Comments on: Carbon Monitoring Satellite Is Lost During Launch

By: Michael F. Sarabia

Michael F. Sarabia — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:53:19 +0000

Keep it a secret…
No major loss.
They wanted to find the sinks and sources of CO2, why?
Do they think there are not enough sources of CO2, therefore there is no Global Warming?
Do they think there are too many sinks of CO2, therefore there is no Global Warming?
Do they doubt the Greenland icebergs are NOT melting?
NASA just proved that the last hold out, that Antarctica was cooling down, has been debunked. It IS warming up and its ice is melting at a rate roughly the same as Greenland’s.

Was it intended to shine an spot light on the powerplants in China and India and deflect the whole discussion into a political one?

We only need to convince China, India and the USA that producing electricity with renewable sources is CHEAPER.
If we cannot do that, we will not make headway.
——–
I read that electricity supply contracts from windmill farms were signed a few years ago at a rate lower than 4 Cents per watt -down from 25 Cents five years earlier.
Better numbers must be available and a case can be made.
We do not need OCO, either we stop ALL CO2 sources or we are doomed. There is no third alternative.
Some people do not seem to know that CO2 accumulates, it does not have a half life that will make it go away.
(I do wonder why solar winds do not blow the air at the top, some of it must be CO2. I have not seen numbers on that.)

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:35:41 +0000

The Gosat and OCO sensors were different and each satellite was going to calibrate the other. Also, the OCO sensor would have delivered measurements of higher precision than Gosat.

By: jps

jps — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:07:03 +0000

The Japanese data should do. It’s not like it was a synthetic aperture interferometry mission.

By: Anders

Anders — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:52:29 +0000

Tragic indeed. It is now the job of NASA and the US climate change community to quickly tackle the issue on how to achieve monitoring capability of this sort in the short-term. Sure, the contractors can build another satellite, but we are still talking about a minimum of a 2 year ordeal.

Hopefully the Japanese mission will prove a great success in its monitoring, but it is important to continue to provide numerous monitoring capabilities to quiet the climate skeptics this blog seems so inclined to focus upon.