Burzycki.org

Bush Wants to Beef Up Earth Monitoring
By Seth Borenstein
Associated Press
posted: 04 February 2008
05:53 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — After years cutting of budgets for tracking global warming, President Bush on Monday proposed more than a $1 billion increase over the next five years for launching more and better Earth-observing satellites.

The president’s 2009 budget provides money for six new NASA satellites to watch Earth’s changes, costing at least $910 million over the next five years.

It also calls for an increase of more than $200 million for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather satellites and climate monitoring, including restoration of key instruments that had been cut from a troubled and delayed weather satellite.

NASA had not approved a new Earth sciences mission in four years and the number of NASA Earth-observing satellites either in orbit or in the pipeline had dropped from 26 in 2004 to 21 last month.

Full Story here