He wants to delay the constellation program? I can’t believe I voted for that guy. ….HUGE mistake.

During the primary (when Florida didn’t count for Democrats), Obama said he was going to delay development of Aries and Orion in order to pay for “early education” programs. Later, when it became clear that this was hurting his general election chances in Florida, he changed his position to say he would not delay development of Constellation vehicles but he kept his platform silent about going to the moon or mars. And then in September, he changed his position to the point that he is in favor of doing absolutely everything including going to the Moon and Mars. Who knows what he will actually do if he become President.

Well, all you believes of the church of manmade global warming.

read this:

http://www.eap-journal.com/download.php?file=671

Have a nice day

So now a single economist knows more climatology than all of the world’s climate scientists? Oh, please. You are arguing from authority, and I do not accept your economist as an authority.

Did you have a point, Dick?

MaDeR – “one rocket launch have about same footprint as one fly of jumbojet through ocean”

Sure it does – if you destroy the jumbojet completely with no recycling after it takes that one flight and generate all the CO2 it takes to build another one.

Some activities of NASA have made scientific sense over the past 20 years. Other activities, such as the ISS and almost all of the manned space program, have been like the twitchings of a headless snake, only on an enormously costly scale.

While I agree that the ISS is a waste, your argument, without numbers, is no more than arm-waving. Perhaps you should look up some figures before making such claims.

RL:
If scientists want the public to listen to them and believe them as objective experts of FACTS, then the last thing they should do is become active participants in the political process advocating for this candidate or that one.

Translation: “The voices of the smart and well-informed have no place in political discourse. Leave it to prattling pastors turning out the fundy vote.”

If this attitude wins out in the U.S. come November, I’ll be voting for our Robot Overlords as humans will have proven themselves beyond reasonable doubt to be unfit to rule the planet.

No, no, Liz. It’s only Americans that will have proven themselves unfit to rule the planet.

Moon -Mars. It’s a great big exciting adventure… unfortunately, nothing more.

Until we start building radio telescope arrays on the far side of the Moon…! Think of the science we could do with that.

Especially if they were FFT telescopes.

If a Nobel Laureate is going to make an endorsement in their field of expertise, I’ll listen. Otherwise, they are an amateur like anyone else and this is especially so in the field of politics.

If scientists want the public to listen to them and believe them as objective experts of FACTS, then the last thing they should do is become active participants in the political process advocating for this candidate or that one. Once they do so, they become players and they will lose their credibility with a large amount of voters and weaken their ability to inform the public.

What, so are you saying that Nobel Laureates have to keep their political opinions to themselves?

Maybe the same should go for anyone with any level of fame and / or notoriety, hmmm? Oh, hang on, wouldn’t that amount to censorship, though?

In this case, it is so clear which candidate is the less bad for science that I am not surprised that so many scientists agree about which candidate they prefer. Why should Nobel lareates not be allowed to state which candidate will most probably improve the working environment for American science?

In Europe there were a lot of “local” problems that maybe some people could have focused on, but instead they decided to set up new colonies in the “new world”, and I’d say that worked out pretty well.

Don’t forget, though, that the first European presence in the Americas was a number of trading posts that were set up to make money. This is a harder thing to do with a lunar or Martian colony.

As for man-made global warming, I’d say the evidence is very strong for it. At the very least, it’s being assisted by humans. Yes, global warming has happened without human causes in the past, but that’s like saying that since animals used to go extinct before humans came along, humans can’t be responsible for any modern extinctions.

Heh. Nicely put.

read this:

http://www.eap-journal.com/download.php?file=671

Have a nice day

1) Yes, and those include CO2, CH4, H2O and a myriad of others. Heat in the atmosphere is also a product of solar output and the temperature response to solar changes are a better fit than to individual constituent gases.

Wrong. Go do your homework. In fact, the recent observed increase in global temperature does not match changes in solar output, whereas it does match the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

2) Yes, and those show a variable record with our current temperature below historical maximums (the Medieval Optimum for example).

The alleged Mediaevel Optimum is trivial compared to the changes we face in the next 100 years if we don’t do something about it. Even if it weren’t, we are now far more at the mercy of changes in sea level that we were 800 years ago.

3) Ice Cores can’t tell you about H2O concentration which, in the current atmosphere, is four times more contributory to the greenhouse effect.

Fluctuations in atmospheric H2O concentration are a trivial component of GW, since they represent such small changes compared to the baseline contribution of H2O (g). Sure, without all the water vapour in the atmosphere, the Earth would be 30°C colder, but any changes are measured relative to the starting value. (10 is a much larger proportion of 20 than it is of 1000).

4) You’re correct about there being a correlation between levels of greenhouse gasses and temperatures. Unfortunately, CO2 seems to lag the temperature changes shown in O16/O18 rations from ice cores.

If there are one or two anomolies in the data, this reflects the relative youth of climatology as a field, not necessarily anything wrong with the consensus, unless you are also prepared to address every other piece of evidence that adds up to anthropogenic GW…?

5) 30% rise in CO2 since pre-industrial times may or may not be significant depending on your criteria. Plants love it though.

This is a common misconception. First, it’s more than 30%, depending on where you start from (it can be argued that humanity has been adding CO2 to the atmosphere by its land management techniques for far longer than the industrial age alone); second, since H2O is already a large component of the atmosphere, changes in CO2 have a larger overall impact; third, no, plants don’t “love” it. For small increases in CO2, plant growth does increase, but it levels off for larger increases, because other factors become limiting (such as nitrogen availability).

6) Absolutely disputable because you ignore a time constraint. Over 300 years, yup warming. 1200, no cooling. 15,000 years, warming. 70,000,000 years would be cooling again. 600,000,000 years and Snowball Earth, lots of warming. The record shows climactic variations all over the place, don’t talk in absolutes without a frame.

The timeframe is obvious – the existence of human civilisation. GW does not threaten life as a whole, neither does it seriously threaten the existence of human life. It threatens human civilisation, and many individual species (in effect, we are about to cause a mass extinction event, which is a perfectly natural phenomenon – the main problem is that it may also reduce the human population by about 95% if left to proceed unchecked). Surely, a moment’s reflection would have suggested the obvious timeframe.

The part of global warming that people have problems with is how science is, as Ray warned, selling its soul for a bill of goods based on highly inaccurate models. The modern modeling simply isn’t powerful enough to resolve out man’s influence on the worlds climate.

Rubbish.

And, even if the GW were not anthropogenic, would it not be a bloody good idea for us to do everything we can to stop it?? Sea level rises threaten most of the major cities in the world (including New York, New Orleans, London, Beijing, Mumbai, Cairo), and a great deal of agricultural land. Since we know that the presence of CO2, CH4 etc. contribute to GW, we should attempt to reduce the amount of these gases that we are adding to the atmosphere. It ain’t rocket science.

In a broader sense, not picking on Jose at this point, people who support the science of man made global warming need to state the science and get out of the Creationist mindset of beliefs and heretics that is absolutely poisoning science beyond repair.

The science is in the public domain. Since it is you that are “criticising” the mainstream science, perhaps it behooves you to find out exactly what it is you are dissing, rather than just regurgitating propaganda. Perhaps you need to get out of your Creationist mindset, and stop trusting your favourite authorities so you can actually learn about the science.

Phil,

Stick to the astronomy posts… please…

You are obviously clueless when it comes to politics, and AGW, for that matter…

-Odinist

First off, it’s Phil’s blog and no-one is forcing you to read the non-astronomy posts, so quit whining.

Second, while I do not agree with all of Phil’s political statements, he seems to be far more grounded in fact than a lot of other political commentaries, so he is quite demonstrably not clueless.

Third, he supports the scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic GW, which is far from clueless, since it is supported by everyone who has studied the field in depth in the last 10 – 20 years (disclaimer – and who does not have a vested interest to protect).

In short, Odinist, either take the time to become informed or keep your valueless opinion to yourself.

The ISS is nothing but a money pit anymore. We aren’t gaining much from it at all and it definitely isn’t worth the LIVES OF ASTRONAUTS to use the Shuttle to get them there.

The current administration has funded more things into space than ever before and more than ANY OTHER ADMINISTRATION (Mars robots, Cassini, Horizons, Hubble upkeep, etc) will provide much more useful information.

Once again, Mr. Obama is speaking from INEXPERIENCE. He takes one thing and diverts attention to it like a magician; keeping you blind to the reality. Truth is, when he gets into the Oval Office, he will increase taxes and funding for social programs and forget about NASA just like Mr. Carter did.

Again, Senator Obama promises another program to increase funding for, without the means to fund it. Even raising taxes, he cannot hope to pay for everything.
I’d love to have all the programs he wants to implement. Fact is, it isn’t affordable to do so. If you really think Sen Obama is going to fund NASA and science over all the other programs he’s pushing, you must believe everything you see and read on the Internet…. gullible.

Man made global warming has not been proven. I hate having to bring up the same arguments of the warming period in the dark ages and the mini ice age that followed. There is also plenty of evidence from ice core samples which shows the earth has been warmer in the past. We are also in an ice house right now (which is rare) and are entering a greenhouse like what should happen in the 1000s of years following an ice age or glacial retreat.

Anthropogenic GW has not been “proven”, but neither has Newtonian mechanics, GR, SR, QM etc. etc. However, anthropogenic GW is the overwhelmingly most plausible conclusion from the available evidence.

Did you have a point?

Temperature fluctuations in the last 2000 years are mostly well understood by climate scientists, and are trivial compared to what we face in the next 100 years if we do not curb our emissions of greenhouse gases.

In “the past”, the Earth has of course been much warmer (and much colder) than it is now. IIUC, the Jurassic was a particularly warm epoch. In what way does this make it OK that we are at risk of flooding all of our coastal cities in the next 100 years?

Okay, I’ll be serious and can the snark for this comment. The reason why Bob Park and Steven Weinberg are opposed to the manned space program is because they have concluded that the scientific contribution made by this program is not remotely commensurate with its cost. It is their view that far greater scientific contributions can be made via the unmanned space program for the same money. Now note, their evaluation is strictly based on scientific contribution and nothing else. If Dr. Plait disagrees with their analysis, he should put forward a defense based on the purely scientific contributions made to date by the manned space program which could not have been made via an unmanned program. Of course, if Dr. Plait thinks that scientific contribution should not be the end all and be all of space activities, that’s another program.

Why should Phil justify NASA’s space programme to you, SLC? This is Phil’s blog, where he publishes his opinion. He is under no obligation to justify himself to you. Besides, you seem to be ignoring the fact that science is not the major motivation for having a manned space programme in the first place.

So Dr. Plait wants to also continue hemorrhaging money into a manned space program which produces little in the way of scientific discovery. Here’s a comment from the man who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Bob Park on the ISS, a boondoggle to end all boondoggles. So I pose the question to Dr. Plait: Why indeed did we build the ISS?

Yah, sure, except that the military machine is spending the equivalent of NASA’s entire annual budget every few days in Iraq and Afghanistan. Get a sense of proportion.

I happen to agree that the ISS is mostly a waste of money, but it hasn’t failed its remit anything like as badly as the Shuttle fleet. As a successor to Apollo, Shuttle was supposed to give quick and easy (and cheap!) access to space. What went wrong? The military insisted that it be big enough to launch their big spy satellites, hence the eventual addition of the external fuel tank and the SRBs, with concomitant increases in cost and complexity. On the plus side, the Shuttle happened to be big enough to launch a 2.4-metre telescope into Earth orbit. So even this hideous compromise had its upside.

Wake up and stop this rip off of the american tax payer!

McCain’s an example of epic FAIL. Obama’s letting us down left and right and he’s not even president yet. Gee, if only there were some other party or candidate we could get behind who actually wants to redirect war profiteering funds into things like science and education. Wait – I forgot what country I live in.

Even if this was true (it’s not), the effect on global warming would still be negligible.

But don’t tell let that get around to Phil Plait. It could cost precious jobs for drones if he turns his skeptical eye on NASA.

Oh yes, there’s no way Phil would ever criticize NASA. The drones must be protected at all costs! Are you a first time reader, or do you just have a short memory?

Sure it does – if you destroy the jumbojet completely with no recycling after it takes that one flight and generate all the CO2 it takes to build another one.

Some activities of NASA have made scientific sense over the past 20 years. Other activities, such as the ISS and almost all of the manned space program, have been like the twitchings of a headless snake, only on an enormously costly scale.

Translation: “The voices of the smart and well-informed have no place in political discourse. Leave it to prattling pastors turning out the fundy vote.”

If this attitude wins out in the U.S. come November, I’ll be voting for our Robot Overlords as humans will have proven themselves beyond reasonable doubt to be unfit to rule the planet.

To lighten up a bit your darkness of ignorance: one rocket launch have about same footprint as one fly of jumbojet through ocean. And guess what is, oh, about two to three order of magnitude, more often in each year.

Oh yes, it really burns. This picture is really useful.

And don’t even get started thinking about the irony of blog posts warning of global warming next to blog posts supporting the enormous CO2 generation machine which is NASA.

But don’t tell let that get around to Phil Plait. It could cost precious jobs for drones if he turns his skeptical eye on NASA.

And having lived with engineers all my life, no way would I get into that whole “engineering is/isn’t real science” argument!

Environmental Impact Statement:

There isn’t any. It’s on the f—ing Moon.

Seems easy enough to me! Shouldn’t cost more than a few $100K to type this up and submit it to the EPA..

Seriously, though there is no impact on the Moon, the launches and re-entries required for all the flights to and from the Moon could potentially have large environmental impacts on Earth. This would make a good case for a space elevator since, once built, it only requires electricity to operate, which could be supplied by solar panels at the top of the elevator. Other than that, LH2/LOX rockets are much cleaner than solids, so if enough rockets were launched to matter, they would definitely be preferable. Then of course there is the impact of the factories, roads, launch pads, people driving to work at the various facilities, the A/C load of the VAB, and what’s the EPA MPG of the crawlers? (150 gallons/mile, according to Wikipedia.)