Guest essay by Ronald D Voisin

A Cynical Engineer: There are three scenarios for the future of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory:

1) NASA will continue to report transparent scientific results that will quickly and stunningly turn CAGW upside down. We will all realize that global CO 2 emissions are not at all as taught, preached or predicted. That human emission to global atmospheric CO 2 concentration is and always has been a small single-digit contribution. That if we shut human CO 2 emission down completely tomorrow little would happen to the future trajectory of global CO 2 concentration. And indeed, had we humans never industrialized, little would be different about that trajectory over the past 60 years right up to today.

2) NASA will homogenize the data with such effort as to make the original data set unrecognizable. There will be lots of hand waving and we’ll endure continued lame explanations such as in the caption that was released with this initial data set.

3) The OCO instrument will suffer a premature and catastrophic failure.

When the first versions of the OCO were being launched I thought to myself: Great, let’s cut to the chase scene, grab the crucial data, and get this AGW malarkey over with quickly. But then scenario 3) happened…twice.

Scenario 2) has been observed from more organizations and more times than can be counted.

Scenario 1) requires so much crow eating by so many organizations and over so short a period of time as to be entirely politically unacceptable even as it is scientifically accurate. I doubt it can be allowed to happen.

And just what would NASA have us believe about this first OCO product:

a) That shortly before this last October 1st, industrial production shut down in the Ohio Valley, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. That as of October 1st, U.S. industrial production has been concentrated in the lush Appalachian Slopes of the Carolinas, Georgia and Northern Florida.

b) That farming activities may account for the CO 2 plumes over the lush forests of South America and South-Central Africa. While Australian industrial activity may have pushed it’s CO 2 output upwind into the lush forests of Malaysia.

c) That the oceans are net absorbers of anthropogenic CO 2 contrary to this most recent observation.

Or…is there a different explanation from what NASA seems to believe? Like:

Insect and microbial emissions, each at 10X all anthropogenic emission, dominate in these lush forested areas while the historically mildly warming oceans are also net CO 2 contributors. And, anthropogenic emission is essentially irrelevant to atmospheric CO 2 concentration at an approximately 2% contribution to the natural flux.

About the Author

Ronald D Voisin is a retired engineer. He spent 27 years in the Semiconductor Lithography Equipment industry mostly in California’s Silicon Valley. Since retiring in 2007, he has made a hobby of studying climate change. Ron received a BSEE degree from the Univ. of Michigan – Ann Arbor in 1978 and has held various management positions at both established semiconductor equipment companies and start-ups he helped initiate. Ron has authored/co-authored 31 patent applications, 27 of which have issued.

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