Why did NASA kill a climate change project? (a brainchild of Al Gore)

[G_j]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/15/opinion/edpark.php

Why did NASA kill a climate change project?
Robert L. Park The New York Times

SUNDAY, JANUARY 15, 2006


COLLEGE PARK, Maryland NASA has quietly terminated the Deep Space Climate Observatory, citing "competing priorities." The news media took little notice. Few Americans, after all, had even heard of the program. But the entire world may come to mourn its passing.

<snip>
The better experiment when it comes to global warming was to be the climate observatory, situated in space at the neutral-gravity point between the Sun and Earth. Called Lagrange 1, or L1, this point is about 1 million miles from Earth. At L1, with a view of the full disk of the Sun in one direction, and a full sunlit Earth in the opposite, the observatory could continuously monitor Earth's energy balance. It was given a poetic name, Triana, after Rodrigo de Triana, the sailor aboard Christopher Columbus' ship who first sighted the New World.

Development began in November 1998 and it was ready for launching three years later. The cost was only about $100 million. For comparison, that is only one-thousandth the cost of the International Space Station, which serves no useful purpose.

Before Triana could be launched, however, there was a presidential election. Many of the industries favored by the new Bush White House were not anxious to have the cause of global warming pinned down. The launching was put on hold.

The disdain of the Bush White House for Triana goes much deeper than just a desire to avoid the truth about global warming. Triana began life in early 1998 as a brainchild of Al Gore, who was then the vice president. Gore, the story goes, woke up one morning wondering if it would be possible to beam a continuous image of the full Earth back from space to inspire people with the need to care for our planet. The 1972 portrait of the full Earth, taken from the Moon, had inspired millions with the fragile beauty of our blue planet. Why not beam the image live into classrooms, allowing students to view weather systems marching around the globe?
<snip>
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[rodeodance]

1. simple--BushCo told them to do it and they did it.

[pinniped]

2. Quietly...standard procedure for these lame fucks.

.

[FloridaPat]

3. * killed everything Clinton and Gore stood for.

[ROakes1019]

4. the beginning of it all

I was wondering how the Bushies would deal with NASA's recent announcement that it may soon know more about how the universe began. Wouldn't this blow a hole in "creationism" and "intelligent design"? If God created it all it on purpose, it would seem he did so with just a bad chemical experiment.

[Lisa]

5. erase Gore from history ...

That's Bush's aim.

Mothball the Triana project. Scrub the US signature off the Kyoto Protocol (a document which Bush detests not just because it's about global warming and international approaches, ideas which he loathes). In previous times the US would simply not ratify treaties, but Bush's people remember that the Kyoto treaty was brokered by Gore during last-ditch negotiations in 1997.

Bush is attempting to remove Al Gore from the public's memory, and replace him with a warped counterfeit -- himself. He's gone to great lengths to portray himself as the outdoorsman/environmentalist (although with an "ownership" spin, as in "only landowners can really care about the environment"). He has stated repeatedly that he wants his own climate policy in place (a toothless one, of course -- but he needs something because the US public is worried about global warming and he wants to be seen as "responsible").

I don't want to sound too gruesome here, but in a symbolic way, Bush has a habit of metaphorically "killing and devouring" his opponents. Bush is a hollow little man who tries to hide inside other people's skins. He steals their ideas and then goes on to impersonate them -- strengthening himself (or at least his built-up political image). Ann Richards was the classic Texas politician. Bush was determined to out-Texan her, and also take away her reputation as "the Education Governor". John McCain was the friendly, joke-cracking moderate populist -- with the help of Karl Rove, Bush "slaughtered" McCain's credibility with dirty campaigning, and then appropriated these characteristics for himself.


p.s. Bush's people have accused Gore of being jealous, and a "sore loser". I suspect that they are projecting more than a little. Bush himself admitted that Bush Sr. had praised Gore -- and based on what we already know about Bush, I don't think that this would have prompted him to rush over and hug Al as "the brother I never had".

“Can you imagine how much it hurt,” Bush joked, “to know that Dad’s idea of the perfect son was . . . Al Gore?”

http://www.americanpresident.org/history/bushgeorgew/biography/lifebeforethepresidency.common.shtml

[Uncle Joe]

7. Well said Lisa, I think you hit the nail on the head.

Kicked and nominated.

:kick:

[fujiyama]

8. That's likely the best explanation I've heard of Bush's

mentality...It seems very accurate. He's proven to be a petty, vindictive person.

[hatrack]

10. That's it - the malignant hermit crab president

Pretty much there.

[G_j]

6. ~~

[SaveElmer]

9. You have your answer...

This was killed out of spite!