Friday, December 5, 2008
Could it be because Al Gore's initials areon it? They changed the name,
but the initials wouldn't rub off. Three years ago while Congress was out
of town for the Christmas break, I heard NASA was quietly terminating
Triana, a.k.a. DSCOVR, http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn010606 . How
could this happen? The $100 million observatory was already built. It
was meant to answer the most fundamental question of climate science: what
is the energy balance between solar radiation falling on Earth and
reflected or reradiated energy? Global warming deniers all claim solar
variation is the major factor in global climate change. Is it? Well,
Triana is the only experiment that can unequivocally answer that
question. But I couldn't find a single global warming denier who wanted
it tested. So I wrote an op-ed for the NY Times; but maybe nobody read
it, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/opinion/15park.html . It's still
timely; the NY Times should feel free to reprint it without change.
The Nov 19, 2008 online Nature news, reported that the NASA
reauthorization bill ordered the agency to come up with a plan for
DSCOVR. The article quoted Francisco Valero of Scripps, the mission's
principle investigator, who estimated that it would take $117 million to
refurbish and launch DSCOVR. The Air Force offered to launch it, but
incredibly, only if all Earth observation equipment is removed. This led
me to wonder if there could be a national security reason. No, Dick
Cheney just doesn't want to hear about global warming. DeSmogBlog, the
best of the environmental blogs, quotes an unnamed source within NASA who
spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying Cheney was the hatchet man,
intent from the beginning on killing DSCOVR, and keeping Bush's
fingerprints off the axe. And why did I have to learn about this from a
UK science magazine and a Canadian blog? The only major U.S. paper that
mentioned it was the Houston Chronicle.
Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of the Strategic Command is urging
quick action on the Reliable Replacement Warhead. Maybe he didn't get the
memo with the election results. The Jason advisory group reported a
couple of years ago that there should be no problem with warheads in the
stockpile for the next hundred years. But look out for unpleasant
surprises in the next few weeks. Our first priority should be to return
to a policy of limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, beginning with
ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
We should have a scientist involved in the discussions. The last thing we
need is a repeat of the hydrogen car fiasco following Bush's 2003 State of
the Union Address. In a couple of months GM had a hydrogen car, paid for
by the taxpayers, circling the Capitol, but it was not a solution to any
problem.
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