With $100 billion and $500 billion numbers floated here, I thought it useful to have a thread about money. I will kick it off with very crude estimates, and let's make them better down the page. Satellites that collect useful environmental data look down at the earth, but others do so by looking at the sun. They are Lagrangian, geostationary, polar orbital, or other various low-Earth orbital inclinations. Looking can include near-visible wavelengths, but also radio (SAR) and GRACE-type gravity measurements. Satellites are typically multi tasked. This means that not all of a bird's cost can be attributed to environmental science if it also has communication-relay mission, or imaging that is exclusively used in other ways. Cost of launch and cost of 'working the bird' after launch are distinct. Costs of failed launches (like GLORY and OCO) are fairly included. Many countries have put up satellites. Within that framework, I find the internet a poor source to answer the question: What has been the total cost of all envtl-related satellites to date? So I introduce this thread on the back of an envelope. There are probably about 100 such satellites working now, many with multiple missions. The ones that are already 'off', or never made it, might increase that to 200. big launches cost 500-800 million each. I suppose that many birds go up for less. OTOH, every mission has post-launch costs. That's it. 200 units times 500 million = $100 billions total cost. I reckon we'll be working down from there but we have to start somewhere. Next refinement?...
Recent US federal expenditures that are broadly related to climate research have been compiled in at least two forms. One, by the Congressional Research Service, is here http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43227.pdf Another on the White House web site http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/.../fcce-report-to-congress.pdf that second link (with ...) may not work directly, so you may have to use it for an internet search. I will only describe them a bit, and say that the research components are smaller than clean-energy R&D and several other categories. This is neither a bad nor a good thing, but it suggests that broad generalizations like $100 (or 500 ) billion on climate change research may have the potential to mislead. What I was really looking for was a NASA budget line for satellite develop, launch, and maintainence that are related to enviromental research. That's not how they slice it up. Maybe an email to NASA hq asking how much they have spent (starting with LANDSAT perhaps?) would be effective. But when looking around for such things, one finds many mews articles bemoaning that NASA is planning to do much less of that in the next decade(s). Potentially leading to data gaps?
Lost satellite deals blow to climate research - today > tech - TODAY.com That $424M is probably the most expensive to date. Most satelites are not just for clmate they are for weather, and if all the tv weather forecasters, the air traffic controllers, etc kick in its a very low cost. My guestimate is about $10B for climate satelites and data, but that is just a ball park. Payout of the US government for climate related (or is it weather) flood and crop insurance last year was around $100B, which puts the $10B in perspective. If we were actually using climate data insurance losses from the federal government should drop significantly. Here is forbes detailing some climate related spending, in a very negative editorial. The Alarming Cost Of Climate Change Hysteria - Forbes Add in the tech for the NASA satellites of $10B and we get $42.5B for climate studies and satellites from the US federal government in 1989 to 2009. Say we kicked in another $5B/year for the last 3.5 years. That would still be only $60B (and I am likely overestimating this cost) since 1989 on US government funded research and satelites, which is a very small number if you consider the possible benefits of the research. Unfortunately the US government has not used this research to properly change agriculture or flood insurance policies that are much more expensive.
Not that this helps answer the question now, but satellites should be much less expensive, and less polluting, when space elevators are up and running.
lol. No matter how you slice it satelites are inexpensive compared to other climate spending. The problem has been NASAs failures. Do you trust them with more climate satellites after the failures. Maybe we should use spacex on the next one?
It's not satellites, but the US 2012 crop insurance payout after the drought has been kinda 'under my skin' for a while. I have read that farmers got more money than they typically would have for a good harvest. That might have been from questionable journlism, but it doesn't sound good. It's also not satellites , but the topic of favorable tax treatment for renewable energy sometimes comes up. At that time, don't you wonder if the complainer actually knows how much larger favorable tax treatments are for fossil energy? Are they able to make knowledge disapper from their own minds? Oh well, we spend what we spend. If lobbying didn't work, there wouldn't be so many of them
The largest payout subsidy used to be for ethanol. The subsidy has disapeared, but the mandate is still on ethanol, meaning we are all really paying for it, it just is one of those "mandates". With high oil prices though the mandate doesn't cost nearly as much as it used to. Here is a good analysis through 2009. I have not seen one for the recent changes http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Fiscal_and_Budget_Policy/EnergySubsidiesFINAL.pdf
Can you find that? Forbes anti environment spending editorial had a much smaller number. If you include payments to foreign countries and subsidies for companies like fisker and solyndra you can get there, but how much of that is really for the environment research? I say 0%.
Come on,0%?Excuse me while I go PUKE. "According to the conservative think tank the National Center for Public Policy Research, Mann received $541,184 in economic stimulus funds last June to conduct climate change research." "Potentially adding insult to injury, Penn State received additional stimulus funds to investigate the impact of climate change last week: A nearly $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation is enabling a Penn State-led group of researchers to continue studies on the potential effects of climate change on the spread of infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue. The grant is part of federal stimulus funding authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act."ClimateGate’s Michael Mann Received Stimulus Funds, Media Mum | PA Pundits - International
Re read my comment. I would say 0% of the funding of solyndra and fisker went to climate research. I am sure the forbes editorial writer included your $2.4M in NSF grants to Mann in the $32.5B they talked about between 1989-2009. That $2.4M was part of $3B in stimulus funds to the NSF, a very small percentage. Not all that $3B likely went for climate research, and it is doubtful more than a handful of jobs were created from it. Perhaps some research assitanships. Payback on the stimulus was quite bad in terms of jobs, but that is quite a different matter than exagerating how much this country spends or wastes on climate research. I'll give you a clue, there is estimated $100B in fraud waste and abuse in both the DOD, and medicade/medicare every year. Climate science is too small to waste that much money.
If we wanted to know the grant-funding totals, I'm pretty sure we could bottom-up. Every NASA, DOE, DOI, (which includes EPA NOAA NWS and USFS)grant award each year is public record. But then we'd be in the position of allocating them, based on their titles. This is an analogous problem to allocating costs of multi-misison satellites. What fraction of their cost belongs to earth-system science? For both, the problem is fair allocation, and heaping everything imaginable on climate cahnge (and multiplying it by 5 as Treb did) is simply not going to get us closer to the truth. Let me return to Federal research grants. Lean closer becaue I'm going to whisper. Programmatic costs are not grant awards, because a lot of program money is spent inside the Beltway. They call it 'Administration'. I call it 'Respiration'. Grant awards to Universities are subject to 'Indirect costs' that fund general university activities. These are typically exceed 40 %, but 80% IDC exists. Univ does what it sees fit with that $$. Net awards to professors cover the stated work. After buying equipment, paying analytical costs, grad students, and whatever ever else needs paying, there may be $$ for a month (rarely 2) of prof salary. Most universities have rules that total prof salaries cannot exceed 12 months (most universities pay 9 months to 'research professors'). So while some Federal program lines show $2B/year, we can be sure that a slim fraction of it went into (aggregated ) professors' pockets. If you wish to believe otherwise, I can't fix that. The extent to which research funds support athletics as opposed to personally enriching faculty is much more likely to be discussed by grad students. Just talk to them and see. They are not on sports teams, so maybe they have an axe to grind
You will notice that I neglected to mention NSF, and I did try to edit that in, unsuccessfully. Same story there.
