Cancels NASA Research Verifying Greenhouse Gas Cuts
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 2) by The Shire on Monday May 14 2018, @07:35PM (7 children)
From the article:
So the American tax payer saves money and there is no loss of data. How is this not a good business decision? Do you really care who the "CO2 monitoring leader of the world" is?
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Gaaark on Monday May 14 2018, @08:25PM
This just shows that Europe is able to think loooong term, and THINK.
Trump is just showing thinking short term and not thinking.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Redundant) by requerdanos on Monday May 14 2018, @08:51PM (5 children)
Although there are many effects of such a decision, I can't say that any of them would make this a "bad" decision. Just pointing out that the President, despite being somewhat known for being a "climate change denier", is nonetheless also in the position of a CFO and is making a decision to save some money.
There is something to be said for doing the research yourself, the better to be certain of the conditions and faithfulness of the results. But is that worth the $10M budget? Doubtful, but in the end I can't say. The president doesn't think so, and making that kind of decision is part of his job.
Again, there's something to be said for faithfulness of the results as science and not as a political tool. The climate alarmism nutjobs (The oceans are boiling away!)(No, they aren't) and the climate change denier nutjobs (Animals and Volcanoes emit more carbon that people!)(No, people lead here) both have a strong tendency to use any given study as a prooftext supporting their fixed positions instead of context from which to make informed decisions.
So yes, it matters who that leader is, but it doesn't matter that that leader is "The USA", especially given that the US has both types of inflexible extremist mentioned above.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday May 15 2018, @12:19AM (2 children)
A CFO that favours literally blowing that money - bet you the latest salvo of rockets in Syria cost more than the 'saved' $10mil. That must be a sign of 'sound economic thinking' - for the values of 'sound' usually associated with explosions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Redundant) by requerdanos on Tuesday May 15 2018, @12:46AM (1 child)
Yes, that one!
You've got to admit, "sound" is a flexible and useful word, only one syllable, doesn't take up too much mental space, only five letters so very twittable.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 15 2018, @12:58AM
Not a chance in hell I'm gonna tweet my comment:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Shire on Tuesday May 15 2018, @02:27PM (1 child)
>Again, there's something to be said for faithfulness of the results as science and not as a political tool.
We're talking about $10 million here which can easily be funded by interested private entities or universities. The allocation of taxpayer money for these sorts of things should be outside the purview of the government - monitoring CO2 is a purely scientific venture, it's not something required to run the nation. This move by Trump is in keeping with the philosophy of smaller government. If a non governmental issue is really important to a group of people, they're welcome to organize themselves and fund it.
In this way you can completely avoid using it as a political tool.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Tuesday May 15 2018, @03:34PM
I am not sure who should be allocating tax money, if not the government. Even if it's tax money "for science". Isn't the government the organization that allocates all the tax money, by definition? Maybe I am misunderstanding something.
While important government policy decisions may hinge on what the CO2 data show, I agree that it doesn't need to be cooked in-house... In fact, smaller government + independent data is a win all around.
I couldn't agree more.