It's ok, you can take the foil hat off. The broadcast from the moon was relayed live to TV stations across the world. The tapes they're talking about were just NASA's recordings of that direct broadcast. So there never was any opportunity for the tapes to be edited like that, because they didn't sit in the chain between the cameras on the moon and the broadcasts everyone saw on their TVs. Fortunately other news organisations (and probably governments) also taped the broadcast as well, hence we still have recordings available.
In fact, it was technologically impossible to record the entire live broadcast on a single tape because tapes with enough capacity didn't exist until many years later. Therefore a faked broadcast from tapes would have had visible transitions as they switched from tape to tape. These transitions would have been visible on the taped copies of the broadcast which the currently available recordings derive from.
Of course the taped copies we have now must have been recorded on multiple tapes. So are the transitions on them from switching tapes to record the broadcast, or are they actually the transitions from the original faked broadcast? If the original broadcast was faked and broadcast from tapes, you'd expect to see both types of transitions in the modern copies!
Thanks! This is another great explanation of the vent that I can use against those who think moon landing was fake. In the past, I always told folks that landing occurred during Cold War and USSR was watching closely. If this was faked, Soviets would love nothing better than to discredit the US worldwide.
> Therefore a faked broadcast from tapes would have had visible transitions as they switched from tape to tape.
In other words you're saying that one should believe NASA landed on the moon, because broadcasting a fake recording would have been technologically too difficult for them?
I don't doubt that they landed on the moon, but I'm not quite convinced about that logic ;)
Especially suspicious when accounting for the sorts of technological developments that have taken off since then -- lots of sending packets to screens of various sizes, not very much human exploration. /s
Here is the original recording of the moon landing. Besides clear evidence for editing, if you watch carefully you will find even more strong evidence for the fake. For instance, the sun light reflected from the space craft is in the wrong angle!
Of course the moon landings are fake. The moon is still up there, isn't it? And wouldn't people have complained of a strong smell of cheese if it actually had come down? Unless it landed in France, that is. I think the French are hiding something.
The House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology is chaired by Lamar Smith, a Republican from Texas who denies climate change science and is currently busy wasting gov't time and funds harassing NOAA scientists.
It's all going to be fine... it's all going to be fine...
Mr. Smith does not deny climate change science, he is a skeptic, not the same. As a congressman, he is afforded the roles of his position to investigate corruption or suspicions of corruption, which in this case includes an agency using taxpayer dollars avoiding the release of information to a committee. The NOAA situation is one where the agency should openly share data with the committee and Mr. Smith would go away, by stonewalling, the agency does not help the cause of science or dissipate suspicion of obfuscating results.
"""It was inconvenient for this administration that climate data has clearly showed no warming for the past two decades. The American people have every right to be suspicious when NOAA alters data to get the politically correct results they want and then refuses to reveal how those decisions were made. NOAA needs to come clean about why they altered the data to get the results they needed to advance this administration’s extreme climate change agenda."""
> NOAA provided Rep. Smith with all the data, methods, and explanation he requested but has refused to hand over the communications of its scientists, which it regards as protected.
Ridiculous, a government agency with individuals paid for by the American tax payer is not willing to release to the American public internal communications.
Why? We don't allow this in business, why should we allow this in the government?
Think Steve Jobs asking a VP to show his reasons for obfuscating the reasons for sales figures reported over a period and then adjusted.
VP: Sorry, that's confidential.
In this situation, I'm paying the administrator (that person that governmental agencies are accountable to) to make sure those agencies aren't obfuscating their own reasons.
I demand answers, whether those answers lead nowhere is inconsequential.
* The letter says: "In your various demand letters you noted the scientific study in question was of some consequence, and could potentially have an effect on policy decisions. However it should be emphasized that the issue in question is a scientific research study, not a policy decision by a Federal agency. As such, this is not an area of delegated legislative authority by Congress to the Executive (unless you are proposing that Congress should somehow legislatively overrule peer-reviewed scientific findings.)*
First, Mr. Johnson, cutely tries to defer that science is not going to be used in a policy manner. Right now, the President of the United States is engaged with making policy decisions from scientific studies, so his premise is flawed to begin with. Also, all of the pushes for climate change agendas feed from scientific studies.
Second, pointing to the delegation of authority and making a cute reference to legislating peer-reviewed scientific findings is a nod to The Daily Show crowd's jokester attitude.
Third, the last line from the paragraph says that "you have not articulated a legitimate need for anything beyond what NOAA has already provided" plays into my argument from before about a government agency obfuscating.
One could argue that the obfuscation is to hold a checks and balance, but then why is a legislature member worried about what the executive branch is doing? The executive branch should be defining what it will fulfill in FOIA requests and why.
Also, the entire letter points to my earlier discussion that while one can have the data, the models, and the methodologies, the reasoning behind the change appears to be left off and NOAA is not helping the concern with the agency when it does not come out with this. Even if they came right out and said, look, we used an incorrect number of significant digits, that is why our models appeared misleading before, it would be a quick story, make the rounds on skeptic sites, and then could move forward. So, why obfuscate?
> Second, pointing to the delegation of authority and making a cute reference to legislating peer-reviewed scientific findings is a nod to The Daily Show crowd's jokester attitude.
It seems to me it (like the next line you take issue with) is previewing the administration's arguments on whether the subpoena serves a legislative purpose should this dispute escalate to the point where Congress attempts to impose consequences and the Administration challenges that attempt in the courts.
Explaining one's position why a demand is outside of the requesters legal authority to demand is quite appropriate in a response to a demand.
You have an agency that releases an update to its modeling capabilities, from which based on the update, a change is made to the forecast that eliminates a political hat upon which an argument is being made. If you release the model, the data, the before and after results, and all of the information, you do not know why and what prompted the change. Internal machinations what they are, the previous Michael Mann situation where we have people admitting: "I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
Nothing externally hinted at any issue, but when an internal machination occurs, the public facing data may not be enough.
As an aside, please stop downvoting me for these posts, I am not trying to defend for or against climate change, just pointing out that a reason for suspicion could exist. If you disagree with my internal machination comment, please witness EPA and Pebble Mine, Lois Lerner and her IRS hijinks, and the former Secretary of State on the origins of the Benghazi attack, all of which were forward facing items that looked fine, but internal machinations showed suspicious activity.
Meanwhile the globe is already 1C warmer than it was before industrialization as Lamar Smith faffs about with emails and is doing everything in his power to cast doubts on the fact that we need to do something about this, much less should already have implemented stronger emissions standards 30 years ago. We're already past the point of "too late," climate science is about damage control now while Smith pisses around denying anything's wrong in the first place. It's time to dig your head out of the sand and move forward. What's Smith doing about that, I wonder?
I more-or-less agree with your points about downvotes.
Where do you get this? I ask because as far as I can tell we were told 20 years ago that it would be too late 10 years in the future (10 years ago for us) based on models that have clearly not panned out.
"""The global surface temperature increase by the end of the 21st century is likely to exceed 1.5 °C relative to the 1850 to 1900 period for most scenarios, and is likely to exceed 2.0 °C for many scenarios"""
> I ask because as far as I can tell we were told 20 years ago that it would be too late 10 years in the future (10 years ago for us) based on models that have clearly not panned out.
Yes, it is unfortunate that science isn't perfect, but it's the best we have, and computer projections have only made it more reliable in recent years than it was in the 80s and 90s. I understand that changing the base of our entire economic system isn't easy, but it's becoming blindingly clear that it needs to happen to halt more disastrous changes. Deniers like Smith are preventing positive action on climate change from occurring, and side-shows like the NOAA investigation are a waste of both critical time and money.
If we had taken action twenty years ago, perhaps we wouldn't be having this conversation at all.
It is not blindingly clear to those nations that are developing.
China has brought their coal plants online and they use 4,361,427 thousand short tons of unfiltered or carbon captured coal to the United States carbon capturing EPA mandated 924,442 thousand short tons. Compare areas that have coal plants with those which do not in China versus America [3] and you can see that our nation has it under control and China does not. [1]
Are we honestly going to another country and tell them to quit developing?
Do we have the will to force them to give up their coal fired plants for nuclear energy (which from internal announcements is set to make up only 5% of their power structure), or natural gas? What does that will look like, money, political manipulation, force?
How can you say that computer projections are more reliable now than they were before? Hurricane projections, using state of the art modeling for a shortened horizon cannot say whether a hurricane in three days will bear west or east of Florida. The validation of the computer projections of today will not be evaluated for another fifteen years, all the while, every day you can continue on with that statement, essentially: "All of the previous models had errors, but today's model is perfect."
[2] I do not have a picture that correctly does this justice, there are ones that are doctored by greenpeace and others where the plant is not running at capacity. So this is not a fair comparison.
The sooner we do it, the impacts will be smaller and it will be cheaper. The longer we wait, the more pain we're in for. Politics don't change that fact. No one said it would be easy, but burying our heads in the sand isn't going to solve anything.
But what would we do, how are we going to tell China or India, sovereign nations whose people are emerging from abject poverty, to knock it off? These nations are on a year over year increase path that by 2030 will see them doubling their CO2 emissions.
Are you willing to give them money and how much, what if they do not use it for appropriate actions?
Are you willing to force them to change, how do you propose forcing them? Are you willing to wage American lives now for a future probability?
The United States of America has done a great job reducing its environmental impact. Back in the day it was a rare event to see stars in Los Angeles because of the fog (the gaseous burning orb ones not the celebrities), but thanks to the EPA, it is a common occurrence now.
I don't know. I agree it's hard. But we need to stop allowing people who deny it's a problem to have positions of power. It's time to acknowledge that the problem exists and start finding solutions for it.
The way politics works in this case would then be to vote those out of office who challenge these changes.
The problem with this is that the populace won't because they are skeptical, for very good reasons.
They see models not working (i.e. alarmism backfired), they see IPCC authors leaving and denouncing authorship because they view the report as too alarmist. They see people warning of "we'll have the worst hurricane seasons ever in the next 5 years!" and then very little happening.
Alarmism has an unfortunate contribution to skepticism (while not the intended result of action) that will keep skeptics in power. And I think this is a good thing.
You advocate for people like Smith to not have positions of power. You should also look at people on the other end of the spectrum, alarmists, who have power and try to use it to incite action. That backfires and we move nowhere. Skepticism, as I mentioned before, is a natural reaction to this.
You think that's bad? There are several episodes of the original Hartnell Dr. Who that were also erased for financial reasons, of which no copies exist at all. :(
I was being tongue-in-cheek, but we do have recordings of the lunar broadcasts and, as I explained elsewhere, there's nothing particularly special about the NASA tapes. They were essentially just VCR-ing the live broadcast the same as everyone else, although I suppose their recordings may have been tapped into the video stream earlier in the chain so perhaps of higher quality.
Not perhaps. They were hi-def slow scan video.
Wikipedia: "When the Apollo TV camera radioed its images, the ground stations received its raw unconverted SSTV signal and split it into two branches. One signal branch was sent unprocessed to a fourteen-track analog data tape recorder where it was recorded onto fourteen-inch diameter reels of one-inch-wide analog magnetic data tapes at 3.04 meters per second."
There is no way that was a live broadcast from the moon because an analysis was done on the rate of speed sand would fall in the supposed live broadcast. The rate indicates Earth gravity:
Who cares what they think? I hate that the argument for a moon conspiracy is defended by the opinion of other states. In fact, Chainman Mao had an unofficial policy of denying the moon landing out of shame. Russia isn't a trustworthy nation and the US could have have a quid-pro-quo with them, say not bringing up their 100+ deaths at Nedelin or lost cosmonauts if they didn't make hay about a faked mission.
The reality is that there's a lot of physical and historical evidence here and denying it is fairly ridiculous.
What I find hilarious about this is that the deniers don't deny any other mission. Why is it that we can launch all this mass with no problems and have all these wonderful missions all over the solar system, but once we pressurize a cabin in space and land it on the moon, suddenly these people are in denial. Their position would be more rational if they denied all space missions.
They're one of the biggest holes in the conspiracy theory. State-level actors with much to gain by proving it to be a fake, the technology and know-how to do so, and nothing much to lose by revealing it.
> Russia isn't a trustworthy nation and the US could have have a quid-pro-quo with them...
In the height of the Cold War? Not bloody likely.
> Their position would be more rational if they denied all space missions.
I think there were more than a few backroom deals regarding the space program back then. Soyuz 1 for example:
an NSA analyst, identified in the book as Perry Fellwock, described overhearing Komarov tell ground control officials he knew he was about to die. Fellwock described how Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin called on a video phone to tell him he was a hero. Komarov's wife was also on the call to talk about what to say to their children. Kosygin was crying.
--
The US was sitting upon a very embarrassing radio communication of Soyuz 1's failure and didn't act on it. You bet your ass this was traded for something valuable. The only reason we even know about this is because a non-state actor in Berlin happened to catch this conversation and told others about it.
I agree faking a moon landing is a bit much, but the argument that "Russia and the US agree" isn't really worth anything. Right now Russia and the US agree that ISIS is the biggest threat in Syria, for example, but from a casualties numbers perspective Assad is responsible for 10x to 20x the deaths. Political convenience often trumps truth.
> Komarov never told ground control that "he knew he was about to die." In fact, while he was in orbit, there was a decent chance that he would get back home alive. And by the way, there was no "video phone" in 1967. And also, Kosygin had nothing to do with this space mission and never spoke to Komarov.
Your source is questionable and its the io9 editor's bias showing here. The reality is that we don't know for certain what happened, but considering we have the communication in Berlin and this book, it seems to me my side is closer to the truth than the questionable Soviet apologia io9 is pushing.
The video phone is irelevant and probably a misunderstanding via a translator. Clearly the NSA and berlin listeners would have no idea what was seen/heard outside of the spectrum they were able to tap.
Not too long ago people like you were denying the Nedelin catastrophe. I think there's a lot of coverups the Soviets pulled that are only coming to light in the past couple decades. Russia has a problem with openness and honesty with its space program. They pretty much ran it as a black ops, not telling other countries their launch schedules or programs. This was done as to make coverups easier. That guy died for nothing. The Soviets forced him on that thing and he knew he was a dead man.
The ISS is also a big lie. They shoot spacewalks underwater here on Earth. There are many videos showing water bubbles floating around while the astronauts do these supposed "spacewalks".
Also, why hasn't anyone asked NASA how they send better-than-HD images from Mars over 140 million km? There is all kinds of serious space radiation between here and Mars. What error-correction do they use? What protocol? Shouldn't we know this? And don't give me any "national security" BS excuse.
The crazies, maybe. I hope not most NASA folk; there really is no way for lunar landings to have been common using chemical propellants and disposable rockets. Even today alternatives are mere speculations. So either our NASA dreamer was a poor engineer, or a nut job willing to nuke Earth to visit a lifeless rock.
Which is not a bad thing: given the immensity and ludicrousness of the Apollo accomplishment, I think NASA had quite a few nutjobs!
In Apollo 13 the movie, there is a scene where the NASA representative is walking politicos on a tour:
JIM LOVELL
- I'm slated to be the commander of Apollo 14 sometime late
next year.
CONGRESSMAN
- If there is an Apollo 14... Now, Jim, people in my state
have been asking why we're continuing to fund this program -
now that we've beaten the Russians to the Moon. [1]
The chasm between what NASA wanted, pilots down, was to keep on its trajectory, but the politicians saw monies to tender.
Why people blame politicians that accurately represent people's views? If you have a bigoted, stupid, awful politician who's popular without fraud or dishonest competition practices in general, may be you should blame education, may be the media, but the politician himself is just doing his job — representing the people. The bigoted, stupid, awful people.
To some extent what you say has merit. But remember we are a republic, we elect people to lead us. They are not meant to raise only to the level of the average person. At least they were not until maybe the last 20 or 30 years.
It is true the main blame for our policies rests with those continuing to elect them. But those actually representing us and making the decisions are responsible also.
It takes about as much energy to get into orbit as it does to fly from NY to Japan. So, regular trips to the moon could end up fairly cheap even with chemical rocks.
The OP was referring to NASA's shot term (ten year) delusion. Flying a rocket to the moon is orders of magnitude more expensive that couldn't have been matched by chem rockets (and weren't, even for the very generously funded ICBM projects)
Not to mention, if you are given a task that requires use of the same type of tapes and are not offered any funding to procure unused ones, then you will have no choice but to record over them. As a government employee, I see this as the most likely scenario.
Documents don't usually preserve themselves. Paper lasts a long time if left in an attic or a closet but can be lost if the wrong person "cleans up". Electronic documents are much more fragile. Media decays or otherwise becomes unreadable. If data is saved in proprietary formats and the reader hardware or software is lost, then it's much the same as degaussing.
IIRC a large set of moon landing data was lost when somebody set the tapes down on a heater and left them there too long.
Not moon-landing related, but Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), the very first group to use a Roland TR-808 drum machine, was unable to read the original masters because they were recording using a cutting-edge digital format for which there are no readers.
Preserving digital data for the long term is hard.
Disclaimer: Library and Info Sci degree with archives coursework.
Yes. Even if the tapes had not been erased, it would have been difficult if not impossible to get it back after that amount of time.
About 5 years ago I helped a team migrate a bunch of data from ~30 year old 9-track tape reels. Obtaining and restoring hardware that was even capable of reading the reels was hard enough (we are talking spending thousands of dollars purchasing zero-warranty equipment from sketchy places on the 'net that had a few sitting in some dusty corner of their warehouse).
We also had to write our own software to read the tapes until an error occurred; reset the drive, retry reading from that spot again, and so on, and then concatenate all of the chucks together.
Most of the reels were eventually readable this way, but there still ended up being a not insignificant number that were given up on after several failed attempts.
It's easy to forget just how little attention is paid to preservation if there isn't a person dedicated to it. This is why libraries, especially the Library of Congress, are incredibly important. Archivists are important. Historians are important. We need to be reminded of that, or we'll make the same mistakes over and over.
My suspicion is that everyone involved just assumed it was someone else's job to take care of that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the person who degaussed the tapes did so with the thought, "sure someone has backed this up."
They could have just found another soundstage and reshot everything, surely, unless they got rid of the props and shooting script as well. But i'm certain I saw some of the props reused in the Outer Limits and Star Trek.
How about the conspiracy theorists funding a probe, sending it to the landing site and taking samples of the human waste product the astronauts allegedly left there. Back on earth they can do a DNA comparison with the surviving relatives. They can make a movie out of it and call it "first poop in the moon".
They would hardly have pooped in the open, would they? Not very private. Probably squatted down in a convenient crater where the moon-poop would be protected from radiation.
Two issues with the article. It is my understanding that the lost tapes are raw data feed S-band recordings. That signal contained both the TV signal and the telemetry which was normally sent via S-band. Upon reception the TV signal was split from the telemetry and recorded to standard TV tape and broadcasted using a Telecine like method. So, the "original" TV recordings do exist, as the existence of restored recordings suggest. What is gone is the telemetry mixed with the TV signal.
Secondly, they didn't erase those tapes because of money savings, or at least not just because of it. It was a supply issue. In the late '70s, early '80s, the manufacturer of those tapes suffered production problems due to the replacement of a substance used in the tapes, if I remember correctly it was whale oil or something like that. The production needed to be scaled back up with the new process, and in that time there was a severe shortage of that particular type of data tape, so NASA had to recycle old tapes.
Actually the original signal was low frame rate, high resolution. So it's more than your description says. A special video monitor with long afterglow phosphorus was recorded by an NTSC camera. Imagine what modern signal processing could have done with that original slow scan signal recorded in raw to these tapes. Alas, it's lost like tears in the rain.
Until there was cheaper paper, old books made of papyrus or goat skin would be scraped or bleached and recycled. A Single page of goatskin might be months farmer wage. Especially if the book was from a no longer popular language or subject.
>> A Single page of goatskin might be months farmer wage.
> I see your point, but applying it to the moon landing is a little far fetched.
Not at all, in the 1970's those tapes easily cost a month's of an average workers wages. It would make perfect sense to re-use them to save a bit of money, especially if you were doing it at scale and didn't realize you were about to erase the master copies.
101 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadhttp://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/apollo11_hdpage.html
puts foil hat on
In fact, it was technologically impossible to record the entire live broadcast on a single tape because tapes with enough capacity didn't exist until many years later. Therefore a faked broadcast from tapes would have had visible transitions as they switched from tape to tape. These transitions would have been visible on the taped copies of the broadcast which the currently available recordings derive from.
Of course the taped copies we have now must have been recorded on multiple tapes. So are the transitions on them from switching tapes to record the broadcast, or are they actually the transitions from the original faked broadcast? If the original broadcast was faked and broadcast from tapes, you'd expect to see both types of transitions in the modern copies!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU
In other words you're saying that one should believe NASA landed on the moon, because broadcasting a fake recording would have been technologically too difficult for them?
I don't doubt that they landed on the moon, but I'm not quite convinced about that logic ;)
"If NASA has the power to land on the moon, clearly they could've faked a broadcast."
"If you're saying they didn't land on the moon, though, how can you use that as technological proof to edit the broadcast?"
https://youtu.be/7JDaOOw0MEE?t=4m46s
You'd think an organization like NASA can plan their budgets a bit better than that.
It's all going to be fine... it's all going to be fine...
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/10/congressman-doubles-d...
Fffffffffffaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrttttttttttttttttttttttt
I'd better hope so.
Think Steve Jobs asking a VP to show his reasons for obfuscating the reasons for sales figures reported over a period and then adjusted.
VP: Sorry, that's confidential.
In this situation, I'm paying the administrator (that person that governmental agencies are accountable to) to make sure those agencies aren't obfuscating their own reasons.
I demand answers, whether those answers lead nowhere is inconsequential.
For a summary of what's going on, better than I can do here, see this letter from another member of the House science committee:
http://democrats.science.house.gov/sites/democrats.science.h...
* The letter says: "In your various demand letters you noted the scientific study in question was of some consequence, and could potentially have an effect on policy decisions. However it should be emphasized that the issue in question is a scientific research study, not a policy decision by a Federal agency. As such, this is not an area of delegated legislative authority by Congress to the Executive (unless you are proposing that Congress should somehow legislatively overrule peer-reviewed scientific findings.)*
First, Mr. Johnson, cutely tries to defer that science is not going to be used in a policy manner. Right now, the President of the United States is engaged with making policy decisions from scientific studies, so his premise is flawed to begin with. Also, all of the pushes for climate change agendas feed from scientific studies.
Second, pointing to the delegation of authority and making a cute reference to legislating peer-reviewed scientific findings is a nod to The Daily Show crowd's jokester attitude.
Third, the last line from the paragraph says that "you have not articulated a legitimate need for anything beyond what NOAA has already provided" plays into my argument from before about a government agency obfuscating.
One could argue that the obfuscation is to hold a checks and balance, but then why is a legislature member worried about what the executive branch is doing? The executive branch should be defining what it will fulfill in FOIA requests and why.
Also, the entire letter points to my earlier discussion that while one can have the data, the models, and the methodologies, the reasoning behind the change appears to be left off and NOAA is not helping the concern with the agency when it does not come out with this. Even if they came right out and said, look, we used an incorrect number of significant digits, that is why our models appeared misleading before, it would be a quick story, make the rounds on skeptic sites, and then could move forward. So, why obfuscate?
It seems to me it (like the next line you take issue with) is previewing the administration's arguments on whether the subpoena serves a legislative purpose should this dispute escalate to the point where Congress attempts to impose consequences and the Administration challenges that attempt in the courts.
Explaining one's position why a demand is outside of the requesters legal authority to demand is quite appropriate in a response to a demand.
Right. I keep forgetting that the USA have no concept of privacy and that everyone receiving a wage is treated like a part-time slave.
Nothing externally hinted at any issue, but when an internal machination occurs, the public facing data may not be enough.
As an aside, please stop downvoting me for these posts, I am not trying to defend for or against climate change, just pointing out that a reason for suspicion could exist. If you disagree with my internal machination comment, please witness EPA and Pebble Mine, Lois Lerner and her IRS hijinks, and the former Secretary of State on the origins of the Benghazi attack, all of which were forward facing items that looked fine, but internal machinations showed suspicious activity.
I more-or-less agree with your points about downvotes.
Where do you get this? I ask because as far as I can tell we were told 20 years ago that it would be too late 10 years in the future (10 years ago for us) based on models that have clearly not panned out.
I'm sincere in asking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fifth_Assessment_Report
"""The global surface temperature increase by the end of the 21st century is likely to exceed 1.5 °C relative to the 1850 to 1900 period for most scenarios, and is likely to exceed 2.0 °C for many scenarios"""
> I ask because as far as I can tell we were told 20 years ago that it would be too late 10 years in the future (10 years ago for us) based on models that have clearly not panned out.
Yes, it is unfortunate that science isn't perfect, but it's the best we have, and computer projections have only made it more reliable in recent years than it was in the 80s and 90s. I understand that changing the base of our entire economic system isn't easy, but it's becoming blindingly clear that it needs to happen to halt more disastrous changes. Deniers like Smith are preventing positive action on climate change from occurring, and side-shows like the NOAA investigation are a waste of both critical time and money.
If we had taken action twenty years ago, perhaps we wouldn't be having this conversation at all.
China has brought their coal plants online and they use 4,361,427 thousand short tons of unfiltered or carbon captured coal to the United States carbon capturing EPA mandated 924,442 thousand short tons. Compare areas that have coal plants with those which do not in China versus America [3] and you can see that our nation has it under control and China does not. [1]
Are we honestly going to another country and tell them to quit developing?
Do we have the will to force them to give up their coal fired plants for nuclear energy (which from internal announcements is set to make up only 5% of their power structure), or natural gas? What does that will look like, money, political manipulation, force?
How can you say that computer projections are more reliable now than they were before? Hurricane projections, using state of the art modeling for a shortened horizon cannot say whether a hurricane in three days will bear west or east of Florida. The validation of the computer projections of today will not be evaluated for another fifteen years, all the while, every day you can continue on with that statement, essentially: "All of the previous models had errors, but today's model is perfect."
[1] http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/
[2] I do not have a picture that correctly does this justice, there are ones that are doctored by greenpeace and others where the plant is not running at capacity. So this is not a fair comparison.
[3] http://www.ecorevolution.it/img/pho/me6.jpg
Are you willing to give them money and how much, what if they do not use it for appropriate actions?
Are you willing to force them to change, how do you propose forcing them? Are you willing to wage American lives now for a future probability?
The United States of America has done a great job reducing its environmental impact. Back in the day it was a rare event to see stars in Los Angeles because of the fog (the gaseous burning orb ones not the celebrities), but thanks to the EPA, it is a common occurrence now.
The problem with this is that the populace won't because they are skeptical, for very good reasons.
They see models not working (i.e. alarmism backfired), they see IPCC authors leaving and denouncing authorship because they view the report as too alarmist. They see people warning of "we'll have the worst hurricane seasons ever in the next 5 years!" and then very little happening.
Alarmism has an unfortunate contribution to skepticism (while not the intended result of action) that will keep skeptics in power. And I think this is a good thing.
You advocate for people like Smith to not have positions of power. You should also look at people on the other end of the spectrum, alarmists, who have power and try to use it to incite action. That backfires and we move nowhere. Skepticism, as I mentioned before, is a natural reaction to this.
Change needs to come from both sides.
Gravity Analysis of Falling Sand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tud7xlSI9fo
The reality is that there's a lot of physical and historical evidence here and denying it is fairly ridiculous.
What I find hilarious about this is that the deniers don't deny any other mission. Why is it that we can launch all this mass with no problems and have all these wonderful missions all over the solar system, but once we pressurize a cabin in space and land it on the moon, suddenly these people are in denial. Their position would be more rational if they denied all space missions.
They're one of the biggest holes in the conspiracy theory. State-level actors with much to gain by proving it to be a fake, the technology and know-how to do so, and nothing much to lose by revealing it.
> Russia isn't a trustworthy nation and the US could have have a quid-pro-quo with them...
In the height of the Cold War? Not bloody likely.
> Their position would be more rational if they denied all space missions.
Some do.
an NSA analyst, identified in the book as Perry Fellwock, described overhearing Komarov tell ground control officials he knew he was about to die. Fellwock described how Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin called on a video phone to tell him he was a hero. Komarov's wife was also on the call to talk about what to say to their children. Kosygin was crying.
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The US was sitting upon a very embarrassing radio communication of Soyuz 1's failure and didn't act on it. You bet your ass this was traded for something valuable. The only reason we even know about this is because a non-state actor in Berlin happened to catch this conversation and told others about it.
I agree faking a moon landing is a bit much, but the argument that "Russia and the US agree" isn't really worth anything. Right now Russia and the US agree that ISIS is the biggest threat in Syria, for example, but from a casualties numbers perspective Assad is responsible for 10x to 20x the deaths. Political convenience often trumps truth.
> Komarov never told ground control that "he knew he was about to die." In fact, while he was in orbit, there was a decent chance that he would get back home alive. And by the way, there was no "video phone" in 1967. And also, Kosygin had nothing to do with this space mission and never spoke to Komarov.
The video phone is irelevant and probably a misunderstanding via a translator. Clearly the NSA and berlin listeners would have no idea what was seen/heard outside of the spectrum they were able to tap.
Not too long ago people like you were denying the Nedelin catastrophe. I think there's a lot of coverups the Soviets pulled that are only coming to light in the past couple decades. Russia has a problem with openness and honesty with its space program. They pretty much ran it as a black ops, not telling other countries their launch schedules or programs. This was done as to make coverups easier. That guy died for nothing. The Soviets forced him on that thing and he knew he was a dead man.
Also, why hasn't anyone asked NASA how they send better-than-HD images from Mars over 140 million km? There is all kinds of serious space radiation between here and Mars. What error-correction do they use? What protocol? Shouldn't we know this? And don't give me any "national security" BS excuse.
The really couldn't figure out by themselves that they shouldn't throw away the visual evidence of one of the most important events in human history?
Which is not a bad thing: given the immensity and ludicrousness of the Apollo accomplishment, I think NASA had quite a few nutjobs!
JIM LOVELL - I'm slated to be the commander of Apollo 14 sometime late next year.
CONGRESSMAN - If there is an Apollo 14... Now, Jim, people in my state have been asking why we're continuing to fund this program - now that we've beaten the Russians to the Moon. [1]
The chasm between what NASA wanted, pilots down, was to keep on its trajectory, but the politicians saw monies to tender.
[1] https://sfy.ru/?script=apollo13
It is true the main blame for our policies rests with those continuing to elect them. But those actually representing us and making the decisions are responsible also.
IIRC a large set of moon landing data was lost when somebody set the tapes down on a heater and left them there too long.
Not moon-landing related, but Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO), the very first group to use a Roland TR-808 drum machine, was unable to read the original masters because they were recording using a cutting-edge digital format for which there are no readers.
Preserving digital data for the long term is hard.
Disclaimer: Library and Info Sci degree with archives coursework.
About 5 years ago I helped a team migrate a bunch of data from ~30 year old 9-track tape reels. Obtaining and restoring hardware that was even capable of reading the reels was hard enough (we are talking spending thousands of dollars purchasing zero-warranty equipment from sketchy places on the 'net that had a few sitting in some dusty corner of their warehouse).
We also had to write our own software to read the tapes until an error occurred; reset the drive, retry reading from that spot again, and so on, and then concatenate all of the chucks together.
Most of the reels were eventually readable this way, but there still ended up being a not insignificant number that were given up on after several failed attempts.
My suspicion is that everyone involved just assumed it was someone else's job to take care of that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the person who degaussed the tapes did so with the thought, "sure someone has backed this up."
It's a real shame, but not many organisations are that farsighted.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11/expe...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmVxSFnjYCA
http://www.americanmoon.org/NationalGeographic/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Orbiter_Image_Recovery_P...
Secondly, they didn't erase those tapes because of money savings, or at least not just because of it. It was a supply issue. In the late '70s, early '80s, the manufacturer of those tapes suffered production problems due to the replacement of a substance used in the tapes, if I remember correctly it was whale oil or something like that. The production needed to be scaled back up with the new process, and in that time there was a severe shortage of that particular type of data tape, so NASA had to recycle old tapes.
All jokes aside, I see your point, but applying it to the moon landing is a little far fetched.
> I see your point, but applying it to the moon landing is a little far fetched.
Not at all, in the 1970's those tapes easily cost a month's of an average workers wages. It would make perfect sense to re-use them to save a bit of money, especially if you were doing it at scale and didn't realize you were about to erase the master copies.
I agree with this.
Negligence of this level, though, is indescribable.
Just learned by reading Gore Vidal's autobiography of the same name.