Another $100 Million Down The Drain

The problem is that the loss is more than money. It's a loss of knowledge about Earth's future. In 1998 Nasa began work on the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a satellite that could continuously monitor what's called the earth's 'energy balance', that is the gap between the amount of the sun's energy that is absorbed by the earth's atmosphere and surface and the amount reflected back into space. The satellite was ready for launch in 2001, but it was never launched; it just sat in storage until recently when NASA scrapped the project because of "competing priorities".

Projects are scrapped all the time. Why is the scrapping of this one important? First of all, it would have been able to look at the earth as an entire planet rather than as a collection of regional views. It was built to collect information on our climate system combining data from the atmosphere, the clouds, radiation and the earth's surface. This is information we do not have now although it is needed if we are to truly understand what is happening with our climate system.

As we non-scientists know, the energy we and all other bits of life get from the sun enables us to live; without it, life would cease to exist here. And, as we also know, the earth is getting warmer and, if the warming continues, we ain't going to be here. It may be that the problem of global warming is due to the rise in so-called greenhouse gases. But it may also be true that it is due to the "energy balance". It is vital that we learn what the cause or causes are. It seems foolish to scrap this project while we are spending money on the international space station, which seems to be more of a toy that a scientifically useful experiment.