[HN Gopher] ESA - Climate from Space
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ESA - Climate from Space
Author : lmc
Score : 107 points
Date : 2022-08-06 12:21 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cfs.climate.esa.int)
(TXT) w3m dump (cfs.climate.esa.int)
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's not a bad overview, but the level of discussion is fairly
| watered-down, scientifically speaking.
|
| A more general way of looking at it would be helpful - i.e.,
| explain how to apply the underlying concepts to any planetary
| body in the solar system to estimate its surface temperature. Why
| is Venus so hot? Why is Mars so cold? What's a radiative-
| convective model? How does an atmosphere affect a planet's
| surface temperature? What if the Earth's oceans were as shallow
| as those on Mars apparently were? Could Venus ever be terraformed
| into an Earth-like planet?
|
| Additionally, a discussion of the economics and industry of the
| global fossil fuel production system (and of the staggering cost
| of completely replacing the existing infrastructure with non-
| fossil energy sources) should be included in the globe diagram in
| an up-front manner.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > a discussion of the economics and industry of the global
| fossil fuel production system
|
| wait, you want _science_ or not ?
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Well, industrial and engineering science definitely qualifies
| as science, for example the history of learning how to
| convert crude oil into hundreds of different chemical
| products is a story of scientific development. The economic
| theory stuff doesn't hold up so well, however.
|
| For example, it doesn't seem to matter much what socio-
| economic ideology a given country adheres to when it comes to
| extracting fossil fuels from the ground - socialist or
| capitalist, authoritarian dictatorship or liberal democracy,
| if they discover oil and gas they start drilling and pumping,
| without fail, and if they've got an excess, they try to sell
| it on the global market.
| enviclash wrote:
| I agree the human dimension of global change is ignored in
| these encyclopedic data collections. Indeed scientific
| criticism exists for these collections: just putting together
| data, without new enlightening algorithms or scientific
| advances, does little or nothing for scientific progress.
|
| (Edit: here the source of the mentioned criticism:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-00986-y?utm )
| not_a_sw_dork wrote:
| moron4hire wrote:
| This was built with CesiumJS
| https://cesium.com/platform/cesiumjs/
| gpa wrote:
| Perfect data visualization of the current environmental and
| climate challenges that is open to anyone. The current
| environmental issues we face are portrayed with "Data layers" and
| discussed with "Stories" beneath. Stories like this should reach
| mass media to raise public awareness. Before we can focus on the
| (final) outer space (frontier), we must first fix our inner
| (terrestrial) space (ship) with a priority. Or not?
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| I would say no. Without outer space there is simply not enough
| space (and resources) anymore. Too much tension to solve the
| major issues...
| ehnto wrote:
| Counterpoint, if we can't make earth work, how are we
| expecting to make another planet work? It will be
| inconceivably harder to turn Mars into something hospitable
| than it would be to remedy our current planet. We have the
| science and knowledge we need to make drastic changes here,
| we are just disorganized and unwilling.
| Grim-444 wrote:
| You're creating a false dichotomy that either we're staying
| on earth or trying to colonize mars, ignoring other options
| such as having a more capable presence in orbit for doing
| things like asteroid mining, which would supply the
| resources that the poster you're responding to mentioned.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > _Before we can focus on the (final) outer space (frontier),
| we must first fix our inner (terrestrial) space (ship) with a
| priority._
|
| The idea that humanity can only do one thing at a time is both
| widespread, and absolutely bonkers!
|
| We're 7 billion different people!
| RobertoG wrote:
| More like 8 billion (next year).
| atoav wrote:
| > We're 7 billion different people!
|
| Consider that it might in fact be _harder_ to get 7 billion
| different people to do _one_ thing than having them do 7
| billion different things.
|
| If we can't manage to exist in balance with this perfectly
| fine planet we evolved on, what makes you think we are even
| prepared in the slightest to do so with a new planet which
| would very likely be the equivalent of playing earth in
| hardcore mode?
|
| I also think we should fix earth and explore the rest of the
| universe at the same time. But as of now we are doing a
| really, _really_ shit job of doing the former, so maybe we
| should focus there first. Why, you might ask? Cause the
| negative impact of fucking that one up has a headcount of 7
| billion + future generations.
| epgui wrote:
| > Consider that it might in fact be harder to get 7 billion
| different people to do one thing than having them do 7
| billion different things.
|
| I don't think that is the case: getting people to focus on
| fewer things is hard, while getting 7 billion people to
| focus on 700 million things is the status quo.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| No because there's very little reason we cannot do both
| simultaneously. Space is no more the opportunity cost of
| climate science than any other thing we do on earth.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| You would think that. But I'm one of a few scientists that
| work on the _only_ fully integrated climate observation
| station for the Greenland ice sheet. I 'm headed to Greenland
| as I type this. The Greenland ice sheet is the fastest
| melting piece of ice in the world, and is one of the
| canaries-in-the-coal mine that we need to observe to
| understand catastrophic climate change impacts. I was just
| discussing with my colleagues the other day the amount
| funding that projects such as the JWST get, and how it's
| extremely difficult to get funding for climate observations.
| We operate the station on a paltry shoestring budget and it
| was nearly shutdown by the NSF last year.
|
| And. To be clear. It's a difficult discussion to have.
| Bickering about which science projects deserve more funding
| is a lose-lose battle, like cutting of each other's kneecaps
| (JWST is an incredible project). Yet climate science is
| extremely poorly funded, in particular monitoring projects or
| analysis. Climate science has also fallen prey to the "must
| be new big and shiny" problem that everything else has.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| But it's incorrect to state that climate science is
| competing with JWST more than it is competing with any
| other venture, scientific or otherwise, for funding.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| Of course that's incorrect, and that's not what I'm
| stating. The comment I replied to implied that we can
| (and are) doing both simultaneously. I'm trying to show
| the degree to which that is or is not true. I even said
| clearly that arguing about funding isn't worthwhile, for
| exactly the point you make. It's philosophically useless
| and categorically weak. The idea is simple: we don't care
| about global climate all that much, either studying it or
| fixing it. The funding and social effort shows that
| clearly. We prefer sexy shiny science the same way we
| prefer cars and iphones shipped from China.
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| > The idea is simple: we don't care about global climate
| all that much, either studying it or fixing it.
|
| This is why I'm so pessimistic about the future. I don't
| really think we are all willing to sacrifice our shiny
| objects and accept a less carbon intensive lifestyle when
| the cost doesn't seem imminent. I often compare it to
| being overweight due to u healthy habbits. People aren't
| born obese, but slowly choose that lifestyle for
| immediate pleasures all the while the danger only creeps
| up.
|
| Not articulated very well because I'm on mobile... best
| of luck to everyone.
| newman555 wrote:
| how frustrating it is for you to do what you do and know
| what you know? I only know the "common" knowledge about
| climate change and it makes me angry every time I think
| about what we know and where we're still heading.
| earthscienceman wrote:
| I'm fairly early in my career (read: youngish). And,
| truthfully, I'm very much having an existential crisis. I
| often wonder what the worth in studying the climate is.
| After all, we already have an extremely detailed
| understanding of the basics. Does refining our estimate
| of melt and other such issues, reducing the error bars,
| really contribute anything more to society? I'm not sure.
| It feels fruitless. But I recently had a friend explain
| that I should consider myself more a documentarian than a
| researcher which shifted my perspective quite a lot. Some
| people here will like the quote:
|
| "Somebody has to document what happened, it's better than
| selling ads on the internet. Imagine a world where we
| burn ourselves to death and we didn't even keep track of
| the specifics, it seems even more tragic."
|
| Anyway. I think the answer is clearly... frustrating.
| newman555 wrote:
| thanks for replying. and I like the quote :-)
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