German Blitzkrieg on Global Warming Movement: Experts Debunk Alarmists

Skeptical: Fritz Vahrenholt, PhD (Photo: RWE)

February 8, 2012 - Germany - One of the fathers of Germany's green movement has gone public as a global warming skeptic. German media are having a field day with him. His name: Fritz Vahrenholt. 

The myth of "global warming" and the worldwide disaster it would bring continues to melt away. The sun - that big hot thing that heats our planet - has more to do with climate than anything we puny humans have done.

German Das Bild published a bombshell article on February 7 with the headline "The CO2 Lies: Renowned team of scientists claim the climate catastrophe is fear-mongering by politics" ("Die CO2-Lüge: Renommiertes Forscher-Team Behauptet: Die Klima-Katastrophe Ist Panik-Mache Der Politik"). 

German ROSAT Satellite Is Down (With Video)

"On Sunday, 23 October 2011, between 1:45 UTC (3:45 CEST) and 2:15 UTC (4:15 CEST) the german ROentgen SATellite ROSAT has re-entered Earth's atmosphere.

There is currently no confirmation if pieces of debris have reached Earth's surface." [23 October 2011, 02:45 UTC (04:45 CEST)] Watch a simulation, below, of ROSAT's re-entry in the video here, made by Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI). They posted it to their blog site:



According to AGI, "The largest single fragment will probably be the telescope’s mirror, which is very heat-resistant and may weigh up to 1.7 tons.” All areas under ROSAT’s orbit, which extends to 53 degrees northern and southern latitude, might be affected by its reentry. The German-owned and operated satellite was launched by NASA in 1990 and is credited with X-ray images of structures in the Milky Way and other galaxies. Because ROSAT doesn’t have a propulsion system on board, a controlled reentry at the end of its mission in 1999 wasn’t possible." More about ROSAT at AGI Blogs.

German Satellite ROSAT Will Crash Over Weekend (Updated)

October 19, 2011 - Here we go again, and it won't be the last time: Another hunk of space junk will crash back to Earth within the next few days. This weekend, in fact.

The German Aerospace Center DLR says one of their satellites, called ROSAT, is expected to return to our planet's surface in a fiery way sometime betweenOct. 21 and 24. ROSAT was launched in 1990. DLR says that as many as 30 pieces of the satellite will smash through the atmosphere at 280 mph. You can follow the re-entry in progress at the German Aerospace Center's website (English and/und auf Deutsche). 

httpv://youtu.be/yezo3SMoPN8 This should not worry you any more than the recent crash of the much larger Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS). That was the NASA bird that came down on September 24, 2011. As then, the exact location of the impact of ROSAT is not yet known.

The odds of being hit by chunks of ROSAT are about the same as with the UARS crash. Remember that UARS was about the size of a schoolbus, whereas ROSAT is more car-like in size. (Video auf Deutsch hier)

Still, there will probably be those who will panic and hide in their basements, fearing the extremely unlikely satellite head injury. Forget about it and just enjoy your weekend.

If you live in Arizona, for example, you're more likely to be abducted by narco-terrorists on Saturday than to be hit by a piece of ROSAT.

Before it breaks up, ROSAT will re-enter the atmosphere at 17,400 mph. Still intact, it weighs 2.69 tons. The doomed satellite will should break up into about 30 individual chunks, says DLR, with a total mass of 1.7 tons, moving at a leisurely speed of approximately 280 mph by the time they hit the planet. Most, however, will actually burn up before they make it all they way down.

DLR says that the biggest fragment of the satellite to make it all the way down is probably the heat resistant mirror of the satellite's telescope.

ROSAT was shut down in 1999. It was primarily used for studying black holes and neutron stars. It also made the first-ever all-sky survey of X-ray sources by using an imaging telescope.

Also See:

German Satellite ROSAT Plunging to Earth This Weekend
Old German satellite hurtles toward Earth
Satellit auf Crash-Kurs: "Rosat" stürzt bald auf die Erde