It’s a sad day when the country that has long had a stranglehold on manufacturing just about everything you can think of is also the country that is putting out so much CO2 in the atmosphere.

In case there’s any doubt about that, NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory will be evaluating CO2 across the globe when it reaches space.

*UPDATE: Unfortunately, this morning’s lift-off didn’t gain enough altitude for some strange reason:

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory failed to reach orbit this morning after a 4:55 a.m. EST liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Several minutes into the flight of the Taurus rocket … the payload fairing failed to separate.

Since the 2008 edition of World Philosophy Day takes place in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration for Human Rights, I wonder what Confucius would say about China’s human rights record – the same country that’ll probably be THE next bully on this big blue ball before the end of the century.

_{*note: ‘funny’ is one of the tags I used for this post, but rest assured I do not find China’s human rights record funny, quite the opposite in fact!}