Until now only a privileged few men and women have been able to see the Earth from outer space and to recognize how tiny and fragile it is. "I hope," said Alexei Leonow, the first cosmonaut to step out of his space vehicle, "that people understand that and protect our blue planet as their place of birth, as their common homeland, and as the ancestral home where their children and grandchildren will live after them."

Envisat will fulfill this desire. With its ten instrument systems it is equipped with the best eyes possible and offers everything that scientists could wish for in the service of the environmentally endangered planet. The unique flying environment station follows in the footsteps of the successful European Earth remote sensing satellites ERS 1 (1991) and ERS 2 (1995). Climate protection is a challenge for the entire society. This is why ESA did not hold back with the budget. The total costs for the Envisat-Program were 2.3 billion euros, distributed over 15 years. Included in this sum is development and construction of the instruments as well as the satellites, the launch on board Ariane 5 and the operational costs of the satellite for five years. Each citizen of the 15 ESA Member States thereby invested 7 Euros in the environment. Put another way, Envisat will cost each European citizen about one cup of coffee per year. For his money, for at least five years, the citizen receives precise information about changes in the environment including global warming, ozone depletion and climate change. This information is absolutely necessary and long overdue as the basis for political decisions. The gas envelope of the Earth is not determined by political boundaries. The atmosphere is global and the circulation is planetary. Letting down the environmental guard is not possible in Europe or anywhere else.

The Sick Earth Atmosphere
The symptoms are unambiguous: The Earth atmosphere is sick. How sick is being debated by the scientists. The threat to the environment appears in a fleeting disguise. It is made of gases which are streaming from the chimneys and smokestacks of our homes and factories, which are created by the combustion of wood, coal, oil and gas as well as slash and burn agriculture, the emissions from automobiles or airplanes, the flatulence of cows, and what spray cans, foaming agents, solvents, coolants and cleaning fluids release in the air. Among other such gases, are carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, nitrogen and CFC's but also water vapor. Although they make up on a small percentage of the total amount of trace gases, they could none the less become the instigators of global climate change. As is so often the case, it depends on the dose.

For several decades a steady increase in the atmosphere of climate-active gases has been registered. What is disturbing is that the processes are occurring by degrees. All substances released into the atmosphere have an effect, somewhere, somehow. The when, where and with which intensity and consequences is very difficult to understand because of the complexity of the climate processes and because the feed-back mechanisms are very difficult to predict. Everything is connected with everything else. "When I began to investigate the atmosphere, I concentrated exclusively on four chemical reactions which at the time were considered to be decisive", reports Paul Crutzen, who received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1995 for his investigation of the cause of the ozone hole. "Today we have to work with hundreds of reactions in our chemical models if we wish to understand something."

One cannot say with certainty in all cases whether certain substances are neutral or harmful. The best example is CFC's. The have enjoyed a remarkable career and metamorphosis. Discovered 70 years ago, they were long considered to be absolutely harmless, neutral and to a great extent environmentally benign because they are colorless and odorless and neither poisonous, corrosive, nor combustible. They were correspondingly in wide use - as a propellant in spray cans, coolant in refrigerators and air conditioners, as foaming agent for plastic manufacture, as sterilizing agent for medical implements, as solvent and cleaning fluid for cloth and leather and as a cleaning agent for integrated circuits for the micro-electronics industry.

Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Envisat SpaceDaily Search SpaceDaily Subscribe To SpaceDaily Express Earth Observation News - Suppiliers, Technology and Application Memory Foam Mattress Review SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News EARTH OBSERVATION New Legislation Initiated To Support Commercial Remote Sensing Industry New York NY (SPX) Jan 11, 2006 The importance of remotely sensed data and technologies to support natural disasters has prompted attention and action in Washington. New initiatives and legislation authorizing appropriations to the remote sensing industry will be discussed at Strategic Research Institute's U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing Industry conference, scheduled for February 9-10, 2006 in Washington D.C.