The Importance of Studying Earth
The day is September 8, 1900. For the residents of Galveston, Texas, the weather at the start of the morning was far from unusual for a late summer day on the Gulf Coast - hot, humid, and partly cloudy. While there was chatter about a storm coming in from the east, few were particularly worried that it was anything they couldn't handle. By mid-afternoon, however, it became very apparent that this was no ordinary storm, but a category 4 hurricane striking the town directly. Winds exceeding 140 mph scattered debris across the island, and a powerful storm surge inundated the coastal community under several feet of water, destroying homes and drowning trapped residents. By the morning of September 9 when the storm had passed, an estimated 6,000 - 12,000 casualties were left behind. To this day, the 1900 Galveston Hurricane is known as the deadliest single-day disaster in the history of the United States (for comparison to a weather-related catastrophe in recent history, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 killed 1,245 - 1,836 people total).
Over the century that followed, weather forecasting has developed substantially, in large part due to data from satellites that have been put in orbit around Earth by public space programs. While the poor emergency response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 left hundreds to thousands of preventable deaths in the aftermath of the tragedy, advanced notice of the storm's trajectory allowed for mandatory evacuation warnings that undoubtedly saved many more throughout the Gulf Coast. Had the residents of New Orleans been as oblivious to the storm as those in Galveston one hundred years prior, the casualties would have likely been incomprehensible. While many Americans are openly enthusiastic about NASA's space exploration and planetary science projects, comparatively few grasp the importance of studying the one planet that offers the easiest and most cost-effective research opportunities - Earth.
As a particularly politicized field of research, Earth-focused climate science in the United States has received inconsistent funding from one federal administration to the next. In a decision that sparked notable controversy within the scientific community, the current presidential administration was especially quick to propose cutting support for critical Earth-science programs across multiple federal agencies like NASA, choosing to instead direct the agency's research focus towards space exploration:
"The Budget increases cooperation with industry through the use of public-private partnerships, focuses the Nation’s efforts on deep space exploration rather than Earth-centric research, and develops technologies that would help achieve U.S. space goals and benefit the economy."
Regardless of one's political beliefs, however, it is crucial that governments allocate sufficient funding towards monitoring the one planet we all share as inhabitants; it is inarguable that we all depend on its finite resources and its capacity to support our growing civilizations. In addition to protecting vulnerable communities from weather-related disasters like the Galveston Hurricane, understanding our climate system through satellite data is vital for commercial agriculture, fishing, aviation, oceanic shipping, and other industries. Even militaries depend on high-quality weather forecasts to develop strategies for fighting enemy forces that threaten national security. Remote sensing data from satellites benefits other fields of Earth science research, as well, allowing for monitoring of threatening forest fires and dust storms across the globe, plankton population changes in the oceans that provide insight on the health of marine ecosystems, and even changes in the planet's crust that can help us better understand the propagation of earthquakes. It is for these reasons that funding Earth science is a prerequisite for effective planetary science - in order to understand our place in the universe, it is important to first understand our place in the universe.
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