Either/Or thinking has been a catch phrase since 1843, the year that Kierkegaard published his two-volume work Enten – Eller. We fault anyone guilty of either/or thinking because, as highly sophisticated and perspicacious people, we think such thinking is simplistic. Surely, there can’t be just two sides to any issue. Surely, “fifty shades of grey” aligns more with our ambivalence about most issues. But a California satellite in the context of either acknowledging global warming or denying it?
“What’s that?” you ask.
“I guess Governor Brown wants California to launch its own satellite to track global warming ‘pollutants and polluters.’ Sorry, correction: In the Governor’s words, to launch its ‘own damn satellite.’”
“No way. Isn’t that state stretching its resources that might serve people in fire-storm areas, flood areas, and droughty fields? Isn’t the state concerned about its burgeoning homeless problem, about gang violence and urban decay, about defecation on the streets of San Francisco? Shouldn’t it be concerned about preparing for the next—and inevitable—earthquake or landslides on highways cut through mountains? Is he really going to launch a satellite at state expense? I can see why his critics have given him his nickname,” you interject.
“I’m a bit in agreement with you there. The problem as I see it is this: EITHER Governor Brown accepts the data and the conclusions of NASA, NOAA, and the IPCC, OR he doesn’t.
“If you go to NASA’s website on carbon monitoring, you’ll find a list of satellites devoted to the distribution of water-rich and water-poor areas affected by EITHER weather Or climate, and you’ll find satellites devoted to atmospheric monitoring. NASA has ECOSTRESS (ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station), GEDI (not Jedi, but rather Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation Lidar), GeoCarb, a stationary-orbit satellite, OCO-3 (Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3), PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem), ASCENDS (Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, & Seasons), G-LiHT (Goddard’s LIDar, Hperspactral & Thermal Imager), LVIS (Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor), and UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar), all sensing the atmosphere and surface for conditions that affect both weather and climate and that have an effect on agriculture.* The Feds have already committed a bunch of tax dollars—including tax money from California—to launch satellites associated with weather and climate studies.”
“So, Governor Brown wants California to launch its own satellite? For? Isn’t this all redundant?” you ask rhetorically.
“My point exactly. So, what’s the governor up to? Spending more money that does nothing to change climate in a state that has had millennia of on-again/off-again droughts and deluges? Isn’t he already convinced that we’re undergoing a planet-wide warming with irrefutable consequences? If he is, what’s the point of spending California’s tax money? If he isn’t—well, that’s the Either/Or. What happened to all that California-Think, that situation-thinking (moral or otherwise), that fifty-shades of grey nuanced thinking that bespeaks of ‘I’m-more-sophisticated-than-you-because-I-understand-things-better-than-you.’? Shouldn’t the governor be putting the money into the green technology he claims to support, you know, maybe into a solar or wind farm to fry or slice up eagles and other birds? (You know they do that, don’t you?)
“It seems to me that Governor Moonbeam’s desire to launch a satellite shows the problem of politicizing any environmental issue. Governments are often inefficient because bureaucracies are often INefficient, and governments like California and the USA are big, big bureaucracies with agencies that can duplicate services.** The left and right hands really don’t know what each other is doing when they duplicate. Lots of examples, of course, such as DHS’s buying 15 million rounds of ammo. Shouldn’t the military and the police get that stuff? And so with monitoring the atmosphere. We already have NASA and NOAA and a number of academic researchers monitoring GHGs, temperatures, and ecologies. Are we going to make ourselves monitor from space a single state’s point sources for, as Governor Brown calls them, ‘pollutants.’ What of those ‘pollutants’ that wash over California from Asia? Will California’s satellite take them into account? And here’s an unanswered question: Isn’t the governor aware that the state has already made an inventory of its GHG emissions and that it has a mandatory GHG reporting program? Another: Does anyone know if the Paris Accord, the withdrawal from which got Brown into a huff, will do anything significant since China has postponed compliance and India says it will comply only insofar as compliance will not affect the country’s economic growth?
“Sorry, also, for belaboring the point. If one accepts global warming and already has agencies in place to monitor greenhouse gas emissions, what’s the point of spending money that merely duplicates what the Federal agencies do? And how specific can a satellite be in monitoring ‘carbon polluters on the ground,’ especially in the context of quantities already known by ground monitors and industry reports? We already know, for example, that burning a ton of coal produces more weight in carbon dioxide than that ton (C^12 + O^16 + O^16 = CO2 (12 + 16 + 16 = 44, more than the carbon alone, obviously). Add up your tons, Governor; it’s relatively easy to do, and your state already does it. How much more accurate do you have to be than California’s Air Resources Board’s GHG Emissions Trends Report for 2000-2016? The state already knows it emits 429.4 million metric tons in carbon dioxide equivalence, only ten percent from the production of in-state electricity.*** Either the governor is playing a political game or the governor is ignorant of his state’s comprehensive monitoring.
“As I have mentioned elsewhere, most of us are hypocrites when it comes to ‘saving the planet.’ If we assume that adding carbon to the atmosphere is detrimental to future in situclimates, then what are we doing individually to decrease the amount of personally unnecessary GHG emissions? And in decreasing those emissions, how can we be sure that we won’t do ourselves and future generations a disservice because we might exacerbate a global cooling, as U. of Virginia’s emeritus professor S. Fred Singer says might be just around the corner? Maybe warming the atmosphere will delay or prevent a return of the ice that just 12,000 years ago covered much of North America and northern Europe. Either/Or is really difficult climate science. Carbon dioxide and other GHGs might warm the lower atmosphere but might cool the upper atmosphere, as a NASA report indicates after it used SABER (Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry) to detect the reflection of energy from a coronal mass ejection (CME) in March, 2013. The GHGs carbon dioxide and nitric oxide (NO) appeared to cast off the excess solar energy striking the planet during that episode.**** What’s a governor to do? Shoot, now will have to use the laws of thermodynamics to figure out the flow of heat from lower to upper atmosphere during increased solar activity. Maybe the moonbeam satellite should be pointed outward rather than inward. Oh! Just remembered. NASA already does that.”
* https://carbon.nasa.gov/missions.html
** See also: Korte, Gregory, Government often has ten agencies doing one job. USA Today, April 8, 2014. Online at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/08/billions-spent-on-duplicate-federal-programs/7435221/
Korte writes, “It takes 10 different offices at the Department of Health and Human Services to run programs addressing AIDS in minority communities. Autism research is spread out over 11 different agencies. Eight agencies at the Defense Department are looking for prisoners of war and missing in action. And Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado has eight different satellite control centers to control 10 satellite programs.
“The report, by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, identifies 26 new areas where federal government programs are fragmented, duplicative, overlapping or just inefficient.” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-gov-jerry-brown-launch-satellite-track-greenhouse-gas-emissions-n909811
***From the report: Statewide emission estimates rely on state, regional or federal data sources, and on aggregated facility-specific emission reports from ARB’s Mandatry GHG Reporting Program. Calculation methodologies are consistent with the 2006 IPCC guidelines.” Online at https://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/inventory/data/data.htm
****Online at https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber
“What’s that?” you ask.
“I guess Governor Brown wants California to launch its own satellite to track global warming ‘pollutants and polluters.’ Sorry, correction: In the Governor’s words, to launch its ‘own damn satellite.’”
“No way. Isn’t that state stretching its resources that might serve people in fire-storm areas, flood areas, and droughty fields? Isn’t the state concerned about its burgeoning homeless problem, about gang violence and urban decay, about defecation on the streets of San Francisco? Shouldn’t it be concerned about preparing for the next—and inevitable—earthquake or landslides on highways cut through mountains? Is he really going to launch a satellite at state expense? I can see why his critics have given him his nickname,” you interject.
“I’m a bit in agreement with you there. The problem as I see it is this: EITHER Governor Brown accepts the data and the conclusions of NASA, NOAA, and the IPCC, OR he doesn’t.
“If you go to NASA’s website on carbon monitoring, you’ll find a list of satellites devoted to the distribution of water-rich and water-poor areas affected by EITHER weather Or climate, and you’ll find satellites devoted to atmospheric monitoring. NASA has ECOSTRESS (ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station), GEDI (not Jedi, but rather Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation Lidar), GeoCarb, a stationary-orbit satellite, OCO-3 (Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3), PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem), ASCENDS (Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, & Seasons), G-LiHT (Goddard’s LIDar, Hperspactral & Thermal Imager), LVIS (Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor), and UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar), all sensing the atmosphere and surface for conditions that affect both weather and climate and that have an effect on agriculture.* The Feds have already committed a bunch of tax dollars—including tax money from California—to launch satellites associated with weather and climate studies.”
“So, Governor Brown wants California to launch its own satellite? For? Isn’t this all redundant?” you ask rhetorically.
“My point exactly. So, what’s the governor up to? Spending more money that does nothing to change climate in a state that has had millennia of on-again/off-again droughts and deluges? Isn’t he already convinced that we’re undergoing a planet-wide warming with irrefutable consequences? If he is, what’s the point of spending California’s tax money? If he isn’t—well, that’s the Either/Or. What happened to all that California-Think, that situation-thinking (moral or otherwise), that fifty-shades of grey nuanced thinking that bespeaks of ‘I’m-more-sophisticated-than-you-because-I-understand-things-better-than-you.’? Shouldn’t the governor be putting the money into the green technology he claims to support, you know, maybe into a solar or wind farm to fry or slice up eagles and other birds? (You know they do that, don’t you?)
“It seems to me that Governor Moonbeam’s desire to launch a satellite shows the problem of politicizing any environmental issue. Governments are often inefficient because bureaucracies are often INefficient, and governments like California and the USA are big, big bureaucracies with agencies that can duplicate services.** The left and right hands really don’t know what each other is doing when they duplicate. Lots of examples, of course, such as DHS’s buying 15 million rounds of ammo. Shouldn’t the military and the police get that stuff? And so with monitoring the atmosphere. We already have NASA and NOAA and a number of academic researchers monitoring GHGs, temperatures, and ecologies. Are we going to make ourselves monitor from space a single state’s point sources for, as Governor Brown calls them, ‘pollutants.’ What of those ‘pollutants’ that wash over California from Asia? Will California’s satellite take them into account? And here’s an unanswered question: Isn’t the governor aware that the state has already made an inventory of its GHG emissions and that it has a mandatory GHG reporting program? Another: Does anyone know if the Paris Accord, the withdrawal from which got Brown into a huff, will do anything significant since China has postponed compliance and India says it will comply only insofar as compliance will not affect the country’s economic growth?
“Sorry, also, for belaboring the point. If one accepts global warming and already has agencies in place to monitor greenhouse gas emissions, what’s the point of spending money that merely duplicates what the Federal agencies do? And how specific can a satellite be in monitoring ‘carbon polluters on the ground,’ especially in the context of quantities already known by ground monitors and industry reports? We already know, for example, that burning a ton of coal produces more weight in carbon dioxide than that ton (C^12 + O^16 + O^16 = CO2 (12 + 16 + 16 = 44, more than the carbon alone, obviously). Add up your tons, Governor; it’s relatively easy to do, and your state already does it. How much more accurate do you have to be than California’s Air Resources Board’s GHG Emissions Trends Report for 2000-2016? The state already knows it emits 429.4 million metric tons in carbon dioxide equivalence, only ten percent from the production of in-state electricity.*** Either the governor is playing a political game or the governor is ignorant of his state’s comprehensive monitoring.
“As I have mentioned elsewhere, most of us are hypocrites when it comes to ‘saving the planet.’ If we assume that adding carbon to the atmosphere is detrimental to future in situclimates, then what are we doing individually to decrease the amount of personally unnecessary GHG emissions? And in decreasing those emissions, how can we be sure that we won’t do ourselves and future generations a disservice because we might exacerbate a global cooling, as U. of Virginia’s emeritus professor S. Fred Singer says might be just around the corner? Maybe warming the atmosphere will delay or prevent a return of the ice that just 12,000 years ago covered much of North America and northern Europe. Either/Or is really difficult climate science. Carbon dioxide and other GHGs might warm the lower atmosphere but might cool the upper atmosphere, as a NASA report indicates after it used SABER (Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry) to detect the reflection of energy from a coronal mass ejection (CME) in March, 2013. The GHGs carbon dioxide and nitric oxide (NO) appeared to cast off the excess solar energy striking the planet during that episode.**** What’s a governor to do? Shoot, now will have to use the laws of thermodynamics to figure out the flow of heat from lower to upper atmosphere during increased solar activity. Maybe the moonbeam satellite should be pointed outward rather than inward. Oh! Just remembered. NASA already does that.”
* https://carbon.nasa.gov/missions.html
** See also: Korte, Gregory, Government often has ten agencies doing one job. USA Today, April 8, 2014. Online at https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/04/08/billions-spent-on-duplicate-federal-programs/7435221/
Korte writes, “It takes 10 different offices at the Department of Health and Human Services to run programs addressing AIDS in minority communities. Autism research is spread out over 11 different agencies. Eight agencies at the Defense Department are looking for prisoners of war and missing in action. And Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado has eight different satellite control centers to control 10 satellite programs.
“The report, by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, identifies 26 new areas where federal government programs are fragmented, duplicative, overlapping or just inefficient.” https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-gov-jerry-brown-launch-satellite-track-greenhouse-gas-emissions-n909811
***From the report: Statewide emission estimates rely on state, regional or federal data sources, and on aggregated facility-specific emission reports from ARB’s Mandatry GHG Reporting Program. Calculation methodologies are consistent with the 2006 IPCC guidelines.” Online at https://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/inventory/data/data.htm
****Online at https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber
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