Boston Globe: NASA shelves climate satellites

By Beth Daley, Globe Staff
June 9, 2006

NASA is canceling or delaying a number of satellites designed to give scientists critical information on the earth's changing climate and environment.

The space agency has shelved a $200 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor that was designed to measure soil moisture -- a key factor in helping scientists understand the impact of global warming and predict droughts and floods. The Deep Space Climate Observatory, intended to observe climate factors such as solar radiation, ozone, clouds, and water vapor more comprehensively than existing satellites, also has been canceled.

And in its 2007 budget, NASA proposes significant delays in a global precipitation measuring mission to help with weather predictions, as well as the launch of a satellite designed to increase the timeliness and accuracy of severe weather forecasts and improve climate models.

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``Today, when the need for information about the planet is more important than ever, this process of building understanding through increasingly powerful observations . . . is at risk of collapse," said Berrien Moore III, director of the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space at the University of New Hampshire.

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We're going to Mars! We can't be bothered with a little climate change here - we are busy with exploring other planets we can't hope to colonize when this one falls apart...

:sarcasm:

I would really have my tax dollars going to pay for programs like this, rather than genocide. :-(

an important program like this so $$$$$$$$$$ can be funneled to return to the Moon. The article points out, it is expected that these trips will not increase much scientific knowledge. So what's the point? This is Bush at his most stupid. He is a sociopath more interested in his place in history than actually thinking through an issue and coming up with a viable plan. Too bad for him his place in history has already been written.... "Lying War Criminal".