Explore Our Planet

The Arctic sea ice conditions are now very similar to last year. The maritime shortcuts through the Artic Sea are almost open or already open. The total extent two days before - the NSDIC reported yesterday - was 5.47 million square kilometers.

Buoys indicate surface melting is coming to an end while bottom melting of the ice will continue a few more weeks.

I was quite excited while visiting this UN site: data.un.org. You’ll find a huge amount of figures provided by different UN agencies. The data is free to use, ready to download and presented by a slick WEB2.0 interface. Of cource data from the UNFCCC is there as well as from the american Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC).

The latter provides a data set with CO2 emissions from more than 200 countries ranging from 1980 to 2004. I’ve jumped at this chance and started to develop google maps overlayed with colored countries. SVG was a dead-end, so the next question was how to generate tiles without having any record in hand painting.

GMapCreator was developed by the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at University College London under the GeoVUE (Geographic Virtual Urban Environments) project which is funded as one of the research nodes of the National Centre for eSocial Science (NCeSS).

In short it picks a shape file, let you colorize the polygons according to their attributes and renders all the tiles down to the level you specify. The world borders shape file from thematicmapping.org (credits to: Bjorn Sandvik, Schuyler Erle, Sean Gilles) was the best solution for this job. The simple version has enough points for a use with level 4. Btw: Quantum GIS is an excellent application for beginners.

Since human senses use logarithmic scales this is the way the map was designed. Also it is easier to distinguish different shades of green than blue. The values correspond to metric kilo tons of CO2.

Blue means no data, countries with an output over one billion tons are colored with dark red. Within these color groups GMapCreator shades the countries according to their past emissions. As a rule of thumb you may say the countries in the orange group emitted 10 times more C02 than the yellow countries.

At first sight the information provided by this interactive map is little: huge countries emit more C02 compared to smaller countries. But given the scale factor it indicates the countries with the most potential to fight Climate Change. Nevertheless the next map in this series will visualize emissions per capita and the United States will then - together with some litte arabian countries - lead this unreasonable competition.

However, this is not the end of this story. CO2 resides for approximatly 100 years in the atmosphere, so taken into account historical emissions will answer the question whose emissions are still heating the planet. Can responsibility-based politics really ignore past emissions?

Stay tuned on this channel.

Between the 9th of November and the 14th of December 2007, TNS Opinion & Social, carried out wave 68.2 of the EUROBAROMETER, on request of the EUROPEAN COMMISSION, Directorate-General for Communication, “Research and Political Analysis”.

Report: 127 pages, including fieldwork details, questionaire, data tables, technical specifications

Conclusion:

96% of Europeans say that protecting the environment is important for them personally. For two-thirds of this group it is even very important.

Uploaded by: WSBTVdotcom, March 15, 2008; 4:19min

A severe weather system moved into Georgia March 14 resulting in numerous injuries and major destruction and damage to areas of Atlanta and Fulton County, Ga.

The system produced one tornado, injuring at least 20 people and damaging dozens of homes and businesses, according to Georgia Gov. Sonny Purdue.

G20 is officially referred to as “The 4th Ministerial Meeting of G8 Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development”, and was set up as a result of an agreement at the Gleneagles G8 Summit held in the United Kingdom in 2005.

At G20, issues such as global warming and climate change will be discussed by environment and energy ministers of the world’s 20 major greenhouse gas emitting nations as well as representatives from relevant international organizations, industries, NGOs and NPOs.

Chart Credit: Ministry of the Environment based on the Handbook of Energy & Economic Statistics in Japan (partially supplemented by UNFCCC data)

via: Hug-Lies and A Beautiful Lie

Nice collection of tips from abeautifullie.org helpful to reduce energy consumption.

1. Slow down to cut costs and cut carbon! Slowing down from 75 mph to 65 mph will drop your highway gasoline consumption 15 percent.

2. If everyone took 30 seconds to inflate their tires to the proper pressure we would save 200,000 barrels of oil a day!

3. Bring Your Own Bag: You’ll save one mile’s worth of petroleum for every 14 plastic bags you don’t use. Not to mention cut down on pollution-we throw away over 30 billion one time use bags each year. (more…)

Though the eleven year solor cycle as well as the Southern Oscillation hit their minimum 2007 is recorded as second warmth year in the period of instrumental data.

More:
Wikipedia: Solar Cycle
Marshall Space Flight Center: NASA Satellites Capture Start of New Solar Cycle
Goddard Institute for Space Studies : Global Temperature Trends: 2007 Summation

… If Germany halted construction of coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester the CO2, it could be a tipping point for the world.

Leaders in Great Britain are advocating a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants; U.S. citizens are blocking one coal plant after another and a potentially course-changing election is nearing.

But time to find the tipping point is running out. I hope that you will give these considerations the urgent attention they deserve in setting your national policies. You have the potential to influence the future of the planet. …

Jim Hanson, Perspective of a Younger Generation

When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s faith.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.
The Edge Annual Question — 2008

How to convince people of the importance to tackle Climate Change? Is it OK to spread subliminal messages when facts does not help? The topic is complex and not everybody has learned to deal with that many facts and prefers other strategies of decision making. Are we equipped to solve problems of this scope?

via Quantinger

Picture Credit goes to Karen Montgomer

Just for reference: not only carbon dioxyde has the capabilitiy to heat up our planet. E.g. a massive amount of Methane reside frozen in the oceans and the siberian permafrost soil.

via Australian Institute of Energy