Trump cancels NASA system to monitor greenhouse gas cuts


Washington, May 11 (IANS): At a time when the world is struggling to fight climate change, US President Donald Trump's administration has quietly killed a NASA system to monitor the flow of greenhouse gas, the media reported.

The White House has mounted a broad attack on climate science, repeatedly proposing cuts to NASA's earth science budget, including NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), the Science Magazine reported this week.

It has now scrapped the funding for the US space agency's CMS which has until now used satellite and aircraft instruments to monitor carbon dioxide and methane levels remotely -- spending $10m each year, the Independent reported on Thursday.

Canceling the CMS "is a grave mistake", Kelly Sims Gallagher, director of Tufts University's Centre for International Environment and Resource Policy, told the Science Magazine.

"If you cannot measure emissions reductions, you cannot be confident that countries are adhering to the (Paris climate) agreement," Gallagher added.

Other scientists also expressed their concerns about the impact the killing oc CMS would have on fighting climate change.

Scrapping the system was "disappointing", said Stephen Hagen, a senior scientist at Applied GeoSolutions in New Hampshire.

"(This) means we're going to be less capable of tracking changes in carbon," he added.

But the NASA system has been an obvious target for Trump who had begun the withdrawal process from the Paris accord.

The accord was signed in December 2015 by nearly 200 countries to curb global carbon emissions and contain global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

  

Top Stories


Leave a Comment

Title: Trump cancels NASA system to monitor greenhouse gas cuts



You have 2000 characters left.

Disclaimer:

Please write your correct name and email address. Kindly do not post any personal, abusive, defamatory, infringing, obscene, indecent, discriminatory or unlawful or similar comments. Daijiworld.com will not be responsible for any defamatory message posted under this article.

Please note that sending false messages to insult, defame, intimidate, mislead or deceive people or to intentionally cause public disorder is punishable under law. It is obligatory on Daijiworld to provide the IP address and other details of senders of such comments, to the authority concerned upon request.

Hence, sending offensive comments using daijiworld will be purely at your own risk, and in no way will Daijiworld.com be held responsible.