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Comment by ldoughty | Hacker News Reader

And this is exactly why _they_ don't want NASA pointing back to Earth... And why they want them to only have enough funding for the megaprojects that redirect federal money into red states.

"There's nothing to see here! Move along!"

But really, I'm glad they managed to get this out there despite the political shenanigans. It looks like they manage their own shenanigans by providing information / assistance, while not actually doing the leg work on building it or deploying it...

It will help to eventually find the hotspots (which, if in the US, are likely businesses skirting laws for profit... Or poor monitoring by the business). In either case, we can have more information on where to act.

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I see where you’re coming from, but the reality is not as stark as you have put it. The forces you point to are real, but it’s more complex because many people have seen the value in learning about Earth.

A huge reason we have a NASA Earth observing system (and not just weather satellites) is the studies that grew out of the CFC damage to the ozone layer [1]. Ground stations and aircraft and balloons turned out not to be enough to assess it, so the measurements moved to space and use spectroscopy now.

(The current fleet: https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science/missions/)

This has led to comprehensive CO2 observation from space, and sea surface temperature, and many other climate-related measurements including methane. All this goes back many decades at this point. It’s not a few people who managed to launch one satellite!

[1] For short, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Observing_System#History..., but see also: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/3472

It’s likely that countries will get CO2 satellites to point fingers at each other. Ending up with everyone monitoring everyone. Also, CO2 import taxes will be introduced to protect local industries like steel, fertiliser, and cement.

For businesses it is actually in the best interest to get clarity on the rules early on. If they stay behind on technology to reduce emissions, they might eventually lose out.

What specifically are the “political shenanigans”? Do you have any evidence/links?

I personally don’t think studying earth is really what I want out of NASA. I would expect that funding to go towards study of space. For Earth, I would view that as more the job of the EPA or some other agency, and think it’s more appropriate for them to set aside funds for a satellite or whatever they need.

But yes it’s interesting to see where there are unexpected plumes. I suspect a lot of those are in third world countries where regulations and rule of law is worse, and it may be hard to address those effectively (except by subsidizing them). Sure there are some examples in the US, but the ones in the article seem much smaller in magnitude.

Depending on who wins the election, but one party has made publicly known that they will specifically defund or worse the agencies that will report this kind of information. What other examples of political shenanigans do you need? The same party that when they were in office removed the ability of these same agencies from making these type of releases to the point that they created "rogue" social media accounts.

> one party has made publicly known that they will specifically defund or worse the agencies that will report this kind of information

Evidence on the specific claim you’re making? Defunding government agencies for savings or efficiency is not the same as trying to defund things specifically to hide certain scientific data with some sinister goal.

> What other examples of political shenanigans do you need?

I’m looking for evidence that supports the GP’s claim. Are there political acts that redirected money from NASA into red states, with an intent to funnel funding based on that political leaning? Is there evidence that they tried (and succeeded?) interfering with specific projects on the grounds that it would show pollution sources that are politically problematic (as opposed to simply defining NASA’s mission as studying things outside of earth)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

Just defunding agencies from reporting science is bad enough regardless of where they move the money. Denying the part because it's not the whole of what you're looking for says more about you than anything else.

The US has been through exactly this before:

(2016):

     On space issues, a senior Trump advisor, former Pennsylvania Rep. Bob Walker, has called for ending NASA earth science research, including work related to climate change. Walker contends that NASA’s proper role is deep-space research and exploration, not “politically correct environmental monitoring.”

~ https://theconversation.com/eyes-in-the-sky-cutting-nasa-ear...

(2018) Trump White House quietly cancels NASA research verifying greenhouse gas cuts

~ https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-white-house-qu...

And, again, NASA's mission is assisted by testing instrument designs from space on the only planet we have complete surface access to .. otherwise it's just diddling about with remote guesswork sans ground truthing.

The tragedy of MAGA is that this is the tragedy of the commons in an adversarial setting, where some members are actively trying to destroy the commons to gain political power. Add to that foreign power interference to finance helpful idiots and it’s not surprising that even obvious common goods, like triaging where accidental greenhouse gas leakage happens are treated adversely.

I imagine the foreign agencies running these interference campaigns as caricatures sipping champagne/cognac/etc, cigar smoking, fully belly laughing that is occurring in all of these places at how little effort is being expelled on their part causing so much chaos on our part.

Funding from "Carbon Mapper, a new nonprofit organization, and its partners – the State of California, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA JPL), Planet, the University of Arizona, Arizona State University (ASU), High Tide Foundation and RMI"

From https://carbonmapper.org/articles/carbon-mapper-launches-sat...

I don't know enough about the EPA's charter to know if this would be within their realm or not. Certainly launching and managing satellites is within the purview of NASA.

> I would expect that funding to go towards study of space.

Space itself is pretty dull .. it's mostly a near perfect vacuum after all.

Planets and stars, galaxies and clusters are more interesting.

How does NASA perfect the remote scanning of a planet from an orbital platform if not working out the designs close to home first?

The EPA provides ground-truthing, surface level observations across the planet, these are used to calibrate and test results from orbiting instrument packages with more challenging transfer functions ( the path from what an instrument actually produces to an interpretation of what that signal "means" ).

You are getting a well-deserved correction to your ignorance of political forces that might result from perceived threats to the oil and gas industry.

I want to comment on a separate thing, about responsibility for the measurement, that’s in your second paragraph.

Developing the spectroscopic measurement of methane from space took a lot of time and engineering skill. (I happened to observe some of this work as part of $dayjob.) In the US, the responsibility for developing novel space measurement technology has historically gone to NASA.

It is proven in space (raised to “TRL 9” in the jargon) by NASA, and then transitioned to other sectors, like NOAA or USGS, for operational use. The prioritization and maturation is very well developed at this point.

Part of the reason it rests with NASA is that systems for spectroscopic measurement of gases (in this example) are also used for other space missions, e.g. planetary and astrophysics. For instance, some of the team of this methane instrument overlaps with the MISE team that will use spectroscopy for Europa https://europa.nasa.gov/spacecraft/instruments/mise/). Besides sharing personnel and knowledge, I believe some of the sensor hardware for MISE and for that in OP was fabricated at the same facility.

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Nothing wrong with ignorance .. asking for a source, as you did, is implicitly saying you recognize that you may be ignorant. The only shameful ignorance is ignorance of ignorance.

That said, I assumed the "You are getting a well-deserved correction" part you're replying to had a typo, or was referring to some other post. I didn't parse it the same way. To me, if a correction of ignorance is "well deserved," that's a vague compliment.

When someone points to an area of my ignorance, I research the hell out of it to become educated on the matter. If I were to become offended by this being pointed out, I would have succumbed to stupidity.

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