One thing I hope Obama gets NASA to fly

The long-forgotten Triana bird:

http://www-pm.larc.nasa.gov/triana.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triana_(satellite)

It's purpose, oh, you can read the purpose for yourselves if you're interested.  But if it had flown when it was supposed to in 2001, instead of being canned by the Republicans, we would have a decent record by now of whole-planet monitoring data.  That might have helped resolve issues as to climate forcing by clouds. 

I have no idea if Obama can solve any of the problems we face, but it will be nice to see science in the US unshackled, at least for a few years, from the dogma of the stupid right-wing religious nutbars and anti-intellectual libertarian kooks. 

I recall reading about several important climate monitoring instruments whose funding has been cut and which have been shelved during the Bush Admin.  I like this part about Triana:

Derided by critics as being an unfocused project, the satellite was nicknamed GoreSat, and was often referred to as an "overpriced screen saver" by Republicans. Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences whether the project was worthwhile. The resulting report stated that the mission was "strong and vital."

Basically Republicans wouldn't fund it, probably mainly because it was supported by Gore, and even though the NAS called it strong and vital, it still remains shelved.  Freaking Republicans.

The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney is a good read. 

I like listening to right-wing talk radio (RWTR), it's simple to follow and entertaining.  Last night after the innauguration, one of the true bottom-feeders of RWTR (I forget which one, but it doesn't really matter (it was not a major name, just some whiny-voiced twerp)) was railing against the Obama stimulus package.  Most of what he was talking about I already knew (e.g., NASA is slated for a huge increase in funding, as is the Energy Department basic research program) so it was humorous to hear him ranting about the details.  For example, he claimed, correctly, that NASA was going to get a large amount (I forget how much exactly, something on order of $100 million) to develop a new generation of climate monitoring satellites.  But this button-head guy says "I don't see how this will create any jobs for Americans."  And I chuckled because the people at Ball Aerospace, Lockheed-Martin et al. who will be building those birds under cost-plus contracts for NASA sure know how that money will provide jobs for Americans.  He went on to deride DOE getting a huge chunk of money for nuclear fusion research, again because it wouldn't provide jobs (which I think would be news to Los Alamos, Sandia, Livermore, Oak Ridge etc. and all the private contractors to those laboratories that will build the infrastructure for research).  But what is really amusing is that most of the audience listening to this bozo think he is right, and this is money being thrown away.  But it wouldn't do any good to explain any of this to any of them. 

Sometimes I feel like right-wing talk radio is like a really bad movie - it's so bad that it's actually funny (unintentionally, of course).  On the other hand, whenever I think about the fact that enough people actually believe the tripe coming out of those windbags that they have entire radio stations devoted to RWTR, it ticks me off.

i saw a rather miffed reference to another bit of kit still on the shelf in the 2008 Global Surface Temperature in GISS Analysis ;

3) Volcanic aerosols: colorful sunsets the past several months suggest a non-negligible
stratospheric aerosol amount at northern latitudes. Unfortunately, as noted in the 2008 Bjerknes talk [http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/], the instrument capable of precise measurements of aerosol optical depth (SAGE, the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment) is sitting on a shelf at Langley Research Center. Stratospheric aerosol amounts are estimated from crude measurements to be moderate.

It's a little different in that the SAGE 1, 2, and 3 missions all flew.  The second instrument in the SAGE III series hasn't, but the SAGE 3 instrument *should* have been operating at this point, except the satellite bus carrying it failed in 2006. 

right. thanks for that. it looked like the nasa crew were getting well pissed off in general in that release.

'nasa use exclamation mark' shock! horror!