NASA Satellites That Scientists and Farmers Rely On May Be Destroyed On Purpose (npr.org) 165
The Trump administration has reportedly directed NASA to draw up plans to shut down its Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite missions, which provide vital climate and agricultural data for scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. As NPR reports, the satellites are "the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases." From the report: It is unclear why the Trump administration seeks to end the missions. The equipment in space is state of the art and is expected to function for many more years, according to scientists who worked on the missions. An official review by NASA in 2023 found that "the data are of exceptionally high quality" and recommended continuing the mission for at least three years.
Both missions, known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, measure carbon dioxide and plant growth around the globe. They use identical measurement devices, but one device is attached to a stand-alone satellite while the other is attached to the International Space Station. The standalone satellite would burn up in the atmosphere if NASA pursued plans to terminate the mission.
NASA employees who work on the two missions are making what the agency calls Phase F plans for both carbon-monitoring missions, according to David Crisp, a longtime NASA scientist who designed the instruments and managed the missions until he retired in 2022. Phase F plans lay out options for terminating NASA missions. The OCO missions would lose funding under the Trump Administration's budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2026, which begins Oct. 1 but has yet to pass. "Presidential budget proposals are wish lists that often bear little resemblance to final congressional budgets," notes NPR. "The Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions have already received funding from Congress through the end of the 2025 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30."
"Draft budgets that Congress is currently considering for next year keep NASA funding basically flat. But it's not clear whether these specific missions will receive funding again, or if Congress will pass a budget before current funding expires on Sept. 30."
Both missions, known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, measure carbon dioxide and plant growth around the globe. They use identical measurement devices, but one device is attached to a stand-alone satellite while the other is attached to the International Space Station. The standalone satellite would burn up in the atmosphere if NASA pursued plans to terminate the mission.
NASA employees who work on the two missions are making what the agency calls Phase F plans for both carbon-monitoring missions, according to David Crisp, a longtime NASA scientist who designed the instruments and managed the missions until he retired in 2022. Phase F plans lay out options for terminating NASA missions. The OCO missions would lose funding under the Trump Administration's budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2026, which begins Oct. 1 but has yet to pass. "Presidential budget proposals are wish lists that often bear little resemblance to final congressional budgets," notes NPR. "The Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions have already received funding from Congress through the end of the 2025 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30."
"Draft budgets that Congress is currently considering for next year keep NASA funding basically flat. But it's not clear whether these specific missions will receive funding again, or if Congress will pass a budget before current funding expires on Sept. 30."
It isn't unclear at all (Score:5, Insightful)
It is unclear why the Trump administration seeks to end the missions.
The clue is in the phrase in the first sentence, "which provide vital climate and agricultural data for scientists". Since Trump and his acolytes claim that "climate change" is a hoax, why fund programmes that might show that it is happening.
In a similar vein, I see that the US Department of Health and Human Services is terminating 22 federal contracts for mRNA-based vaccines because of "safety concerns".
Who needs facts, when you can simply declare what is, and what is not true?
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Re: It isn't unclear at all (Score:5, Insightful)
The Republican party is going medieval.
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The Republican party is going medieval.
Wrong verb tense there dude. That ship hasn't just sailed, it's already far over the horizon.
Re: It isn't unclear at all (Score:2)
The luddites wanted all workers to benefit from increases in productivity, the Republican party wants the opposite of that. So no.
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A load of farmers aren't going to make anything change here. However, if Oil and Gas use the data from these satellites, well, then they won't be going anywhere. They may start to restrict access to the data though...
I dare say the Fossils have already paid enough to the powers that be, but there may well be some rent to pay on these satellites. Gotta keep the grift going...
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"A load of farmers"? Hello, reality check time: 80% or more of all farming is agribusiness, and agribusiness will not like this.
Of course, I trust you don't mind if they decommission them, and then there's food shortages in YOUR supermarket.
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A lot of the food we produce is for export. We're not going to see shortages in the US without a major disaster.
Also retaliatory tariffs will limit our exports, so food will be cheaper in good years (which will continue to be most of them), and a little more expensive in bad years when the satellite might have helped make less bad.
Re: It isn't unclear at all (Score:5, Informative)
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Somehow, I don't think "using it correctly" is going to eliminate the other 98.2% of true positives.
You're a stupid person. Why are you still posting to this site? Certainly you must be tired of being mocked for being stupid?
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Actually, it looks like 1.8 % is pretty good, they found 1.7 % here :
"Persistent False Positive Covid-19 Rapid Antigen Tests" - https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/... [nejm.org]
And even lower, around 1 % when you don't count the repeats of false positives from individuals prone to have them (mostly occurs with persons with autoimmune disorders and some women too).
Thought it does look like it's possible to get up to around 5 % false positives if the tested population has a low enough incidence of COVID :
"The impact of false
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Re:It isn't unclear at all (Score:5, Insightful)
This is, for want of a better word, a pile of steaming horseshit.
- The fact tools with overlapping purposes exists on an expensive, multifunctional, space station whose future is in doubt has little or no bearing on whether to keep a satellite built for the purpose in order that costs barely anything to run. Not only is the ISS system you refer to unlikely to generate exactly the same results, but it's also necessary to have multiple sources of data to ensure the general gist of the information you're getting is consistent and can be compared to something.
- As just mentioned, the ISS's future is in doubt. There have been calls since the beginning of the current administration to decommission it.
- Trump has a recent history of interfering in projects that report facts that are inconvenient. Literally last week he fired the person responsible for publishing the employment figures because he didn't agree with the negative report that had just been published. For the last few weeks, about 1,000 FBI agents were required to help with a project to remove his name from 100,000 records referring to the Epstein investigation [newsweek.com]. He has asked Texas to gerrymander the next election (which Texas is trying to do, and is why there's a walkout by Democratic lawmakers there and why several states are talking about a retaliatory district redraw) because he doesn't want an election to show he's "unpopular" (he referred to both 2020 and 2016 as "rigged" because he didn't win the former, and didn't get the popular vote in the latter.) A reasonable person would suggest an unnecessary decommissioning of a satellite whose maintenance is barely a few million a year, that reports on global warming, is happening specifically because it's giving results the administration doesn't want reported.
The man is a liar and conman, as well as a concentration-camp building fascist (and apparently a rapist of young teenagers in addition to a dictionary-definition rapist of adults as already recognized by a court.) Are you sure you want to defend him?
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When is the ISS supposed to come down?
The current plan is 2031.
That was supposed to be a 15 year mission but it's been orbiting for a bit more than 25 years now. Maybe we can keep that patched together with 90 MPH tape, baling wire, and happy thoughts to get 30 years total out of it.
We can probably keep ISS going indefinitely by jettisoning the one failing Russian station component and connecting the remaining pieces together. Alternatively, we can jettison the entire Russian portion of ISS and keep it going even without Russia's permission, because the one "Russian" component that is actually critical was paid for entirely by the United States back when Russia had no money.
The only thing bringing it down is politics.
but that would be funds that could be put towards a new NASA space station or whatever as an improved platform for CO2 observation
The annual operating costs for both system
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Picking at nits:
CO is Carbon Monoxide, because there is only one Oxygen atom in the molecule. Mono = one
CO2 is Carbon Dioxide, because there are two Oxygen atoms in the molecule. Di = two
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The quote is: "provide vital climate and agricultural data for scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health".
I'm not getting where you can even misread that and think it's measuring CO2 emissions by crops, especially as it's widely known plants absorb CO2, not emit it.
The quote is that it's measuring carbon dioxide and crop health, not whatever you think it's saying.
Re:It isn't unclear at all (Score:4, Informative)
Plants perform cellular respiration the same way you do. That means they emit CO2. They ALSO absorb CO2 during photosynthesis. Photosynthesis notably requires sunlight.
You can learn quite a lot about crop metabolism by measuring changes in day/night CO2.
Simple: Vindictive against climate research (Score:5, Insightful)
It is essentially politically-motivated attempts to sabotage future research and data gathering.
Trump has decided climate change is not a thing; therefore any research involving data gathering that could undermine the narrative shall be terminated.
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Not quite, la Presidenta has decided that climate change will whack his grifts, so he claims it does not exist. Him believing in anything that doesn't translate to his bottom line is simply a contradiction in terms.
Re: Simple: Vindictive against climate research (Score:5, Informative)
Ground truthing (touchy term depending on if you are the ground based or spaced based nerd) is essential in getting a verification on the ground of what the bird sees. Once you have that calibration, the sat data is very reliable. And you cannot be on the ground everywhere, so the sat has greater range. This is an evolution of what the LANDSAT birds have been doing for decades. Source: have been working on earth resource monitoring education / citizen science for 30 years.
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Ground truthing (touchy term depending on if you are the ground based or spaced based nerd) is essential in getting a verification on the ground of what the bird sees. Once you have that calibration, the sat data is very reliable. And you cannot be on the ground everywhere, so the sat has greater range. This is an evolution of what the LANDSAT birds have been doing for decades. Source: have been working on earth resource monitoring education / citizen science for 30 years.
You may not have the precision to know exact airborne concentrations such that it’s in agreement with ground measurements, but you can very clearly tell what is happening by its visual maps. It’s like saying a thermal imaging camera is useless because you don’t know surface emissivity, which is irrelevant when you point it and something is clearly the problem to people without technical knowledge.
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The satellites are already in orbit, so using what is already there isn't spending a lot of money. Giving tax breaks to the very wealthy and corporations helps us in what way again? You probably don't care about THAT nonsense that Trump keeps doing, but anything that helps people, including hurricane tracking is a waste of money for you, right?
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How many windmills could be installed for the cost of operating these satellites?
Their current budget is $15 million annually. So somewhere between 3 and 7 commercial-sized wind turbines per year, or 10 megawatts of capacity. Assuming it's four, with those savings, we could be be carbon-neutral by the year 116,025. How could that not be a good idea? /s
On the flip side, they cost $750M to launch, so if they deorbit the things, then in four years, when the current administration is on the streets begging for change (campaign contributions), the next administration can pump a billion do
Re: Simple: Vindictive against climate research (Score:2)
"which makes this disgusting to fiscal conservatives with a working brain."
No such though because austerity doesn't work.
History of the Decline and Fall of the US Empire (Score:5, Insightful)
You're experiencing it in realtime, folks.
Epstein, Schmepstein?
Re: History of the Decline and Fall of the US Empi (Score:2)
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Republicans sent subpoenas to everyone BUT Trump. And no I don't call if Bill was there, lock him up too if he's guilty. https://www.bbc.com/news/artic... [bbc.com]
Climate is socially constructed (Score:2)
If the Earth identifies as a cool planet, who are we to say otherwise?
This is beyond stupid (Score:3)
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Yeah, they're also trying to shut down the Mauna Loa Observatory [sfchronicle.com] that keeps that vital time series of atmospheric CO2 going.
The Mobs have come (Score:3, Insightful)
Well here is a mob, not acting directly and somewhat rationally for a crime clearly committed; but acting indirectly through a democracy against scientists for the crime of delivering bad news at all. We've killed each other enough that the days of direct holocaust and mobs are mostly gone outside an isolated incident or two, evolved out of the deluded direct mob. Instead the mob in question just burn the metaphorical books; and some even claim it's not their fault, they wouldn't have voted for the leader of the mob just months later, they voted for the mob for other reasons, somewhere, somehow others are to blame, not them.
What a sadly anticlimactic little pith of nothing this example of humanity marches towards its doom as. Collectively we've the power to bring forth great dramas and amazing twists for our imagined dooms, and yet in this real world example of demise humanity punishes those who warn caution as it stands on the shore as the acid seas reach achingly slowly to swallow them whole.
Re:The Mobs have come (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no need to channel sci-fi when you can draw historical parallels.
donald is channeling stalin, hitler and putin, all of which started with a purge of reality from the pubic life.
The only thing that is fairly new here is how fast the US is disintegrating, the rest is basically by the book.
Re:The Mobs have come (Score:5, Interesting)
I would argue that U.S. has been disintegrating ever since Republicans decided to wage war on the Fed. Gov., education, research, Democracy, i.e., anything that gets in the way of them acting like selfish brats. It started under Reagan and was (and is still being) pushed by Gingrich. la Presidenta just found that he could surf off that disintegration. At first, he was just running as a joke. Then he got his tail caught in a crack and decided he need to run again to keep his ass out of jail.
Now, he's busy destroying anything that could put him in jail after he leaves office. Although I expect at that time he'll be totally senile. How would we ever know the difference among his stupidity, his corruption, and his senility. They are indistinguishable at this point. However, never forget that it is the Republicans that are enabling him.
Re:The Mobs have come (Score:4, Informative)
That was really the beginning of the end of our civil rights as individuals. Now we are seeing where this and all decisions and laws since that have incrementally given corporations more and more power.
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And how did you rate it a couple years ago when Democrats tried to eliminate the filibuster so that they could pack the Court and create two new blue States?
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You forgot Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution.
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Both KMT and its Maoist wing that became CCP were Soviet by design and initial implementation, so hardly a big difference there.
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Germany disintegrated even faster under Hitler.
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Hardly.
To get to power, Hitler had to build an army to gain votes, to lick the balls of the large capital so they'd support his chancellor bid, to stage the Reichstag building fire and the Leipzig process so that he could empty the Reichstag of all left and centrist parties by force and declare himself a dictator. He started dismantling the institutions of the weak German democracy only after that, and it took him all of 12 years.
Shitler got freely elected on the promise to destroy the democratic facade of
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Trump, his Heritage Foundation puppetmasters and his MAGA minions have been at it for years too. Just like ole Adolf.
Trump is only able to do all the fascist shit he's doing now because the extreme right has been stuffing the courts - and the Supreme Court - with fascist-adjacent judges for years. And - if this needed remininding... Jan 6 happened.
Donald and Adolf are quite literally following the same playbook. The only difference is, Donald is an idiot who's really doing the Federalist Society's bidding.
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Donald and Adolf are quite literally following the same playbook.
Quite, as I said above.
Perhaps the USA will have to do something about it at some point in time. The sooner, the better, because it will be harder the more this, errr, process continues.
Re:The Mobs have come (Score:4, Funny)
Two differences. Hitler could also write pictures.
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And books.
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The only thing that is fairly new here is how fast the US is disintegrating, the rest is basically by the book.
Considering that it took 50+ years of concentrated and monumental efforts to get here, I would not say that the ultimate break-up is occurring too quickly. It started when the Baby Boom was recognized in the early 50's, late 40's.
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My impression is that up until Hillary snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Trump's chances to make impact looked pretty weak. Perhaps I am not seeing a lot looking at it from far away, but I am genuinely surprised by the speed with which trumpistan is taking shape.
Trump is determined (Score:4, Informative)
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Can you point to anything, literally anything at all, that Trump has said and/or done to make America cleaner and healthier?
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Does that count?
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"Beautiful clean coal, I told my people never use the word 'coal' unless you put the word beautiful clean before it"
Trump pays for support and Qatari jet... (Score:4, Informative)
Trump's Big Oil friends need it closed.
They helped him to stay afloat when russian oligarchs bought his real estate...
They helped him win election with millions from US Oil companies...
They gave him big nice jet (Qatar) ...
Don't you know? (Score:2)
What you don't know can't hurt you...
Re:Don't you know? (Score:5, Funny)
Not in a position (Score:2)
When Trump is dead/imprisoned/impeached, the Trump Foundation should be sued for the cost of all the equipment that was
Like all dictatorships (Score:2, Insightful)
Trump's wages war on knowledge and science.
And you know what? Even if you don't care about climate data, those satellites have been put up there at great cost to the taxpayer. Whatever happened to going after waste and abuse? People who pay taxes should be hopping mad.
Anyway, at the end of the day, it's yet another distraction to make his idiotic MAGA supporters forget that he's a fucking pedo.
More wasted taxpayer dollars (Score:5, Informative)
Destruction of 500 tons of emergency food aid by claiming it was about to expire [go.com], but that was because the agency involved with its distribution was shut down.
Planned destruction of $9 million worth of contraceptives [pbs.org], because the same agency was being shut down.
Destruction of the iconic White House Rose Garden wherein the U.S. flag is used as a waste disposal system [yahoo.com].
Then there's the nearly $1 billion it will cost to renovate the "free" bribe, er, jet, from Qatar [dnyuz.com].
And now a perfectly good satellite because he's anti-science.
As usual, what does he care? It's not his money.
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Re:More wasted taxpayer dollars (Score:4, Interesting)
To me it is like throwing away $500 million just because the words "CO2" is in the description.
There's precedent. Following the ban of DEI initiatives, federal agencies rescinded a grant for research on "trans-crustal processes" (ie, earthquakes) because it used the term "trans".
Simple: Trump is evil (Score:4, Insightful)
He does not care how many people die or live in misery as a result of his actions. He just cares about putting on a show for his cult members.
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This is why the best thing we can do as a country is steer him towards things like trashing the rose garden and building a ballroom, to distract him from things that would do more damage. To that end, it is critically important to rage against those things so that he'll think he's "owning the libs" by doing them.
A total non story then .. (Score:2)
"They were asking me very sharp questions. The only thing that would have motivated those questions was [that] somebody told them to come up with a termination plan."
star of real world and road rules (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't like the data? (Score:2)
...then fire and/or burn it.
That's what dictators do. Nobody trusts China's and Russia's official econ stats because the books are always cooked to make the dictator look like the best dictator ever, believe me, everyone says so.
There can't be climate change if there is no instrument around to measure it.
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I've talked to a lot of people, very important people, the best people. I've never met people who are better than them, really. THEY ALL TELL ME that these satellites are a WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY and should be decommissioned. Sleepy Joe and Kamala should never have put them up there in the first place!!
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It's perfectly clear why (Score:3, Insightful)
NPR (Score:2)
"As NPR reports..."
'Pathfinder' - Orignal Mission Duration: 2 years (Score:2)
OCO is an orbital dinosaur (Score:2)
Re:Do farmers actually use these satellites? (Score:5, Insightful)
Farmers aren't pointing a dish at these satellites. Weather forecasting models use this data. I doubt it'll cause a famine, but less data means lower crop yield and higher prices.
Re:Do farmers actually use these satellites? (Score:4)
What part of weather forecasting are you having trouble understanding?
Re:Do farmers actually use these satellites? (Score:5, Informative)
Not a farmer myself, but live in the country and am in close contact with some of them - they sell on the local market, we discuss...
You use satellite-based information to decide when to sow your crops, when to irrigate (if necessary), and when to harvest. When exteme weather events are likely, you go check your fields more regularly. You need finer-grained information than just the national weather for this, you want to know your local circumstances. And yes, with this information, you can improve yields, limit risk of harvest loss, and ultimately keep food prices at a reasonable level.
Why would the US want to get rid of valuable information for their farmers is beyond me - in the rest of the world, we are not dependent on your stuff, so well, have it your way...
Re:Do farmers actually use these satellites? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would the US want to get rid of valuable information for their farmers is beyond me
Project 2025 has, among is many, many goals, removing from government anything and everything that competes with private corporations. This includes weather forecasting. AccuWeather's CEO, in particular, has been a strong proponent of the US government simply stopping all of it, so he can charge more from people for his company's services as the free competition goes away.
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Doesnt the US gov need good weather forecasting for national security reasons?
After all, you want to be sure there is not cat 5 hurricane forming anywhere near your carrier fleets. Or your air force missions / exercises.
And to make sure your troops are aware and prepared before a storm hits them.
And so many other things.
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Doesnt the US gov need good weather forecasting for national security reasons?
I imagine they think it that can be provided by private weather corporations turned defense contractors and selling the information to the government.
A huge amount of stuff that the US government used to do in-house was outsourced over the decades, first to a broad range of small independent defense contractors, then to monopolies as those consolidated, thus now costing ten times as much as it should. There's no reason weather forecasting cannot become another monopoly defense contracting service charging t
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So how long before they start sourcing Chinese data in the same way that defense contractors source Chinese components?
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They use plenty of weather data from satellites, but are they tracking CO2 emissions as if they could move their crops closer?
Re: Do farmers actually use these satellites? (Score:2)
For asking for facts instead of suppositions and speculation?
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Who said anything like that?
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Re:Do farmers actually use these satellites? (Score:5, Insightful)
Being MAGA and having an inkling of education requires monumental levels of mental gymnastics. Arguing if climate monitoring satellites are of use to people whose livelihood depends on the climate is a perfect example.
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Composition of the atmosphere affects the weather and therefore you want to know that when forecasting.
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The farm lobby and "big ag" are not the individual farmers either; they're the companies that supply farmers with their necessary products such as equipment - chemicals, and seeds. Thus their disinterest doesn't mean anything either.
Big ag also aren't going to be the users, and large farms would monitor the health of their own fields through other means.
The satellite data would be more useful for traders and other market participants.
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Pretty sure companies like Cargill and ADM directly or indirectly own a shitton of land. They're huge, and they produce/process a lot of food. They would be at the front line of anyone using these satellites for data relevant to crop production if, in fact, anyone is using them to enhance crop production.
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I would be very surprised if farmers didn't rely on climate data that comes from these satellites.
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Should I plant corn again, or should I make the move and spend a few million dollars on equipment to start farming grain?
If you think farmers are only worried about the weather tomorrow you've never met a farmer.
Re:Do farmers actually use these satellites? (Score:4, Informative)
Do farmers actually use these satellites?
Per TFA:
"NASA and others have turned this happy accident into an incredibly valuable set of maps of plant photosynthesis around the world," explains Scott Denning, a longtime climate scientist at Colorado State University who worked on the OCO missions and is now retired. "Lo and behold, we also get these lovely, high resolution maps of plant growth," he says. "And that's useful to farmers, useful to rangeland and grazing and drought monitoring and forest mapping and all kinds of things, in addition to the CO2 measurements."
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Re:Do farmers actually use these satellites? (Score:4, Insightful)
So you are argument is "My imagination says this isn't really a problem, and that these satellites serve no useful purpose." Your imagination can tell you anything.
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I suspect we have other satellites that capture the same high-resolution maps of plant growth.
Did you imaginary friend tell you that? Do you do research based on feelings? Are you attempting to create a new fancy method of farming called vibe farming where you just suspect something exists somewhere and therefore it is so?
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INRE: 'License Plates' (Score:2)
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I suspect we have other satellites that capture the same high-resolution maps of plant growth.
Which ones?
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If there ever was a better example of the effects of leaded gasoline on children, behold that post.
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"Wind and solar are both cheaper now than anything you can do with fossil fuels and they are perfectly capable providing baseband power in every situation"
Not even remotely true.