Daval

Here is the latest twist in the bizarre story about the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). Apparently, the US Air Force is in discussions with NASA to take over the mission, with one important catch: that all the Earth observing instruments be removed.

It seems the Air Force is more interested in looking at the Sun than our warming planet and plans are being made to send the spacecraft 100 million miles distant – only to look the other way.

DSCOVR is unique experiment that would place a spacecraft at a gravitational parking spot 100 million miles away where it could continuously observe the Earth as it circles the sun.

This unique vantage point would allow us for the first time to directly measure the energy budget of our warming planet. This spacecraft would also immediately lay to rest any remaining scientific questions about the origins or seriousness of climate change. Strangely, this fully completed spacecraft remains in a box somewhere in Maryland, eight years and $100 million after it was built.

DeSmog Blog has written a series of investigative articles on the status of this strange mission. NASA has repeatedly refused to release any internal documents relating the status of DSCOVR or why the space agency refuses to launch it, even when requested through the Freedom of Information Act.

This spring, Congress submitted a bill that included a clause requiring NASA to explain to the taxpayer within 180 days why this mission remains in storage and what it plans to do with it. The bill was signed into law last week by president Bush, meaning NASA must present their plan regarding DSCOVR by April 13, 2009.

Assuming that there are senior scientists within NASA that are threatened by the novel methodology of the DSCOVR experiment, or well placed oil interests that want to keep the so-called climate debate going, this legally mandated deadline presents a problem. What to do?

The latest bizarre development with the Air Force would perversely get NASA off the hook. The spacecraft would be launched, NASA would met the strict legal requirements of resolving the mission, yet DSCOVR would return no data for which it was designed. Problem solved.

This latest twist is entirely consistent with the eight years of foot-dragging and obfuscation from the leadership of NASA. For those of us with a growing suspicion about why DSCOVR remains in a box, we can only wonder how all of this will play out.

In the meantime, I will be publishing some new and disturbing internal documents about the DSCOVR mission in the next week. If anyone out there has any additional documents or insights they would like to share in confidence, please contact me directly at manderson@kwik.net.

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What the hell? What on earth is the US military trying to hide here? Maybe this thread should be in Tilted Paranoia but this just smells of a conspiracy of some sort.

I hope that when Obama wins he is able to do something about this - we need this environmental information that this sattelite could provide.

__________________
"It is impossible to obtain a conviction for sodomy from an English jury. Half of them don't believe that it can physically be done, and the other half are doing it."
Winston Churchill

snowy

There are already a number of satellites in orbit that collect information in regards to water resources/watersheds that can give us information about climate change. Currently I am in the middle of working on a project to aggregate journal articles that use data from these remote sensing satellites. One of the studies I came across uses satellite to detect the water levels in soil over a large area of Oklahoma; another used satellite data to establish whether or not a resource management plan in India was effective or not. These are just a couple of examples off the top of my head; there are quite a few more.

From looking at the other information on the 'Net about the Deep Space Climate Observatory, this thing has been dead for a while. Evidently it was supposed to be launched on the mission where Columbia crashed, and has languished in storage ever since. The Bush administration denied a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, which suggests that this is a problem caused by the current administration.

At any rate, while I think the idea of DSCOVR (formerly known as Triana, which is a cooler name) is nifty, there is also existing data to be used, provided by existing satellites. What I don't understand is why, in the meantime, we're paying $1 million a year to store a satellite that cost $100 million. Perhaps turning the mission over to the USAF is a way to sweep what has become a boondoggle under the rug.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Glory's Sun

the only conspiracy here is that if the DOD takes control of it, then the taxes can continue to be collected on it.

3GPositive

Latest study says it's a done deal...

Selected quotes:

Attribution of polar warming to human influence : Abstract : Nature Geoscience

Attribution of polar warming to human influence
Nathan P. Gillett and others..
Nature Geoscience
Published online: 30 October 2008

The polar regions have long been expected to warm strongly as a result of
anthropogenic climate change, because of the positive feedbacks associated
with melting ice and snow, Several studies have noted a rise in Arctic
temperatures over recent decades but have not formally attributed the
changes to human influence, owing to sparse observations and large natural
variability. Both warming and cooling trends have been observed in
Antarctica, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth
Assessment Report concludes is the only continent where anthropogenic
temperature changes have not been detected so far, possibly as a result of
insufficient observational coverage. Here we use an up-to-date gridded data
set of land surface temperatures and simulations from four coupled climate
models to assess the causes of the observed polar temperature changes. We
find that the observed changes in Arctic and Antarctic temperatures are not
consistent with internal climate variability or natural climate drivers
alone, and are directly attributable to human influence. Our results
demonstrate that human activities have already caused significant warming in
both polar regions, with likely impacts on polar biology, indigenous
communities, ice-sheet mass balance and global sea level.

Study confirms human impact on climate - Breaking News - National - Breaking News

The study, from the Canadian Centre for Climate Analysis and published in
the journal Nature Geoscience, looked at the most up-to-date temperature
data from across both regions at the north and south poles and compared them
with temperatures simulated by four computer models. "We found that we could
only explain the warming that's been observed if we included human-climate
influences, particularly greenhouse gases," the study's author, Nathan
Gillett, told ABC Radio.

Climate change at the poles IS man-made - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent

It is the first time scientists have been able to prove the link between the
temperature changes in both polar regions are down to human activity and it
also undermines climate sceptics who believe the warming trend seen in the
Arctic in recent decades is part of the climate's natural variability.

"We're able for the first time to directly attribute warming in both the
Arctic and the Antarctic to human influences on the climate," said Nathan
Gillett of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, who
led the study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience.