Space Measurements Of Carbon

[phantom power]

"Direct satellite measurements of carbon dioxide will have as dramatic an impact as the Hubble Space Telescope within the Earth science field," said Philippe Ciais of the Laboratory for Climate Sciences and the Environment (LSCE) in Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

"It should give us a completely new picture of something more or less completely unknown, showing us the carbon flux across tropical areas such as South America and Africa, where we basically have no data available right now."

The total number of carbon atoms on Earth is fixed – they are exchanged between the ocean, atmosphere, land and biosphere, through a set of processes known as the carbon cycle.

The fact that human activities are pumping extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, by burning carbon that has been locked up in the Earth, is well known – the overall concentration of this leading greenhouse gas has increased by a third since the Industrial Revolution.

However, only around half of the extra carbon dioxide human activity sends into the atmosphere stays there, unidentified 'sinks' on the land or ocean surface absorb the rest. The rate of climate change would be much greater without this absorption, but as long as its distribution, strength and variability remains uncertain, the continuation of this effect cannot be taken for granted. In future, global warming may shut it off, or even throw it into reverse.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/print.php?url=/releases/2005/06/050612111201.htm

[NNadir]

1. Thank goodness for the ESA.

I am old enough to remember when we used to have a useful organization in the United States that used to do things like this. It was called NASA. It did wonderful things.

(I also am old enough to remember when the US was a democracy rather than a theocracy, but that's another matter.)

Believe it or not, NASA still exists, but it's mission has changed. Apparently it is now focused on an exercise to send missionaries to Mars and to claim the planet for Christ.

[phantom power]

2. I think it's been repurposed as a Potempkin Space Program

BushCo uses NASA as a useful bag of vague talking points, and photo-ops, but they don't care if it actually does anything. Except maybe some projects for space militarization.

Come to think of it, like every other formerly-useful government program. We now have an entire Potempkin Government. It's all becoming an under-funded shell. Exactly according to Grover Norquist's plan.