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Comment by lrvick | Hacker News Reader

I am noticing a distinct lack of maga apologists in this thread. I know you are reading. Please, explain why this is a good thing.

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Calling out political opponents to defend every move of their party, so you can clown on them on the internet? Why bother?

No need to clown them. I just want to know if people exist that are willing to even attempt to defend this rationally.

Is the data gained from the programs described in the article worth the $15M per year cost? That’s the real question.

It’s entirely rational to think such an expense is unnecessary, especially if your politics inclines you to believe the data collected by these programs will be used to push for more stringent environmental regulation that you dislike.

Even granting that the data is valuable, is it worth $15M per year? Can it be collected privately? Why does the government need to fund it?

To answer your question, yes, people can defend this action rationally. You don’t even have to be MAGA to do it. We should all want more efficient government.

$15M per year is a rounding error in the military budget.

Wasting money is fine as long as it’s less than $15M per year? What are you trying to say?

It’s not a good thing. The only somewhat okay reason to go down this path is if you know you have to cut spending and want to terminate missions safely rather than leaving junk. But this seems like a biased decision for obvious reasons.

That's not even an okay reason. We know where it is, it's in one piece, it'll last for years even if we do nothing with it.

Destroying it is insane, inexcusable Stalin-esque behavior.

Yea but you may lose the people, hardware, whatever to remove it from orbit easily. SpaceX designs their satellites to passively deorbit within 5 years to remove the space junk risk. But satellites in higher orbits take much longer.

Because it's a waste of money. You don't need satellites to measure CO2 levels. Ground based measurements work perfectly fine, which is where air is densest. These satellites are supplementary and are fairly imprecise in measuring CO2 as they look at reflected sunlight from the surface. Note that the satellite can't measure through clouds, which is 2/3 of the atmosphere at any given time.

This is a satellite you probably never heard about before but you were moved by an overemotional headline that a journo used to manipulate your pretenses.

So... how many ground based CO2 stations are there?

And do they have the same coverage as a satellite?

Also, why do we need weather satellites when ground wx stations work perfectly fine?

There are many, but the most important one is Mauna Loa. CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere. It has to be or plant life would suffocate and die (remember CO2 is their O2). Just like Oxygen is well mixed and evenly distributed around the planet. A ground measurement that is sufficiently isolated from forests or cities that could have localized effects is ideal. Muana is considered ideal because it sits out in the Pacific ocean on a remote island of Hawaii.

https://www.co2.earth/22-co2-now/121-mauna-loa-co2

For list of stations besides Mauna Loa: https://gml.noaa.gov/dv/site/

Page 185 - https://www.commerce.gov/sites/default/files/2025-06/NOAA-FY...

"In coordination with the requested terminations for Weather Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes (see OAR-10) and Ocean Laboratories and Cooperative Institutes (see OAR-19), NOAA will close...Mauna Loa"

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