The Climate Spacecraft "That Could Save The World" -- Killed

DeSmog Blog:

Somewhere in Maryland is a metal box containing a fully completed climate spacecraft that could save the world.

NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) cost over $100 million and was designed to measure the energy budget of our warming planet. Yet the spacecraft has remained in its box for the last five years and it looks like it is not going anywhere anytime soon.

NASA quietly cancelled the project altogether in January 2006 citing "competing priorities".

What happened? How could the US government possibly justify killing DSCOVR given the importance of climate change and after over 90% of the project expenses had already been incurred? What role did petty partisan politics play in this? Did the oil lobby have any influence on this decision?

Read the whole story: DeSmog Blog

Comments

[ashabot]

12:24 PM on 08/29/2007

Mind boggling. Perhaps the X Files was right. Perhaps our leaders actually have colluded with aliens. Perhaps they have sold us out to protect their own sorry a$$es. Why else would they sabotage a project of this importance to the entire world? Certainly not because they are myopic, p$ychotic boob$ who place the hope of per$onal gain above the survival of life as we know it.

[EvSmith]

07:44 AM on 08/29/2007

This administration has been engaging in criminal obstruction and manipulation of public information concerning the science of climate change.
The U.S. Government is not the property of G.W.Bush or Dick Cheney or the Fossil fuel industry. Neither are it's institutions.
This is a matter of public and global health and well being.
These people involved in this are criminals and this should see a day in a Court of Law. Bush is lucky his days on the strings are few now. This will come to be seen as one of his administrations most misguided and damaging policies. This along with the lies of the Iraq war and occupation, should follow the high level people responsible all the way to the President and the Vice President in the years following the dawning of the Sun at midnight, January 20th 2009. Charges may or may not be brought against some of these people. Only time will tell.
We are rapidly charting or rather burning our way down a dangerous course of rampant, out of control fossil fuel use, aswell as air and water pollution.
Earlier today I was washing a golden pear that I bought at a local grocery market, when I noticed a small lable of origin, Argentina. This pear was grown deep in the southern hemisphere and then flown 14 hours to then be trucked several hundred miles to the store where it was sold. All by vehicles that burn fossil fuel and contribute to the current global warming of the atmosphere and oceans.
I not only drive my own vehicle, I am also on the receiving end of a series of steps after harvest that all have a detrimental effect on the Environment.
Global trade on a massive scale, with what we know about greenhouse gas emissions is clearly madness, nothing less.
Globalization is the worst form of greed ever witnessed by the world. Far bigger than Rome or China or OPEC alone. Nothing else can explain it's rise. Greed alone.

[BlackbirdHighway]

06:22 AM on 08/29/2007

The thing has already cost over $100 Million!

We can't afford it. That is enough money to finance the Iraq war for almost half a day!

Besides, we don't need science, Bush has already told us everything we need to know about science.

[longnow]

02:11 AM on 08/29/2007

Thank you, DeSmogblog for looking out. Maybe HE
will run after all and we will have two Tennesseans running for the same office.

[KGrandia]

08:35 PM on 08/28/2007

Yes, all those scientists huddled in some masonic temple in Eastern Europe plotting to takeover the world with their "global warming hoax."

- [e-mail]

[ohiomark]

07:36 PM on 08/28/2007

Oh no!!! Were all gonna burn to death, or is it freeze to death? I forget, what is the latest bullshit hoax that the left is trying to push on us.

Get over yourselves Libs, you can't change the climate........or save the world!!

[EvSmith]

02:47 AM on 08/29/2007

Why don't you take your sorry ass to the outskirts of town and lay down on some train tracks already.
Not one comment you have ever posted has been anything but malicious, twisted noise. You're words and opinions are total garbage. Pathetic troll.
You are completely fucking worthless.
Fuck you for wasting my time. I hope you NEVER breed.

[ohiomark]

08:25 AM on 08/29/2007

More proof that Liberalism is a mental disorder and run strictly on emotion.

Thanks for keeping the stereotype alive.

By the way, the REAL "malicious, twisted noise" is coming from the mouth of Al Gore and his carbon credit selling cronies.

[KGrandia]

06:05 PM on 08/28/2007

Stayed tuned. Right now there's a FOIA request that NASA is refusing to completely disclose about this project.

[e-mail]

[JScott]

01:58 PM on 08/28/2007

Hmmm this kinda sounds like that movie 'Silent Running' (google it folks) a ship saving the last remnants of living things other than humans from earth (apparently in the movie the earth is one big enclosed shopping mall) but then they jettison it because of 'budget priorities'.

[jfoxx]

02:26 PM on 08/28/2007

I remember "Silent Running".. that's where the Jamaican bobsledding team sweeps the Olympics and wins the hearts of the world.

[Freecelladdict]

05:18 PM on 08/28/2007

No, he meant "Silent Running", not "Cool Runnings". Like JScott said, Google it, or better yet, check out
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067756

[scootmandubious]

01:31 PM on 08/28/2007

Competing priorities?

As in the priorities of responsible public policy vs. corporate greed?

One wonders how much research money BushCo would like to put into proving that the earth was created in 7 days.

[SouthJerseySteve]

05:27 PM on 08/28/2007

Actually, the Earth was created in 6 days, as Yahweh (G-d) rested on the 7th day; even Deities take vacations.

[scootmandubious]

12:36 AM on 08/29/2007

Touche! :-)