One of the big problems with emissions reduction treaties like Kyoto is how to enforce them. Sure countries can pledge to make cuts, but how can you be sure they won’t cheat? It turns out that Europe is working on that.
German warmist website CO2 Handel here tells us how Europe intends to make sure the rest of the world complies fully to climate treaties: Human society will be reduced to color pixels and be constantly watched by a satellite launched and run by climate Eurocrats in Brussels. Carbon Big Brother is coming.
According to CO2 Handel (Astrium EADS press release here in English):
Aerospace company Astrium is designing a new satellite for the European Space Agency (ESA) to be used for monitoring greenhouse gas occurrences. The new climate satellite will be able to detect greenhouse gases with an unprecedented spatial resolution: 2 x 2 kilometers. The European Space Agency wants to hunt down environmental and climate violators with its new satellite. Aerospace company Astrium will put together a feasibility study for the project by the end of 2013, according to company reports Thursday. If things move forward successfully, the mission – dubbed CarbonSat – could already begin as soon as 2017 and thus enable monitoring of international climate treaties.”
Now if anyone ever needed a compelling reason not to sign the treaty, this is it. Signatories will have to subject their territories to a constant invasion of privacy. Who knows what else they may want to monitor later on? Where does it end?
According to CO2 Handel, CarbonSat would monitor mainly the two climate gases CO2 and methane, and with “an unprecedented accuracy.”
For the first time it would be possible to record local CO2 sources such as coal power plants, emissions from cities or also geological sources like volcanoes. Other similar possibilities include detecting methane, says the company, for example from landfills and oil processing industrial complexes.”
By cities they mean private commuters (collectively). Imagine local political leaders demanding more transportation restrictions in cities – all because satellite pixels from ESA suggest people are driving too much. Or, farm operations will encounter the heavy hand of bureaucracy because of “excessive” cow emissions, or fertilizer use. Does the whole planet really need to be kept under constant surveillance by a European eco-Big Brother?
If you think that’s scary, listen to how they justify this highly intrusive surveillance system. CO2 Handel here writes:
‘Knowledge of both of these gases is not only decisive for climate forecasts, but also for monitoring international climate treaties,’ emphasized Astrium-Germany Evert Dudok in an interview with the German Press Agency (dpa). Up to now there has been no reliable way of monitoring the implementation of the Kyoto and Copenhagen treaties. ‘The target is to hunt down environmental violators,’ said Dudok.”
At first the Astrium press release here in English makes it sound like they need the data to refine the climate models. But notice how Dudok reveals the true intentions of the technology: global surveillance.
And it all boils down to the myth that climate is controlled by trace gases CO2 and methane, and so man has got to be constantly monitored and regulated. Orwell’s 1984 – just 33 years later – brought to you by catastrophe-obsessed Europe.
The project will be led by German Friedrichshafen-based Astrium Company near Lake Constance.
Astrium press release here in English
72 responses to “European Big Brother: CarbonSat Surveillance Satellite Aims “To Hunt Down Climate Violators” GLOBALLY By 2017!”
You didn’t mention which countries may be controlled. I suppose you only meant the countries within the EU because I can’t imagine China being forced by EU to reduce CO2 emissions…
It’ll be more something like your CO2 hotspot is way more than ours, and so shame on you. Europe will try to use the images for singling out and finger-pointing. Of course China is not going to listen to them. Europe ought to worry more about their airlines being denied flying over China, Russia, India, etc. on account of their stupid airline emission extortion money they are trying to collect.
When this satellite goes up, the EU will already have declined further compared to India, China, Brazil and even Africa. The CO2 scare that only scares Australia and the EU will be the EU’s private business. People in the rest of the world will fall over laughing when the EU threatens them with withdrawing business.
It’ll be like North Korea threatening the US for withdrawing their food aid.
I hope so, Dirk. Please see my comment to CO2 tax for fossil fuels, according to EC plan:
Gasoline: 335€/1000 liter, constant
Diesel: 330€/1000 liter today, 412€/1000 liter in 2018
LPG (very popular in Poland): 125€/1000 kg today, 500€/1000 kg in 2018
I drive an LPG car. At the moment, no tax besides 20% VAT (Mwst.) . This no-tax promise for LPG was introduced in 2005 or so and promised for 10 years. I expect that they will ramp up the tax on LPG after 2015 and make it unattractive.
There’s a saying – “Die Rechnung zahlt immer der Kunde” – it is always the customer who pays the bill; meaning: when my cost of living goes up, the cost of hiring me will go up.
So, I don’t worry about all this madness; for me, it’s important to see where it will strike next, what economy and businesses will be ruined next. So I can avoid owning shares in those businesses.
So have I. The LPG cars became very popular after the fall of communism, especially for older type of cars without complicated electronics. It still is an alternative fuel for gasoline or diesel. The increasing cost will be very hard for 4 Million car users in Poland. I go by car if I only must. Anyway, life is getting more painful for us.
I suppose you live in East Germany 😉
No; Braunschweig, 40km west of the ex iron curtain. Born here as well. We’re thrifty here.
I was born in Warsaw, live in Dortmund and I’ve been living in Germany for 10 years. I often go by my car to Warsaw. Therefore, I mentioned some info about the fuel prices.
In Poland we are paying near 5,9 zl/liter (1€ = 4,2 zl) for unleaded petrol, and 5,8 zl/liter for diesel, and 2,9/liter for LPG, respectively. Don’t forget, an average salary in Poland equals to 850€!
I wonder if a private enterprise can complain of invasion of privacy or industrial espionage.
I see agriculture like rice fields, dairy farms, beef farms, and of course coal power plants and steel and alumnium plants, glass, cement, ceramics, etc. as the big potential targets.
Future historians will list this among the irrational actions (the product of mass delusions) that directly preceded, and inexorably led up to, the outbreak of World War III. The political promulgation of global warming hysteria is only adding to the divisive forces within every nation. I think many citizens simply will not obey insane laws, enacted by greedy and stupidly tyrannical political leaders (as they will properly be seen to be)–the example of prohibition comes to mind. Casper’s cited 335 euros/1000 liters for a proposed gasoline tax is equal to $1.67/gal now; it might be prudent to watch how that goes up, to track the rise of the insanity.
It’s a total proposed price, CO2 tax included:
My citation refers here: http://tinyurl.com/6n8sxg9 (English)
“KE w nowelizacji zaproponowała nowe minimalne stawki podatku, a kraje UE same miałyby zdecydować, czy wolą np. zmniejszyć opodatkowanie benzyny, czy też zwiększyć opodatkowanie diesla. Minimum dla benzyny nie zmieniłoby się (359 euro za 1000 litrów), a dla diesla stopniowo by rosło (z obecnych 330 euro/1000 litrów do 412 euro w 2018 r.). Stawka akcyzowa dla LPG miałaby wzrastać stopniowo z obecnych 125 euro/1000 kg do 500 euro/1000 kg w 2018 roku.”
Well, for the 2.0 version 30 years later, after the utopian levels of North Korea/Albania/ancient Gaul have been reached and 100 % of what energy is available comes from renewable sources, the design can be simplified: it only needs a light sensor pointed downwards at local night time to spot anyone straying from the Luminous Path.
More Good News from outer space – the question of scarce resources gets finally tackled: asteroid mining.
Brought to you by Charles Simonyi (space tourist), Ross Perot (ran for some obscure political office once) James Cameron (films?). Just give them half a billion $$, and ten years later you’ll get back <100g of some stuff that is even more useless than dandruff.
Maybe they should learn from that non-success with zeppelins and immortality-trough-freezing and demonstrate that their economics work on a humbler scale: like growing lemons in greenhouses in Antarctica and then selling them at lower prices than the old variety. Help from genetic engineering is optional.
The world’s oceans contain something like 15 million tonnes of gold.
We already have technology to recover gold from sea water…but we don’t do it because it costs more than the gold is worth.
I could probably extract 100 kg of gold from seawater for less money than it would cost to get 100 kg of anything from an asteroid. Other than by directing it towards Earth…which is how the rich nickel deposits in Canada arrived. Just don’t be underneath when James Cameron’s new epic hits the screens.
But the cost comes down steeply as the amount goes up. The first gram will cost billions. The millionth gram will cost pennies, and the billionth gram will be free. The best use of asteroid sourced material won’t be down here; it will be in space.
I agree with you Ed – but the comment was “the question of scarce resources gets finally tackled: asteroid mining”.
Resources aren’t scarce. When copper becomes too expensive for household wiring we will use aluminium. When coal becomes too expensive we will use thorium. All barriers to these changes are political, they are neither economic or environmental.
You are right though: the price for a tonne of copper on the LME is a whole lot less than the price of copper in low earth orbit!
Incidentally I’ve been a member of the Planetary Society for about 30 years and an SF reader for 40.
There may be unintended consequences of such surveillance. If the data is made public and not fudged (as GISS does to temperatures) then the natural sources of CO2 may be made apparent and people can decide for themselves which is the greater contribution.
Most of it is emitted by the tropical rainforests and jungles. Only little by Europe, Japan, USA.
Watch the video of Dr. Salby’s lecture here, at one point he shows a global map of such emissions.
Must be so, that is where solar insolation is highest and constant.
Biggest CO2 contribution from the ocean must be carbonate exoskeleton from (former) plankton. Biggest CO2 contribution from land must be microorganisms, oxidizing everything organic.
Thus CO2 contribution from living sources, showing how (delta) 13C has decreaesd in the atmosphere following rebound from the Little Ice Age.
(I hear howls of “Denier argument” from people like Dave Appell)
Okay, this is consistent also with the oxygen isotope content of the additonal CO2 from calculated loss of oxygen in the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion. The oxygen stoichiometry is consistent, the isotope composition of that is not.
First Solar has announced on Tuesday that they will close their two Frankfurt/Oder factories this autumn, affecting 1,200 workers.
Previous experience has shown how difficult it is to keep an enterprise going when the stock price of the concern has reached 0.000.
Not always. I know a case where an insolvent supplier went on for years. They were in a kind of limbo, the cash flow was provided by their customer and they were completely controlled by that customer but production just went on, pretty smoothly even. Machine breaks down? Customer pays the repair. The customer didn’t want to gobble up his supplier to avoid getting the workers. It was easier to unwind the operation piecemeal while it was insolvent.
A bizarre consequence of worker protection laws.
Indeed, the people who are living there, are in the shithouse 🙁
Thank God for the Chinese, they have developed satellite-killing satellites
Can it detect cows’ farts?
I have faith in the people; the incident known as the “Third Reich” lasted 1933-1945, 12 years, not that long, a lot of damage, unfortunately, but the people just wouldn’t take it any longer.
Same will happen with this nonsense and the Climate Craziness, Germany cannot suspend Parliamentary elections, much as they would like to, and this will come to a halt. Bloodless revolt, more and more I see that people are not accepting EU dictatorship.
I am an optimist.
This essay might sum up what is happening in the western nations.
The Malign Power of Bad Ideas-
I hope it dosen’t go that far but maybe it already has.
Very interesting, especially the comparison of a countries GDP/capita with the world’s average in 1900 and now. Thanks a lot!
‘Knowledge of both of these gases is not only decisive for climate forecasts, but also for monitoring international climate treaties…’
I thought they had already tried using CO2 levels for climate forecasting and failed.
I found something interesting for your topic:
“Buried away for millions of years underground, fossil fuels contain virtually no carbon-14; and neither does the CO2 emitted when the fuels burn. But CO2 coming from plants does contain carbon-14. That difference that showed up in the team’s atmospheric samples as a ratio of natural, “biogenic” CO2 to fossil fuel CO2. The trick could complement existing carbon accounting methods used to monitor how much CO2 countries and regions are producing, principal among them the self-reporting of fossil fuel usage(…) However, the method may not stretch down to a level of geographic detail that is increasingly important for single CO2 sources such as power plants.”
Recently, Pierre reported about the Red-Green efforts to replace NRW forests with wind turbines.
This article from yesterday talks about identical efforts in Hesse, this time by the CDU-FDP (conservative/classical liberals) government.
2 % of the area of the land should be free for wind park development; and as 42% of the land are forested, this necessarily implies that some of this area will be forests.
As the Greens are in the opposition in Hesse, they are AGAINST wind turbines in forests, unlike their brothers in NRW who are in government and therefore fanatical supporters of bulldozing forests.
Did they confuse the trees with the wind turbines? 😆
The EU Nomenklatura and apparatchik Stasi are having a wet dream.
CCTV on every street corner, Satellite tracking in cars, energy use monitored in our homes via ‘smart metres’. Our loyalty cards tell big brother all about your shopping habits. Here in the UK they want to ‘listen’ to all our email and observe which web sites you’re perusing, when cash payments are ended – and every payment has to made by electronic means [what the banks want] – every part of your life will be monitored and watched.
Back to [Orwell’s nightmare book] 1984 and even – don’t think – the thought police will arrest you for ‘thought crimes’.
It’s what your politicians want, it’s what the EU will bring.
I’d never let anybody who writes “Kohlendioxid und Methan sind die zwei wichtigsten Treibhausgase, die das Klima beeinflussen.” (“CO2 and methane are the two most important greenhouse gases which affect climate.”) near anything like a satellite, let alone a launch vehicle.
Somebody with such a poor understanding of the fundamental laws of physics is not only a danger to themselves but also to innocent bystanders. Yet Arstrium are encouraged to do so; and paid to develop weapons systems. Does one still wonder why those industries are such a mess?
Their next statement is entirely true, taken only literally: “Ein umfangreiches Wissen über deren Entstehung und globale Verteilung ist unumgänglich für Klimavorhersagen.” (“An extensive knowledge to their production and global distribution is essential for climate predictions.”)
And a cup of coffee in the morning is approximately as effective. An open window doubly so.
Of course, one could ask how past, confident predictions could have been made without such knowledge.
BTW: Friedrichshafen is ON Lake Constance. Else it’d be difficult for the ships and boats to dock. 🙂 A Zeppelin can dock anywhere; except near a wind turbine.
Dear Bernd, can you please explain the physical effect behind the absorption of thermal radiation by these both gases in the atmosphere leading to increasing atmospheric temperature ?
SpaceScience, you haven’t noticed it, but I think Bernd was alluding to the fact that CO2 and Methane are exactly NOT the two most prominent greenhouse gases.
I leave it at that; I don’t want to give more hints so you have some fun trying to find the right answer.
Correct is: Carbon dioxide (CO2) and Methane (CH4) are the two most important anthropogenic greenhouse gases (modulated by human activity…). Many people, especially in press releases often skip or forget the word “anthropogenic”…..
Which shows the shoddy quality of all the warmist propaganda. What shall I as a layperson read into those invalid utterances? Am I supposed to guess where they messed up next time?
Now, for me it’s all pretty clear of course: You warmists give a rat’s ass for the science or how it is communicated because all you want is our money – for instance to build useless satellites.
And the omission of water vapor is of course strategic; the public must not know that water vapor is already the most powerful greenhouse gas lest they start to scratch their heads and think.
You warmists are 100% into deluding the public and 0% into EXPLAINING the science – you are pied pipers; Rattenfänger.
BTW your statement is false. You call CO2 and CH4 antropogenic – by which you doubtlessly mean that about 5 % of their yearly emissions are of human activity origin … you indicate that with the word “modulated”.
Of course you and I know that the prevalence of water vapor is also human-modulated; so H20 is also an antropogenic gas in your parlance – rendering your statement false.
Dear Dirk, pls read the enclosed document
and then you can explain how you calculate the value of 5 %… this will be verry interesting also for the others…
Water vapor accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% for clear sky conditions and between 66% and 85% when including clouds. Water vapor concentrations fluctuate regionally, but human activity does not significantly affect water vapor concentrations except at local scales, such as near irrigated fields. The atmospheric concentration of vapor is highly variable, from less than 0.01% in extremely cold regions up to 20% in warm, humid regions.
The average residence time of a water molecule in the atmosphere is only about nine days, compared to years or centuries for other greenhouse gases such as CH4 and CO2. Thus, water vapor responds to and amplifies effects of the other greenhouse gases. The Clausius-Clapeyron relation establishes that air can hold more water vapor per unit volume when it warms. This and other basic principles indicate that warming associated with increased concentrations of the other greenhouse gases also will increase the concentration of water vapor. Because water vapor is a greenhouse gas, this results in further warming and so is a “positive feedback” that amplifies the original warming….
“Water vapor accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect, between 36% and 66% for clear sky conditions and between 66% and 85% when including clouds.”
Copied from Wikipedia, which was copied from RealClimate. Those numbers are very obviously much too low. If you had experience at night in both the humid tropics and dry deserts, you would know that in your bones
If you Google
there is an interesting article by John O’Sullivan telling about JAXA, the Japanese space agency. Its satellite program IBUKU has been up and running since June 2009 measuring CO2 on a world wide basis. The results show leading western economies do not emit CO2 (they absorb all they emit). Don’t tell the EU . they might keep their satellite on the ground.
The article by John Sullivan was very misleading, and it seems no one went back to JAXA for the actual press release.
Scroll down towards the bottom for the actual seasonal maps.
How does your link show John Sullivan to be misleading? I reviewed your link and all I see is information on how the GOSAT program is reducing uncertainty in regional flux estimates. It say nothing about long term net CO2 absorption/emission by region/country. Please explain. Thanks
John O’Sullivan here:
Used figure 1 in the JAXA press release, illustrating the improvement in the measurements, as if that figure WAS the measurements, claiming a completely false conclusion. Read the JAXA press release carefully.
Concerning China & CarbonSat Constellation
see also folowing links:
Concerning TanSat (Chinese = CarbonSat)
see folowing links:
concerning NASAs OCO project see following link:
This would be a good candidate for target practice of the missile defense system.
What happens when the stupid carbon capture fields start leaking? What if a bog melts and starts emitting CO2 as it starts living again. Are they going to penalize the country for nature’s work?
Have a forest fire? You’ll have to run to the phone to call Europe and beg not to be fined. They, of course, will forgive the fire, but only if you have it out in the next 15 minutes. After that, the fines start in earnest. As if putting out a fire was not a goal in itself, the EU would say that they are just stimulating with (punitive) motivation, as otherwise we might not try as hard to put out the fire.
The logic here is as valid as considering food stamps to be economic stimulus funds, a la Pelosi.
Sounds like a lot of fun and anew way to fund the European Union.
Dear Charles, this is exactly what CarbonSat aims to do, i.e. to distinguish with it’s high spatial resolution an precision between anthropogenic localized sources with strong localized emission patterns and known positions and aerial sources like bogs, etc. For instance, the positions of the most power plants worldwide is known. So it is easy by the high spatial resolution and large swath of CarbonSat to attribute these emission patterns to the right sources. This is exactly what current systems are not able to do….
What a waste of human talent.
That´s just the same old thinking that they rule the colonies, aka, the “rest of the world”…
The problem with the CO2 detecting satellites is that they can’t “see” the CO2 until it lofts to some altitude in the atmosphere. For example, the maps released to date show a concentration over the western US and off the US east coast. But the resolution is so poor that it cannot be determined if the CO2 is or is not coming from the Japan current and the Gulf Stream rather than on-shore sources.
This is only true for satellites working in the TIR but not for satellites working in the SWIR, see also
so you should look on maps derived from SCIAMACHY and GOSAT
Most of the published maps mask off the oceans. Those that don’t are fragmentary but suggest large ocean sources. I await more information. More complete information.
concerning your question, the answer is extremely easy.
SCIAMACHY was not designed primarily as a GHG sensor
but as atmospheric sensor measuring from ~ 0.24 to 2.4 micron.
The SNR of SCIAMACHY (for GHG absorbing in the SWIR)
is low over water due to the weak
albedo (reflectivity) of water which is below 1 %.
Therefore measurements over the ocean is often masked out in
The SCIAMACHY data. Over land, SCIAMACY is very sensitive
down to the earths surface. To overcome this problem, the second generation
of passive GHG satellites like OCO has the so called sunglint
mode implemented, which will provide same sensitivity
of the systems over water as for land.
Great… another spy satellite to check on countries that produce CO2. Does this mean we are seeing the start of another space race because if the EU launches a satellite to check on CO2 emissions. Won’t other nations want to validate the EU’s claims and therefore check on the EU by launching yet another CO2 satellite.
As Humanity expands into to 21st Century we are slowing declining into the stone age of reason.
Just more insanity from the pious !!!
The “space race” was not startet by the EU but by NASA with OCO (now OCO-2) and Japan with GOSAT. Other one will be improved follow on missions..
“…but human activity does not significantly affect water vapor concentrations except at local scales, such as near irrigated fields. ”
I see you have to add more and more caveats. So, now a Greenhouse Gas is antropogenic in your parlance if affected slightly by human activity, but not when it is affected by human activity at local scales? Why didn’t you give us the entire complicated definition right from the start?
Because you warmists try to own the debate, define all the terms at a whim, and don’t need to communicate all this.
“Trust me.” is your message.
I’m too busy to continue this takedown of your ragged vocabulary.
i expect you miss the main point : The average residence time of a water molecule in the atmosphere is only about nine days, compared to years or centuries for other greenhouse gases such as CH4 and CO2
Not important. The LWIR emitted downwards from a GHG molecule does not depend on what you think for how long that molecule persists in the atmosphere.
The SWIR, MWIR & LWIR per molecule didn’t but the atmospheric response and atmospheric equilibrium state did…
Residence time, especially for water vapor, is not important. For water, the residence time for the reservoir, the oceans, is another few billion years.
Co2 residence time – 5 to 14 years
CH4 residence time – 10.5 years
CO2 5 to 200 yr
CH4 12 yr
N2O 114 yr
CFC-11 45 yr
HFC-23 260 yr
CF4 >50,000 yr
“CO2 5 to 200 yr ”
Total idiocy. Yearly carbon cycle exchange is 770 Gt of CO2 annualy in each direction. Total amount in the atmosphere is 3,000 Gt.
Uh, wait, did I see that correctly – “5 to 200” years – is that your insecurity or is that an IPCC error bar? You could just as well have said “Total residence time of CO2 – ? years”.
In that case I agree.
Will it continue warming – “?”
Will there be sea level rise – “?”
Should we spend trillions on “?” – …
I love the trolls. Don’t you?
So assuming that the uncertainty in atmospheric lifetime is between 5 and 200 years….this doesn’t change the fact, that the CO2 concentration is increasing…. and increasing ….. and increasing….and increasing…. wait a minute ….. wait a minute…. stopped ??? … oh shit……. increasing…
And crops and other vegetation are increasing, increasing, increasing, feeding more and more people…
I don’t see a downside!