Turning a blind eye to what’s happening on the Earth
December 3, 2016 11:09 AM   Subscribe

"Turning a blind eye to the Earth wouldn’t just stifle basic research. It would leave us more vulnerable to all sorts of weather and climate-related disasters, from drought-fueled famines in Ethiopia to devastating wildfires in Alberta to the ceaseless march of sea level rise in South Florida and the South Pacific. These, and many other environmental challenges that NASA’s Earth science division helps us to understand, have enormous economic and national security implications for all of humanity."

NASA's Earth Science Division, which is up for massive cuts under the incoming administration, is about far more than climate change.

15 Ways NASA Earth Science Benefits You That You Don't See: STEM Education. Weather forecasts. Hurricanes*. Drought. Wildfires. Pollution. Volcanic ash and aviation. Ocean conditions. The ozone hole closing. The poles. Changes in land use. Agriculture. Jobs. Earthquakes. And more (even birds)...

*"What made Sandy unusual was the sudden “left-hook” of the storm towards the New Jersey coast, which was almost unprecedented and challenged many Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) systems. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) made excellent forecasts of Sandy’s landfall providing some warning signals 7 - 8 days in advance. To better understand the role of satellite observations in the successful forecasting of the event, a group of scientists at ECMWF recently performed a number of experiments." "The study showed that the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) Near Real-Time (NRT) data from NASA’s polar-orbiting satellites significantly improved these predictions."

"Consider NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or Grace, mission. [NYT] It was designed to study Earth’s gravity field, meaning the planet’s distribution of mass. Grace could “see” changes in ocean currents, precipitation runoff on land and changes in groundwater storage. Grace showed us the spreading of drought conditions as water tables dropped. In this way the Grace data speak directly to a fundamental mistake of the agency’s critics. Climate change is not the direction of NASA’s earth-science enterprise; it’s a conclusion of that effort." [original emphasis]

From that same link, on the proposal to shift some of these functions to another agency: "NOAA, an agency of the Department of Commerce, has a budget of just $6 billion, a fraction of which is spent on earth science. Asking it to absorb part or all of NASA’s earth science effort would be like watching a snake try to swallow an elephant."


Previously, NOT related to climate-change:
How many trees are on our planet
Ancient earthworks discovered from space
The most complete terrain map of the Earth's surface
NASA's Earth Observatory [with some link rot]
posted by puffyn (20 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Nope. Weather is a conspiracy by the Chinese.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:17 AM on December 3, 2016 [9 favorites]


This is fine.
posted by Cookiebastard at 11:19 AM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Is any organization funding lobbyists who can advocate for this research?
posted by amtho at 11:28 AM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


In one episode of The Tick, he tries to prevent destruction of the Earth because, "That's where I keep all my stuff!"

It amazes me that a fictional, somewhat dim, nigh-invulnerable superhero has better sense than we do.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 11:41 AM on December 3, 2016 [8 favorites]


Stuff like this is why the screaming in my head won't stop.
posted by hippybear at 11:53 AM on December 3, 2016 [15 favorites]


My theory is we've got a death wish now because even the most liberal, humanist types among us are really self-righteous, snobby, superficial, and unreliable as friends. The most basic requirements for effective communication and social cohesion--authentic connection, honesty, the presumption of good faith, a sense of shared purpose, the sense of personal social responsibility, and the habits of reciprocal altruism--are just broken in America. Everybody wants to be seen as sexy, rebellious, and cool more than they really want to make the world better and get along with each other.
posted by saulgoodman at 12:01 PM on December 3, 2016 [11 favorites]


Many of these programs won't be ended, they'll just come under the supervision of the military and the intelligence services, and their results will be classified.
posted by jamjam at 12:11 PM on December 3, 2016 [6 favorites]


Once you've convinced people that taxes are the devil's work and must be eliminated, it becomes childsplay to kill-off any annoying bits of government that get in the way of profits.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:12 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


God, I'm so depressed
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 12:20 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Everybody wants to be seen as sexy, rebellious, and cool more than they really want to make the world better and get along with each other.

Keep in mind that any trend that can be identified is already in the past. Other people are reacting the same way you are. You are not alone in your feelings nor in your desire for something different.
posted by amtho at 12:43 PM on December 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


It seems reasonable to assume that most people, when they think of impending climate change and the impacts therein, feel a heavy dread. I mean, we're looking at agricultural disruption, coastal inundation, drought and fire, floods and even more tornadoes. Where people differ is their response. Some go into angry denial, and seek to shut down all talk of climate change. Some freeze, and desperately try to distract themselves from it. Some get down to work.

Nobody wants to have to change their habits or lifestyle if they can help it, so much of societal focus is on technical solutions to the problem. Clean, no-carbon energy. Carbon capture. Efficiency increases. This might not be the most effective way to forestall the worst effects, but it is reasonable, as our currently technological society has a done a lot to (unequitably, certainly) lift people out of poverty. We have also to fight the deniers, who are angry that they have to change their habits, or risk losing the wealth that comes to them from fossil fuels and environmental degradation.

There are ground-level actions you can take to help. If you can, donate to NRDC, 350.org, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Call your reps and senators. States have a lot of pull to force climate action; just look at Hawaii, California, Washington, Vermont. Solar power, wind power, grid and home battery storage, all of these things are scaling up dramatically, and Trump's administration will be able to do relatively little to derail them; the market forces are already moving. Hell, in deep red Texas they just had few periods where wind generated nearly 50% of their electricity, and are nearing 15% average generation from wind. You can influence your state government to make the investments needed to move us away from carbon.

We're going to have to adapt to a significant amount of climate disruption, and we need to move faster, but there are many ways to help!
posted by Existential Dread at 12:47 PM on December 3, 2016 [15 favorites]


Weather is a conspiracy by the Chinese.

I think you mean climate. Weather is for all those "I'm cold so there is no global warming" types.
posted by TedW at 12:54 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


I get that environmental research is very much needed, and the impending political situation is quite the blow to all of that... but I do wonder about at the individual and cultural aspects (materialism) that impact our use of resources and subsequent impact on the environment. I know I can't personally conceptualize the environmental impact of driving a car over my lifespan, or the environmental impact of having a 24x7 Starbucks on every block in NYC. Although I try to consider my actions and environmental footprint, I also feel that every plastic bottle I go out of my way to recycle feels like a drop in the ocean, if even that. My concern for the environment arises intermittently, but then I just move on with my life and go back to burning through notebooks and notebooks of paper for my studies, driving around, and using the awful styrofoam take-out boxes if that's what the restaurant or cafeteria provides me.

Regardless of what the upcoming administration does to funding for environmental science research, I think there's something to be said about the general culture surrounding the way people use and acquire things, as well as somehow getting the message across that how we collectively treat the planet will make a difference in the years to come.
posted by gemutlichkeit at 1:02 PM on December 3, 2016 [4 favorites]


As a user of NASA earth observation products daily in my work, this has me extremely saddened and worried. My most pressing concern is the discontinuity of datasets that we have been collecting for decades, and where we are just starting to achieve a longitudinal dataset of sufficient length to learn some really interesting stuff. LANDSAT. MODIS. Incredible work is just starting to come out of these programs, and they're going to pull the plug and let them fall out of the sky and not be replaced? Fucking bastards.

Ultimately the impact will be reflected in the decline and increasing irrelevance of US science. The Europeans are launching more and more incredibly useful EO satellites, as is Japan and increasingly China. Americans on the ground will still benefit from this data, hopefully, in the same way the international community has benefited from NASA's data. But I guess in the future I will look towards their space agencies for scientific collaborations rather than NASA.
posted by Jimbob at 1:28 PM on December 3, 2016 [14 favorites]


I think you mean climate. Weather is for all those "I'm cold so there is no global warming" types.

Nope. Weather. Hurricanes are a Chinese weapon, that's why there's no record of a hurricane before 1949. Everyone knows "climate" isn't even a thing, it's a word made up by liberal scientists to get government funding to study if a bear shits in the woods because they won't work a factory job like real Americans.

Post-truth society is great!
posted by T.D. Strange at 2:36 PM on December 3, 2016 [5 favorites]


Nobody wants to have to change their habits or lifestyle if they can help it, so much of societal focus is on technical solutions to the problem.

Really? It seems like a lot of the focus is on individual/family level shit that has the least impact. Do we talk about where people live, how much fossil fuel it takes to get food to them/keep them warm, how many kids they have? Do we talk about the industry that everyone works for? Not really, that's all mostly off the table. Let's make sure everyone is sending some of their waste to a recycling centre and not idling their cars too long. Maybe it's just the "societal focus" that I'm used to seeing up here though.

Meanwhile it's nuts up here. Hovering at a couple below freezing when it should be around 30 below.
posted by ODiV at 3:33 PM on December 3, 2016 [6 favorites]


jamjam,

Every year I call my representatives to the governments (all red except McCaskill) and remind them of that. Then I go on something like, "If I've gotta help pay for it, I wanna be able to look at it. Do you have any idea how much time I spend a NOAA's web site each spring? Looking at the Pacific Ocean temps, the Drought Monitor, long range forecasts for here, China and Brazil? Then there's the Doppler Radars, if a tornado's coming, l wanna have at least enough time to try to get my breed stock down in the bottoms." Etc. etc.

They may ignore me after I hang up, but they don't try to convert me to their side.
posted by ridgerunner at 4:05 PM on December 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


NC Governor calls special session of General Assembly for Hurricane Matthew relief, not for packing the courts or invalidating the election results, of course.
posted by thelonius at 5:21 PM on December 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Really? It seems like a lot of the focus is on individual/family level shit that has the least impact. Do we talk about where people live, how much fossil fuel it takes to get food to them/keep them warm, how many kids they have? Do we talk about the industry that everyone works for? Not really, that's all mostly off the table. Let's make sure everyone is sending some of their waste to a recycling centre and not idling their cars too long. Maybe it's just the "societal focus" that I'm used to seeing up here though.

I work in clean tech commercialization, so that might just be my perspective, reading a lot of trade websites and news aggregators. There's a lot of emphasis on new energy technologies from DoE/ARPA-E, NSF, etc. I see a lot of work being done on grid infrastructure to incorporate renewables, building- and campus-sized batteries, solar and wind, increased energy efficiency in buildings and planes and cities. As long as you can earn investors money and/or save consumers money, they're all for it! Of course, making things profitable might not be doing as much as we need to be right now. I don't see much about societal change as in day to day living and organization, because that requires a lot of very difficult buy-in.
posted by Existential Dread at 6:52 PM on December 3, 2016


The fact that climate change is so accepted that the U.S. military is actively planning for its consequences yet the Republican party can't bring itself out of its ideological stupor is just the most frustrating thing in the world to me.
posted by AndrewInDC at 7:58 AM on December 4, 2016 [5 favorites]


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