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Projects: Observing EarthFollow the Science to Understand Earth
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Earthset over the Moon
Kaguya captured the blue marble of Earth setting below the Moon's north pole on November 7, 2007. This image is a still from a high-definition movie shot with Kaguya's telephoto HD camera. The Australian continent can be seen at the left center of Earth, and Asia to the lower right; because the view is across the Moon's south pole, Earth appears "upside down". A reduced-resolution movie can be downloaded in Quicktime format (2 MB) or MPEG-2 format (43 MB). Credit: JAXA / NHK |
by Charlene Anderson
What is The Planetary Society’s position on Earth? We believe that Earth is a planet, too.
The many amazing scientific resources developed for space exploration – both in Earth orbit and at other worlds – should also be used to better understand our own world. The investments made for space science can provide great benefits for Earth science.
We are following the science in tackling the topic of global climate change. While the science of climate change has political ramifications, it reflects no political stance in itself -- and neither does The Planetary Society. Whether it is caused by human actions, the evidence for global warming is there – Earth’s average temperature is rising. Weather varies from year to year, but the trend of average temperature, measured over decades, is rising.
We know this because of the tremendous advances made in the past few decades in the science of climatology.
Climatology is an astoundingly complex science and no one person is master of it all. That was the point of creating the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – to bring together hundreds of scientists with individual expertise, to pool their knowledge and understanding in one place and to represent the best analysis of what is happening to Earth’s climate.
It is astounding that any group of scientists agrees to the point of saying that, with 90% certainty, they know what is happening to Earth. Scientists always leave open the possibility that what they profess is wrong – the self-correcting nature of science is what makes it such a powerful method of understanding the world. What scientists are telling us with their statement of probability is that there is overwhelming consensus that Earth is warming and that human actions are, in part, the cause.
Why has The Planetary Society chosen to get involved at this point? Because of the science.
To understand climate change, we need more scientific data and analysis. It is hard to unravel the extraordinarily complex and rapidly changing interactions of life, Earth’s atmosphere, the oceans, and the rocky surface. The vantage point of space is the best place for gathering the information on a global basis. Earth-orbiting satellites are the best tools to collect the data.
But over the past several years, space agencies have diminished their commitment to building new and more powerful systems to replace existing satellites that are long past their expected lifetimes. They will begin to fail. In the years to come, this will mean that humanity will have fewer satellites to study our Earth.
So, at the time we need more data, we will have less. As the effects of climate change accelerate -- as ice caps melt, as the seas acidify, as droughts intensify, as temperatures rise -- we will be less able to monitor those changes.
The Planetary Society is targeting its Earth advocacy narrowly -- on this coming crisis in Earth observations from space. Just as we fight for spacecraft missions to other planets, we will campaign for the satellite missions to our world, where science tells us the climate changing in ways that will affect our life on Earth.
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