Climate researchers in a spin after satellite loss

Nature News ^ | 25 February 2009 | Jeff Tollefson & Geoff Brumfiel

[neverdem]

doi:10.1038/news.2009.124

NASA Satellite Fails to Reach Orbit

The NY Times was the only source that I found that described what happened in some detail.

[Parmy]

HOpefully, some things aren’t meant to be.

[BenLurkin]

Good news for a change.

[ronnie raygun]

Bushes fault

[DesertRhino]

Awwwwwww what a shame! LOL

[Nervous Tick]

>> “My experience is that every time we have a comprehensive new data set, we redefine the field,”

Believe me, I’ve noticed that, hon.

I’m so heartbroken over the loss of your satellite that I think I’ll knock off early today and celebrate.

[SpaceBar]

So they dump fifty tons of carbon in the form of burned rocket fuel into the atmosphere just to get it in orbit to measure our fragile carbon damaged ecosystem. Sure must be nice sucking on that government teat.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Dear Scientists,

Just make crap up. That’s what you do anyway.

[wolfcreek]

“The satellite would have measured carbon dioxide concentrations in unprecedented detail, allowing scientists to track emission sources”

So the Obama Admin. could tax the crap out of them.

[digger48]

At least this way, they can just keep making up numbers instead of having the actual measurements that dispute Global Warming

[kingu]

But it's much easier to delude others when you've got a larger dataset and control the only access to the original instruments. Unlike the previous standard where ground stations declared the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and defied any existing model as it showed five times what scientists said would be ‘normal’ and was virtually the same around the world. Well, least on the ‘calibrated’ instruments which are routinely adjusted to ensure they all give the same results.

[xcamel]

FReepmail me to get on or off

Climate Research News

Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown

GREENIE WATCH

Ping me if you find one I've missed.

---

[Malsua]

The rocket is a metaphor for the whole carbon scam. Everyone has hope, it lights off and becomes a bright beacon for all to sea and then unceremoniously crashes to the ocean, a false hope.

[Tallguy]

So the Obama Admin. could tax the crap out of them.

Don't look now, but your local township might already be using satellite imagery to lookdown on your house to make sure you didn't do any "unauthorized" additions.

[az_gila]

“Everyone is in shock,” Inez Fung, an atmospheric scientist with the University of California, Berkeley who worked on the OCO project, said after a debriefing conference call on Tuesday afternoon. “It was like a grieving session. There were 13 buses at the launch. A lot of people contributed to this.”

---

I wonder how many so-called scientists (13 bus loads at least) were relying on the data from this satellite to get new grants?

No wonder they were grieving...:^)

[colorado tanker]

Darn. And this thing was going to produce so much propaganda, er, uh, data, I mean.

[Matchett-PI]

“At present, samples are taken by hand every two weeks at roughly 100 ground stations situated unevenly around the world.”

Yeah. And we don’t like the readings we’re getting right now. :)

Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling
Michael Asher - February 26, 2008 12:55 PM

World Temperatures according to the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction. Note the steep drop over the last year.
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Widescale+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm

[palmer]

I am going to miss all those research studies written up the NYT: “CO2 satellite data shows mankind much more doomed than previously thought”.

[Matchett-PI]

02/19/2009

The 2008 weblog awards winner for Best Science Blog
http://wattsupwiththat.com/

NSIDC: satellite sea ice sensor has “catastrophic failure” - data faulty for the last 45 or more days (”Although we believe that data prior to early January are reliable, we will conduct a full quality check in the coming days. ...it became clear that there was a significant problem - sea-ice-covered regions were showing up as open ocean. ...”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/18/nsidc-satellite-sea-ice-sensor-has-catastrophic-failure-data-faulty-for-the-last-45-days/#comments

Click for larger image [at above link]

Today NSIDC announced they had discovered the reason why. The sensor on the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) satellite they use had degraded and now apparently failed to the point of being unusable. Compounding the bad news they discovered it had been in slow decline for almost two months, which caused a bias in the arctic sea ice data that underestimated the total sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers. This will likely affect the January NSIDC sea ice totals. .... [snip]

John Egan (22:29:11) asks :

Will NSIDC issue a correction to the media?

“Arctic sea ice coverage was at its sixth lowest January extent since satellite records began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Average ice extent during January was 5.43 million square miles.”

This was released in a number of news outlets -
http://www.examiner.com/x-219-Denver-Weather-Examiner~y2009m2d18-January-was-seventh-warmest-for-globe
And was also part of the larger NOAA January report -
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090218_globalstats.html
<>

William Schlesinger on IPCC: “something on the order of 20 percent have had some dealing with climate.”
17 02 2009 http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/17/william-schlesinger-on-ipcc-something-on-the-order-of-20-percent-have-had-some-dealing-with-climate/

This is a bit disturbing, though in retrospect, not surprising. One of our local IPCC wonks at Chico State University, Jeff Price, is a biologist, but lectures me about climate all the same. - Anthony

by Paul Chesser, Climate Strategies Watch

I had intended to return to this point when I originally posted about this debate last week, but time got away from me. Thankfully, my colleague Roy Cordato brought it up today:

During the question and answer session of last week?s William Schlesinger/John Christy global warming debate, (alarmist) Schlesinger was asked how many members of United Nation?s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were actual climate scientists. It is well known that many, if not most, of its members are not scientists at all. Its president, for example, is an economist.

Picture: http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/10/13/Rajendra_Pachauri_wideweb__470x317,0.jpg
Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC - trained initially as a railway engineer

This question came after Schlesinger had cited the IPCC as an authority for his position. His answer was quite telling.

First he broadened it to include not just climate scientists but also those who have had ?some dealing with the climate.? His complete answer was that he thought, ?something on the order of 20 percent have had some dealing with climate.? In other words, even IPCC worshiper Schlesinger now acknowledges that 80 percent of the IPCC membership had absolutely no dealing with the climate as part of their academic studies.

This shatters so much of the alarmists’ claim, as they almost always appeal to the IPCC as their ultimate authority.

[wolfcreek]

I worked for a county tax assessor for a year. I know the process.