What's New Friday December 5, 2008

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 5 Dec 08   Washington, DC

1. TRIANA:  WHY DOES THIS ADMINISTRATION HATE IT SO MUCH?
Could it be because Al Gore’s initials areon it?  They changed the name, 
but the initials wouldn’t rub off.  Three years ago while Congress was out 
of town for the Christmas break, I heard NASA was quietly terminating 
Triana, a.k.a. DSCOVR, http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn010606 .  How 
could this happen?  The $100 million observatory was already built.  It 
was meant to answer the most fundamental question of climate science: what 
is the energy balance between solar radiation falling on Earth and 
reflected or reradiated energy?  Global warming deniers all claim solar 
variation is the major factor in global climate change.  Is it?  Well, 
Triana is the only experiment that can unequivocally answer that 
question.  But I couldn’t find a single global warming denier who wanted 
it tested.  So I wrote an op-ed for the NY Times; but maybe nobody read 
it, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/15/opinion/15park.html .  It’s still 
timely; the NY Times should feel free to reprint it without change.  

2. DSCOVR: A DICK CHENEY SHOTGUN BLAST BLINDS THE WORLD.  
The Nov 19, 2008 online Nature news, reported that the NASA 
reauthorization bill ordered the agency to come up with a plan for 
DSCOVR.  The article quoted Francisco Valero of Scripps, the mission’s 
principle investigator, who estimated that it would take $117 million to 
refurbish and launch DSCOVR.  The Air Force offered to launch it, but 
incredibly, only if all Earth observation equipment is removed.  This led 
me to wonder if there could be a national security reason.  No, Dick 
Cheney just doesn’t want to hear about global warming.  DeSmogBlog, the 
best of the environmental blogs, quotes an unnamed source within NASA who 
spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying Cheney was the hatchet man, 
intent from the beginning on killing DSCOVR, and keeping Bush’s 
fingerprints off the axe.  And why did I have to learn about this from a 
UK science magazine and a Canadian blog?  The only major U.S. paper that 
mentioned it was the Houston Chronicle.

3. STRANGELOVE: IT’S NOT WARHEADS WE NEED TO REPLACE. 
Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, head of the Strategic Command is urging 
quick action on the Reliable Replacement Warhead.  Maybe he didn’t get the 
memo with the election results.  The Jason advisory group reported a 
couple of years ago that there should be no problem with warheads in the 
stockpile for the next hundred years.  But look out for unpleasant 
surprises in the next few weeks.  Our first priority should be to return 
to a policy of limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, beginning with 
ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

4. SCIENCE ADVICE: BEFORE WE BUY A PIECE THE AUTO INDUSTRY.  
We should have a scientist involved in the discussions.  The last thing we 
need is a repeat of the hydrogen car fiasco following Bush’s 2003 State of 
the Union Address.  In a couple of months GM had a hydrogen car, paid for 
by the taxpayers, circling the Capitol, but it was not a solution to any 
problem.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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