JayStream

Temperature data is recorded at ten thousand locations across the earth. But actual measurements of carbon dioxide – the key component in global warming theory – are only collected at about three hundred land-based locations around the globe. There are some existing satellites capable of monitoring carbon dioxide levels from space, but their coverage area and effectiveness are limited.

The lack of reliable, real-time carbon dioxide measurements is one of the bones of contention in the reliability or believability (depending on you who talk to) of our global climate models. Because CO2 is not sufficiently measured, the CO2 numbers input into the models must be parameterized, or estimated based upon other equations. How accurate those numbers are is contested within the climate change community.

That is why the recent launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was so highly anticipated. The satellite was designed not only to measure CO2 over land and oceans, but measure how the earth’s oceans and landmasses capture and store some portion of that CO2.

Significant amounts of CO2 are absorbed by vegetation, which is why graphs of CO2 measurements look like “jagged teeth” (the red line on the Mauna Loa graph) over time. During the growing season, CO2 is absorbed by vegetation and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is at a minimum. In winter, when vegetation is dormant, photosynthesis is minimized and CO2 levels are at their highest.

Everyone in the scientific community was publicly disappointed that the rocket failed shortly after launch, and the $280 million satellite was destroyed. But let’s be honest – the launch failure actually benefits some of the scientists and politicians involved in the climate debate.

There are huge dollars being spent by both sides (though hardly in equal amounts) of the manmade global warming issue. Some scientists regularly quoted by the media are little more than activists in lab coats. Prolonging the debate serves their personal interests, as it keeps them in the spotlight.

The OCO could have provided answers – definitive answers – to some of the questions currently at the crux of the global warming debate. For those who make money from the climate change debate – and for a few who have become rich in the process – the loss of a satellite that could settle some of the disputed numbers has an unintended beneficial side effect: job security.

Because of the satellite’s destruction, climate modelers will continue to parameterize carbon dioxide numbers and effects, and climate debaters will continue to debate their accuracy. The climate change rhetoric will continue at shrill levels because a key question – how much carbon dioxide is in the air at any given time and what happens to it – is just another issue for debate.

UPDATE 3/2/09: One of those activists in a lab coat is NASA’s James Hansen, who urged “mass civil disobedience” during remarks to protesters who barricaded gates at a coal-fueled power plant. Hansen’s former boss wonders “why he has not been fired.”

Jay Weather carbon dioxide, global warming