Exploding satellites hamper climate change efforts

NASA rocket failure blow to Earth watching network

A new satellite to track the chief culprit in global warming crashed into the ocean near Antarctica after launch Tuesday, dealing a major setback to NASA's already weak network for monitoring Earth and its environment from above.

The $280 million mission was designed to answer one of the biggest question marks of global warming: What happens to the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide spewed by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas? How much of it is sucked up and stored by plants, soil and oceans and how much is left to trap heat on Earth, worsening global warming?

"It's definitely a setback. We were already well behind," said Neal Lane, science adviser during former President Bill Clinton's administration. "The program was weak and now it's really weak."

What's that? An expensive satellite sent to monitor global climate change exploded during launch, spewing even more carbon dioxide into the air, and denting our Mother Earth with craters full of flaming science debris?

Bjørn Lomborg 1 - Al Gore 0

The satellite plummeted to earth after it's protective covering didn't jettison, rendering it to heavy to break orbit. It appears rocket science is as difficult as it seems. The $280 million fire crater was meant to be the one positive step the US had made towards global monitoring efforts and one of the lone bright spots for earth monitoring period. Luckily the stimulus package provided NASA with an extra $400 million for Earth sciences, so now they have to decide if they want to spend some of that money rebuilding the satellite or proceed with a more costly and advanced follow up......which will also probably explode in the ionosphere.

Hopefully the President will not only pony up some scratch to NASA for better Earth monitoring, but finally get NASA to get us some goddamn moon bases and a Mars program. Talk about a stimulus, how expensive would it be to build shit on the moon and go to Mars?

Now all we're left with is the only true way to monitor global warming: conservative douches looking outside, seeing whether it's too cold for a particular season, then sneering about myths and Al Gore being fat. It's science!