Say Nothing About the Failing Satellite 193
The QuikScat satellite used for predicting the intensity and path of hurricanes could fail at any time (it's already past its designed lifetime). Without this satellite, the accuracy of US forecasters' predictions could be degraded by up to 16% — and there are no plans for any replacement. Bill Proenza, director of the National Hurricane Center, has been outspokenly critical of his superiors on this situation, but he has been warned to stop commenting on it.
Can someone who knows about hurricane prediction (Score:5, Interesting)
Can someone who knows about hurricane prediction please answer a quick question for me? I heard countless predictions on the media that global warming was going to cause the 2006 hurricane season to be catastrophically intense and large. Obviously it wasn't.
Where were the media's predictions coming from? Did the hurricane forcasters in the scientific community screw up (i.e. were the scientists really predicting a large hurricane season)? Or did the media just present a one-sided view when really many hurricane forcasters were not predicting anything unusual?
Because if the hurricane forcasting is so off as to generate such predictions as we were heard about 2006, then a decrease in accuracy of 16% probably isn't that serious, is it (they're so far off anyways)?
I'm writing as a layman here.
Re:Can someone who knows about hurricane predictio (Score:2, Interesting)
its not there this year, so there is nothing to stop the 2007 being as bad as predicted.
Re:Can someone who knows about hurricane predictio (Score:5, Interesting)
Firstly, I believe that when it is referring to hurricane forecasts, it is actually referring to hurricane tracking, not predicting the number of hurricanes in the upcoming season. A 16% decrease in the accuracy of hurricane forecasting therefore would result in meteorologists being less sure of the path that a hurricane would take. It's possible it's also referring to the prediction of a storm system being elevated to 'hurricane' status after forming a tropical storm/depression.
Even assuming I am completely wrong (that wouldn't be surprising) and the satellite will be use to help predict hurricane seasons, hopefully the replacement satellite will offer forecasters some new information to help in the future (Not every year's predictions are as off as the 2006 predictions, but if they were, I'd agree with you, a accurcy decreasing by 16% really won't make much of a difference.)
Secondly, while the 2006 hurricane season was grossly overstated [noaa.gov] and scientists really were predicting a record number of hurricanes, you can blame the media for creating a frenzy regarding the results. In any other year, the prediction might have gotten a mention on page 20 of a newspaper, or the science section of CNN.com, but after hurricane Katrina, media outlets jumped at the opportunity for more scaremongering. So I'd say, both are to blame.
One of the important things to realize is that he's not saying the acgency is necessarily underfunded, but that it has the money to easily replace the satellite but it is being used for PR instead.
It looks like they're predicting a record [noaa.gov] number of storms this year too..
Re:Can someone who knows about hurricane predictio (Score:5, Interesting)
The predictions were based on the computer models. In hindsight, they went back and analyzed the atmospheric data and found that there was a lot of dust in the atmosphere, being carried by the prevailing winds. The dust was coming from the sahara. It appears that the dust had the affect of reducing storm intensity. That's the kind of thing that's hard to account for in a model. Especially when it the variables can change significantly from year to year.
Re:Is it any wonder? (Score:3, Interesting)
The satellite was launched by Clinton anyway so it's probably better just to let it fall out of the sky with no replacement until we figure out how to launch political operatives into geosynchronous orbit so they can beam down pictures of calm seas and balmy weather. If Clinton lied about a blow job how can we trust his satellites?
Re:Opps --- warm waters DO relate to storm intensi (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is it any wonder? (Score:5, Interesting)
The satellites had nothing to do with embarrassing anyone over Katrina. What's embarrassing is that my damn governor refused Federal help and let people die in their homes. Which (combined with the hugely incompetent recovery effort) is why she isn't running for re-election.
Re:Is it any wonder? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks, Ron Obvious!
With NASA's already anemic budget being mostly eaten up by the money pit of the ISS to keep the Russians afloat and NOAA having huge commitments all over the place (Do you know how many programs and areas of responsibility NOAA has? It's staggering.) I imagine Congress just thinks it's cheaper to pay the cost of evacuating more people over the next ten years than pay the large upfront cost for getting a new satellite out NOW. Congress decided it wasn't worth billions of dollars to prepare for a "once in 200 years" event. If it'll only happen once in 200 years, then you can stretch out the monetary damages over that time period as well (in theory). Preparing for a category 5 storm just isn't worth the cost.
They used to feel the same way about terrorist attacks. Then 3000 people got killed, and we've more than doubled the defense budget since then, to $739 billion [slate.com] if you count the yearly emergency funding bills. The comparable figure in 2003 was $480 billion. [msn.com] Meanwhile Katrina killed 1000 people, about 1/3 as long ago. Somehow we didn't react to that one. For FY 2007, NASA's budget was $16.8 billion, and NOAA's was $3.6 billion.
Even according to your own logic (which in principle, I agree with) this is ridiculous. We can afford to replace a weather satellite.
Re:Not the only soon to fall satellite (Score:5, Interesting)
As one of those toilers at JPL who worked on QuikSCAT: The instrument is a copy of one that was being built for a Japanese satellite. It was built in 13 months (hence the Quik) from spares from the one already in process, modified to fit on a commercially available satellite bus (Ball BCP2000) and launched on a surplus obsolete TitanII the AirForce had sitting around. The rush (normal spacecraft development is a 4-5 year process) was because the existing instrument, NSCAT, was on a satellite that failed after 6 months, leaving a big hole in the data, so QuikSCAT would fill in until the Japanese satellite launched and came on line (it launched late, and later failed)
The instrument was designed as part of an effort to collect 10 years or more of continuous data as part of an overall "understand the interactions of air and sea" program. So JPL developed a ground data system oriented towards that need (hosted at PODAAC). As it happens, we also had a real time feed of the data to NOAA (think of a "tee" early in the data pipeline), which, it turns out, has been very useful in the forecast business (back in 1999 and earlier, when this was all being done, people weren't sure it would be useful.. certainly not to the point of kicking in large sums of money to that end..). It took several years for the forecast community to start heavily using QS data (they were justifiably nervous about depending on an experimental satellite that was never intended to run this long...)
QS is actually operated by LASP in Colorado.
Re:Is it any wonder? (Score:2, Interesting)
"The Treasury Department reported Monday that the deficit for the budget year that began Oct. 1 totals $42.2 billion, down 57.2% from the same period a year ago." - Federal deficit shrinks due to record tax collections [usatoday.com]
2/12/2007
"The Treasury Department said that the deficit through May totaled $148.5 billion, down 34.6 percent from the same period a year ago." - Federal Deficit Continues To Drop [cbsnews.com] 6/12/2007
Of course the fact that the budget deficit is shrinking as revenues go up doesn't fit very well with people's argument that the tax cuts should be rescinded, so they put their fingers in their ears and keep claiming otherwise...
The economy is booming. The Federal government is making more money than it's ever made before. When you let people keep their money, they use it to make more money. If not for them, then for someone else.
Re:Can someone who knows about hurricane predictio (Score:4, Interesting)
In short: this is how science works. Multiple hypotheses for the same event simply mean that we don't have a full understanding of what happened. You need more data, which in an experimental science means more experiments. In an observational science that means sitting back and hoping that mother nature will give you something that will validate/invalidate your hypothesis.
Re:Is it any wonder? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is it any wonder? (Score:4, Interesting)
No. The fact that there is a deficit at all fits perfectly well with the argument that tax cuts should be rescinded.
If the national debt was zero then that would fit with the argument that taxes overall could be kept at the same level (although it might still be good to shift the tax burden to the very wealthy to deal with the increasing wealth inequality) but you're talking about the deficit here not even the national debt.
If we were talking about the national debt then I would agree that the national debt is so large that it is impossible to pay off the national debt in a single budget year. In that case, it would make sense to talk about the rate at which the national debt was growing or shrinking. On the other hand, when it comes to the deficit, there should be very little inertia. In fact, the average deficit should be negative (i.e. running a surplus on average) with some years running a slight surplus and other years running a slight deficit - we need the surplus to pay off the national debt.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. The fact that the government is running a deficit means that the government is going further into debt. Going further into debt hardly seems like "making money". You may mean that the raw revenues have increased but the raw expenditures have increased even more (or there wouldn't be a deficit).
Anyway, under Clinton the deficit was (depending on your accounting) actually eliminated so, over the long term, the fact that there's a deficit at all makes it hard to claim that the deficit is less now than it was under Clinton. If the deficit had been decreasing ever since Clinton left office then we'd be running a sizable yearly surplus - which would be a good thing because then we'd actually be paying down the national debt.
Re:No, it's part of the new policy on global warmi (Score:2, Interesting)
the claim of the reprimand "taking valuable time away from your public role" indicates,
in my view, that Mary Glackin, who presumably wrote or approved the document, is
corrupted and can no longer function as a useful civil servant. We, the people, need to
find a better person to take over that position. Clearly, warning of failure to maintain the
information gathering apparatus that supports hurricane warning is VERY MUCH the
correct public role for Bill Proenza. Kudos, Bill! Shame, Mary!
Alas, our current administration does not support the Hurricane Control Center as
well as it supports the likes of Mary Glackin.