Abstract
This chapter details the monstrous challenge of sea-level rise as an impact of climate change. It discusses the network of satellites that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has developed and deployed over the years to determine what is happening, how fast, and why. It asks how this network was constructed and the role of bureaucracy-driven decision making in a difficult political environment.
Today, there exists an integrated, large-scale satellite system to track sea-level rise, its spread, causes, and impacts. In many ways, sea-level rise is the clearest and most understandable result of a warming planet. NASA and its partners built the network satellite-by-satellite over decades. It has gone from initiation to institutionalization. The introduction tracks how this network was built and the role of NASA in that “political construction.” It shows how NASA drove decision-making—sometimes well, sometimes not so well. It demonstrates the barriers along the way and how NASA and its key leaders overcame them through various strategies to fashion a coalition of support and neutralize opposition.
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Notes
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Paul Voosen, “Seas are Rising Faster Than Ever,” Science (Nov. 20, 2020), 901.
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“Tracking 30 years of Sea Level Rise,” NASA Earth Observatory. Retrieved from https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150192/tracking-30-years-of-sea-level-rise
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Jeff Goodell, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, (N.Y.: Little, Brown, and Co., 2017).
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Henry Fountain, “Coastal Sea Levels in U.S. to Rise a Foot by 2050, Study Confirms” The New York Times, (Feb. 15, 2022), A19.
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Paul Voosen, “NASA Set to Announce Earth System Observatory,” Science, (May 7, 2021), 554.
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James Q. Wilson, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (New York City, NY: Basic Books, 1989).
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Paul Sabatier Ed., Theories of the Policy Process, (Boulder, CO: Westview 2017).
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Homer Neal, Tobin Smith, and Jennifer McCormick, Beyond Sputnik: U.S. Science Policy in the 21st Century (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2008), 10–11.
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James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity (NY: Bloomsbury, 2009).
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Daniel Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputation, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).
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“Tracking 30 years of Sea Level Rise,” NASA Earth Observatory. Retrieved from https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150192/tracking-30-years-of-sea-level-rise
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Lambright, W.H. (2023). Introduction. In: NASA and the Politics of Climate Research. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40363-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40363-7_1
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