Through a collaboration between Google and the British government, two cool new environmental layers for Google Earth were officially unveiled a few days ago by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Google Zeitgeist UK conference.
Aptly named, Climate Change in Our World, the project draws data from the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey and uses Google Earth Outreach to create interactive animations that, respectively, show world temperature changes over the next hundred years, taking into account greenhouse gas emissions and the retreat of Antarctic ice caps since the 1950s.
The first layer, produced from the data supplied by the Hadley Centre depicts CO2 concentrations spanning from November 1999 forward to October 2099. Along the time line, annotated place markers pop up to provide information on the impact of global climate change for specific regions and links to external resources on the topic.
The second layer, utilizing data provided by The British Antarctic Survey, documents the Antarctic ice shelves retreat since 1940 and constructs a projected regression through June 2099. The layer is covered with dates of specific discoveries and documents the retreats of 10 different ice shelves.
Facebook
Twitter
Digg
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Well, don´t know about you, but personally I surf with http://www.treehoo.com the web that plants trees for most of its profit. What a simple and genious way to help our planet. Can any other webportal beat that?
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:00 pm
“projected regression through June 2099.”
I apologies for my potty-mouth in advance, but this is bullshit.
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Well, after over 30,000 scientists have come out as “skeptics” of global warming, then comes news from the “global warming people” that in fact the earth will be going through a 15 year cooling cycle due to ocean currents and then start RIGHT BACK UP.
Someone really needs to tell these people that there are things called cycles. It’s a tough subject to wrap the noggin around but it’s fun to watch the arguments fly.
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Chris – it would be fun to watch apart form the almost fascistic response any kind of questioning about these issues prompt in the majority of people.
Personally, I don’t believe in Sacred Cows…
Random tip: check out a book called Wilhelm Reich in Hell by Robert Anton Wilson I have a feeling you’ll dig it.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Very interesting stuff going on here…
If we can stay around long to capture data like this for the next 100 years we’ll have interesting patterns to model off of.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:58 pm
As Jim Hansen says, skepticism in science is reasonable, but contrarianism is not.
Please read Mark Bowen’s Censoring Science on Jim Hansen’s journey as the world’s leading climatologist navigating between science and policy.
Those who do not accept the findings of the 99% majority of scientists, it appears, are “on the take” by institutions funded by the fossil fuel industry (primarily Exxon/Mobil) – these include handfuls of scientists even as places such as MIT. Look at a “denier” – they are either an evangelist or have their salaries PAID for by the industry. If the science was inconclusive in the ’80s – it’s certain now.
May 26th, 2008 at 12:31 pm