Orbiting Carbon Observatory launch fails

NASA's Orbiting Climate Observatory, launched this morning (Tues Feb 24th 2009) on a Taurus XL (which doesn't seem to have a stunning record of success), failed to achieve orbit and crashed in Antarctica (BBC article).

The aim of the OCO was to improve our understanding of atmospheric carbon (specifically CO2) sources and sinks , rather important for bettering our scientific understanding of Global Climate Change (GCC) and for formulating effective politcal policies to combat it. Thankfully the recently launched Japanese IBUKI (aka GOSAT) satellite should be able to perform similar measurements.

Of course, if you're a conservative talking head like George Will or John Tierney you don't need no stinking science to know what is going on or to inform policy. Its all a communist conspiracy by evil lefty scientists to undermine Western capitalism!

[Update: In case its not blatantly obvious to you what is so dishonest about Tierney's column then a post at Climate Progress spells it out for you.]