7 ms·

ESA – Climate from Space

126 points by lmc 4y ago

photochemsyn 4y ago
It's not a bad overview, but the level of discussion is fairly watered-down, scientifically speaking. A more general way of looking at it would be helpful - i.e., explain how to apply the underlying concepts to any planetary body in the solar system to estimate its surface temperature. Why is Venus so hot? Why is Mars so cold? What's a radiative-convective model? How does an atmosphere affect a planet's surface temperature? What if the Earth's oceans were as shallow as those on Mars apparently were? Could Venus ever be terraformed into an Earth-like planet? Additionally, a discussion of the economics and industry of the global fossil fuel production system (and of the staggering cost of completely replacing the existing infrastructure with non-fossil energy sources) should be included in the globe diagram in an up-front manner.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  > a discussion of the economics and industry of the global fossil fuel production system wait, you want science or not ?
  - photochemsyn 4y ago
    Well, industrial and engineering science definitely qualifies as science, for example the history of learning how to convert crude oil into hundreds of different chemical products is a story of scientific development. The economic theory stuff doesn't hold up so well, however. For example, it doesn't seem to matter much what socio-economic ideology a given country adheres to when it comes to extracting fossil fuels from the ground - socialist or capitalist, authoritarian dictatorship or liberal democracy, if they discover oil and gas they start drilling and pumping, without fail, and if they've got an excess, they try to sell it on the global market.
- enviclash 4y ago
  I agree the human dimension of global change is ignored in these encyclopedic data collections. Indeed scientific criticism exists for these collections: just putting together data, without new enlightening algorithms or scientific advances, does little or nothing for scientific progress. (Edit: here the source of the mentioned criticism: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-00986-y?utm https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-00986-y?utm )
moron4hire 4y ago
This was built with CesiumJS https://cesium.com/platform/cesiumjs/ https://cesium.com/platform/cesiumjs/
gpa 4y ago
Perfect data visualization of the current environmental and climate challenges that is open to anyone. The current environmental issues we face are portrayed with "Data layers" and discussed with "Stories" beneath. Stories like this should reach mass media to raise public awareness. Before we can focus on the (final) outer space (frontier), we must first fix our inner (terrestrial) space (ship) with a priority. Or not?
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  No because there's very little reason we cannot do both simultaneously. Space is no more the opportunity cost of climate science than any other thing we do on earth.
  - earthscienceman 4y ago
    You would think that. But I'm one of a few scientists that work on the only fully integrated climate observation station for the Greenland ice sheet. I'm headed to Greenland as I type this. The Greenland ice sheet is the fastest melting piece of ice in the world, and is one of the canaries-in-the-coal mine that we need to observe to understand catastrophic climate change impacts. I was just discussing with my colleagues the other day the amount funding that projects such as the JWST get, and how it's extremely difficult to get funding for climate observations. We operate the station on a paltry shoestring budget and it was nearly shutdown by the NSF last year. And. To be clear. It's a difficult discussion to have. Bickering about which science projects deserve more funding is a lose-lose battle, like cutting of each other's kneecaps (JWST is an incredible project). Yet climate science is extremely poorly funded, in particular monitoring projects or analysis. Climate science has also fallen prey to the "must be new big and shiny" problem that everything else has.
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      But it's incorrect to state that climate science is competing with JWST more than it is competing with any other venture, scientific or otherwise, for funding.
not_a_sw_dork 4y ago
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126 points by lmc 4y ago

It's not a bad overview, but the level of discussion is fairly watered-down, scientifically speaking. A more general way of looking at it would be helpful - i.e., explain how to apply the underlying concepts to any planetary body in the solar system to estimate its surface temperature. Why is Venus so hot? Why is Mars so cold? What's a radiative-convective model? How does an atmosphere affect a planet's surface temperature? What if the Earth's oceans were as shallow as those on Mars apparently were? Could Venus ever be terraformed into an Earth-like planet? Additionally, a discussion of the economics and industry of the global fossil fuel production system (and of the staggering cost of completely replacing the existing infrastructure with non-fossil energy sources) should be included in the globe diagram in an up-front manner.

mistrial9 4y ago
> a discussion of the economics and industry of the global fossil fuel production system wait, you want science or not ?
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Well, industrial and engineering science definitely qualifies as science, for example the history of learning how to convert crude oil into hundreds of different chemical products is a story of scientific development. The economic theory stuff doesn't hold up so well, however. For example, it doesn't seem to matter much what socio-economic ideology a given country adheres to when it comes to extracting fossil fuels from the ground - socialist or capitalist, authoritarian dictatorship or liberal democracy, if they discover oil and gas they start drilling and pumping, without fail, and if they've got an excess, they try to sell it on the global market.
enviclash 4y ago
I agree the human dimension of global change is ignored in these encyclopedic data collections. Indeed scientific criticism exists for these collections: just putting together data, without new enlightening algorithms or scientific advances, does little or nothing for scientific progress. (Edit: here the source of the mentioned criticism: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-00986-y?utm https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-00986-y?utm )

moron4hire 4y ago

This was built with CesiumJS https://cesium.com/platform/cesiumjs/ https://cesium.com/platform/cesiumjs/

gpa 4y ago

Perfect data visualization of the current environmental and climate challenges that is open to anyone. The current environmental issues we face are portrayed with "Data layers" and discussed with "Stories" beneath. Stories like this should reach mass media to raise public awareness. Before we can focus on the (final) outer space (frontier), we must first fix our inner (terrestrial) space (ship) with a priority. Or not?

spywaregorilla 4y ago
No because there's very little reason we cannot do both simultaneously. Space is no more the opportunity cost of climate science than any other thing we do on earth.
- earthscienceman 4y ago
  You would think that. But I'm one of a few scientists that work on the only fully integrated climate observation station for the Greenland ice sheet. I'm headed to Greenland as I type this. The Greenland ice sheet is the fastest melting piece of ice in the world, and is one of the canaries-in-the-coal mine that we need to observe to understand catastrophic climate change impacts. I was just discussing with my colleagues the other day the amount funding that projects such as the JWST get, and how it's extremely difficult to get funding for climate observations. We operate the station on a paltry shoestring budget and it was nearly shutdown by the NSF last year. And. To be clear. It's a difficult discussion to have. Bickering about which science projects deserve more funding is a lose-lose battle, like cutting of each other's kneecaps (JWST is an incredible project). Yet climate science is extremely poorly funded, in particular monitoring projects or analysis. Climate science has also fallen prey to the "must be new big and shiny" problem that everything else has.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    But it's incorrect to state that climate science is competing with JWST more than it is competing with any other venture, scientific or otherwise, for funding.

not_a_sw_dork 4y ago

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