| Hot Planet |
350.org launched an impressive campaign and received feedback from all over the planet.
More viral media is needed to attract global interest.
Featuring: Rachel Alexander, Shannan Click, Hanne Gaby Odiele, Olya Ivanisevic, Alla Kostromicheva, Heidi Mount, Crystal Renn, Rianne Ten Haken, Nicole Trunfio, and Dorothea Barth Jorgensen.
Not everybody was invited to join. :)
Stunning the melt is over scenario. More video formats.
A Filmakademie Baden Württemberg production
Visual Effects Supervisor Mattepainter
Production Design Director
Thilo Ewers
Digital Artist
Holger Wenzl
Production
Franziska Specht
Music
Cornelius Renz
TDs
Daniel Stern
Stefan Habel
Cut
Sven Kulik
Animation
Felix Graf
Ellen Hoffmann
via Ehrensenf.de
The 2009 Arctic melting gained momentum, it is now below 2008 and accelerates. A massive bloom of algae has set up Alaska’s coast guard and Innuits. Nobody remembers that kind of occurrence in Chukchi Sea at any time.
Greenpeace expects the collapse of hundred square kilometers of the Petermann glacier soon. The Arctic Sunrise anchored closely enough to document from helicopters. Cams have been installed on the glacier.
Above image shows east Greenland close to the Jakobshavn glacier with all the melting ponds giving the ice sheet the structure of a sponge. Each pixel equals roughly a few hundred meters.
The average GHG emission associated with a single spam message is 0.3 grams of CO2. That’s like driving three feet (one meter) in equivalent emissions, but when multiplied by the annual volume of spam, it’s like driving around the Earth 1.6 million times.
While checking the gmail spam folder, I decided to count them in miles from now :(
We reaffirm the importance of the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and notably of its Fourth Assessment Report, which constitutes the most comprehensive assessment of the science.
We recognise the broad scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2°C.
Because this global challenge can only be met by a global response, we reiterate our willingness to share with all countries the goal of achieving at least a 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050, recognising that this implies that global emissions need to peak as soon as possible and decline thereafter.
As part of this, we also support a goal of developed countries reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in aggregate by 80% or more by 2050 compared to 1990 or more recent years.
Consistent with this ambitious long-term objective, we will undertake robust aggregate and individual mid-term reductions, taking into account that baselines may vary and that efforts need to be comparable.
Similarly, major emerging economies need to undertake quantifiable actions to collectively reduce emissions significantly below business-as-usual by a specified year.
| 100 Days of Melting |
Currently the Arctic sea ice covers 9.5 million square kilometers an area which is between the extent of 2008 and 2007. So, given the relatively cold Arctic summer and far less multi-annual sea ice, how will it look like in late September 2009?
The animation above shows the last 100 days captured by NASA’s satellite Terra. Be careful, areas under the clouds are not updated, the stills are not telling the truth. The first frame is dated 03/26/09.
Check out the HD Quality link and go fullscreen to enjoy a brilliant 720p animation with a very detailed Arctic. A 14MB AVI is available on request.
Many thanks to the MODIS Rapid Response System Team providing a daily high resolution mosaic of the Arctic
Follow the daily melting at ice-map.appspot.com.
The Edge - constantly exploring the mindset of the future - offered Gavin Schmidt the opportunity to draw a line from noisy climate models to noisy communication.
Gavin is writing as one of the main contributors at RealClimate.org.
Available from Natural Resources Canada is this detailed geological map of the Arctic. The map was completed in November 2008 as part of a two-year, seven-nation collaboration. Resources as minerals, gas and oil could be very often found in similar geological formations.
“The Europeans, the Russians, they’ve been at it much longer than we have in terms of mineral and energy exploration in their Arctic,” said Marc St-Onge, a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada in an interview. “Knowing where they have their mineral deposits and gas and oil fields, we can use the geology of this consistent map … to see where else we should be looking Canada.”
The Arctic is continuously facing new claims by the surrounding countries. Russia placed a flag on the sea bed at the North Pole and recently Norway expanded its ambitions in the Barents Sea and gave a green light for a $4.2 billion project.
“Goliat is the first oil field in the Barents Sea that will be developed. Goliat is the biggest industrial project to ever be undertaken in northern Norway,” said Norway’s Oil And Energy Minister Terje Riis-Johansen in a statement.
Is there a need to model these kind of economic feedback effects on a melting Arctic? Or is the Arctic anyway ice-free , when the carbon found there is all burned?
The good news is sea level will not rise if Arctic melts. Your soft drink full of ice cubes does not overflow for same reason. Instead of the Northwest and Northeast Passages will become navigable by regular ships for part of the year very soon and feeds economic and military interests.
International shipping routes between Asia and Europe will be reduced by thousands of miles. Canada could face worldwide demands on opening the Passage for international transit. The implications in terms of increased ship traffic, pollution and infrastructure development regarding Arctic’s fragile ecosystems are obviously.
Each year the Arctic undergoes the seasonal formation in winter and in summer an area of ice the size of Europe melts away to freeze again the following winter - usually.
20th September 2007 - the National Ice and Snow Data Center announced a historical arctic sea ice minimum: A loss of 4.61 million square kilometer. That means some square meters per terrestrial - compared against the 20 year average minimum. Your greenhouse gas emissions do count!
Due to the positive ice-albedo feedback effect Arctic sea ice is a sensitive tipping point in the Earth climate system. Without that ice, heat energy from the ocean would be transferred to warm the polar air. In fact, sea ice is so effective an insulator that its absence would warm the overlying air by between 20 and 40°C during winter.
Last year the September minimum did not break the latest record, on the other hand it was just a matter of a few days. What can we expect for 2009? An important factor is the thickness of the sea ice. Scientists distinguish between annual and multi-annual ice. The latter is thicker and less vulnerable to sun rays, warmer sea water or air.
Based on submarine measurements, the ice draft is reported to have thinned by 40% from the 1960s and 1970s to the 1990s. Latest satellite based analysis show Arctic is now literally on thin ice. Thicker ice, which survives two or more years, now comprises just 10 percent of wintertime ice cover, down from 30 to 40 percent.
Personally, I think Climate Change is lacking a powerful symbol. CO2 is invisible, so what can we print on T-shirts? Although measurements and graphs state a yearly sea level rise of millimeters, a temperature increase of fractions of a degree and a few ppm of CO2 molecules - does someone feels the daily impact?
The vanishing Arctic may serve as a symbol, but climate models estimate the Arctic might be completely ice free in summer in 20 or 30 years. This would be an irreversible result of uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions and a lack of political action and responsibility. Not all aspects of the Arctic are already modeled - possibly you can book a tourist trip to North Pole much earlier. Until then you may like the idea to see and prove how Global Warming is already changing our planet.
Two NASA satellites called Aqua and Terra capture daily photos of the poles on their orbit. The MODIS Rapid Response System at NASA/GSFC combines them into a daily mosaic of the Arctic since 18th April 2009. Since a few days the mosaic from the day before is available using the Explorer here with geoLink 1650.
More interactivity allows the spin-off side ice-map.appspot.com: seven daily updated maps, four zoom levels, a perma link feature and the calendar give you full access to the current melting season.
By default it starts with the latest complete mosaic of the Arctic. You can zoom in from a resolution of 4km to 500m meters per pixel (Ctrl-down/up) and see daily changes (Ctrl-left/right).
The tiles are downloaded and cropped on request, depending on the zoom level it may take some seconds or more until the picture is complete. But once all the tiles are processed and cached the interface is very responsive. The more users the better is the performance. Unfortunately the NASA near-realtime data feed experiences sometimes technical issues, a status page give latest information.
Very informative is the band 367 layer with a false color display. It includes an infra-red band and maps the wave lengths differently to the red, blue and green channels. Clouds, ice, water, land and vegetation are shown in different colors.
The photo on the right shows some dark red areas with melt water on the ice surface. In summer blue melt ponds will dot the surface of Greenland. If in late September there is no more red - all ice had disappeared.
For your convenience here are a few direct links:
Iceland (20/04/2009 - Band 367), Jakobshavn Glacier (24/04/2009 - Band 367), Bering Strait (06/05/2009), former Ellesmere Ice Shelf (02/05/2009), Nuuk (07/05/2009)
Did I mention Antarctica is also available? At least the outer regions are enjoying still a bit of sun light, but using the calendar you can go back and see an nearly intact Wilkins Ice Shelf (06/03/2009).
Follow Arctic sea ice changes on Twitter and discuss by using the comment function.
Many thanks to the whole MODIS Rapid Response team. Without their cooperation this project would not have been possible.
| Obama at Nato Summit |
He said about Climate Change and responsibility:
… we also know that in the 21st century, security is more complex than military power.
This is the generation that must also stop the spread of the pollution that is slowly killing our planet, from shrinking coastlines and devastating storms to widespread misery and famine and drought. The effects of climate change are now in plain sight.
Europe has acted with a seriousness of purpose that this challenge demands. And in the last few months I’m proud to say that America has begun to take unprecedented steps to transform the way that we use energy.
We appointed a special envoy to help us lead a global effort to reduce the carbon that we send in the atmosphere.
But we all know that time is running out. And that means that America must do more. Europe must do more. China and India must do more. Rolling back the tide of a warming planet is a responsibility that we have to ourselves, to our children, and all of those who will inherit God’s creation long after we are gone.
So let us meet that responsibility together. I am confident that we can meet it. But we have to begin today.
I believe it started here: http://benjamin.smedbergs.us/blog/2008-11-24/abc-meme/. Mike provided a speed-up:
C=Components;d=C.classes['@mozilla.org/browser/nav-history-service;1'].getService(C.interfaces.nsPIPlacesDatabase).DBConnection;for(o=[],c=97;c<123;c++){h=String.fromCharCode(c);q=d.createStatement( 'SELECT title t, url u FROM moz_inputhistory JOIN moz_places ON id=place_id WHERE input LIKE "'+h+'%'+'" ORDER BY use_count DESC LIMIT 1'); if(q.step())o.push(['',h,': ',q.row.t,''].join( '' ))}open('data:text/html,'+o.join('\n'))
for FF3.1 - check out minefield and don’t order new hardware just because your browser is slow!
A: http://www.amazon.de/
(it’s Christmas soon)B: http://musicbrainz.org/
(tag & listen & work)C: http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/emis/em_cont.htm
(a moving target)D: http://www.deezer.com/
(too many ads)E: http://exploreourpla.net/
(!)F: http://feelxfree.blogspot.com/
(Autour de moi les fous)G: https://mail.google.com/mail/
(unbeatable@G)H: http://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/common/c_cd.jsp?conDetailID=589689
(who knows the future?)I: http://www.climate-l.org/2008/08/icao-statement.html
(fly but ver)J: http://www.chrisesler.com/mootools/
(oops - is there an upcoming update?)K: http://chat.kongregate.com/gamez/0002/7196/live/99bricks.swf
(physical tetris)L: http://start.ubuntu.com/8.04/
(please - intrepid ibex is running)M: http://mootools.net/docs/Class/Class
(who said jquery?)N: http://news.google.com/
(daily update)0: http://editra.org/
(formats newlisp)P: http://localhost/info.php
(_.’._)Q: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/cryosphere.html
(stop the melting!)R: http://www.hittail.com/login.asp?c=0
(traffic, traffic, traffic)S: http://blog.songbirdnest.com/
(itunes? - pfffh)T: http://www.mousegestures.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=147
(installed easystroke instead)U: http://data.un.org/Default.aspx
(emissions per inhabitant per kilowatt per year per country)V: http://www.green.tv/
(greenTube)W: http://www.ehrensenf.de/shows/ehrensenf/wachskunst-stadtzeichner-falsche-hand
(Jeannine rocks)X: http://feeds.feedburner.com/transportenvironment/bulletin?format=xml
(transforms transport)Y: http://mlt0.google.com/mapslt?lyrs=lmc:panoramio,lmc:wikipedia_en&x=1316&y=3176&z=13&w=256&h=256&source=maps_
(google knows to render)Z: http://www.zeit.de
(german, best value / text and money )
Just type letter by letter in the location bar of your browser and blog the first result from the proposals.
Prepared by Dr. Tina Tin this report compiles the scientific outcome published after the latest IPCC report.
She points out the Arctic sea ice coverage was low this and last year and is stressed by an albedo feedback effect.
Findings lead to a new maximum sea level forecast this century. Other topics are the health of children suffering from Climate Change, long-term droughts in the Mediterranean region, damage of northern birch forests caused by leaf-chewing and leaf-mining insects and crops failures and the collapse of eco systems on both land and sea.
Ever wondered how something as little as a molecule of C02 can change the world? But more is different: CO2 turned Venus into a overheated hostile planet and without greenhouse gases Earth would be a snowball.
This post collects - without any special order - amounts, years and references and provides the facts needed to see the complete picture. Updates will happen when ever new information is available.
|
2005 7.85 billion tons |
of carbon passed into the atmosphere | Global Carbon Project |
|
2005 379.1 ppm |
Quantities of CO2 were measured at 379.1 parts per million (ppm) for 2005, up 0.53 per cent from 377.1 ppm in 2004, WMO said in its latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin | UN News Centre |
|
1750 280 ppm |
The CO2 concentration has risen from about 280 ppm in the year 1750 to about ~380 ppm today. | Postdam Institute |
|
2006 50,000 tons |
UK traffic lights emit about 50,000 tonnes of CO2 per year through energy use. | BBC Magazine Monitor |
|
2006 400 litre |
Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles. | CBBC News Round |
|
>1751 315 billion tons |
Since 1751 roughly 321 billion tons of carbon have been released to the atmosphere from the consumption of fossil fuels and cement production. Half of these emissions have occurred since the mid 1970s. The 2004 global fossil-fuel CO2 emission estimate, 7910 million metric tons of carbon, represents an all-time high and a 5.4% increase from 2003 | Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center |
| Coalfinger |
This animated Bond spoof features David Mitchell (C4s Peep Show) as secret agent Gaverson Green fighting to stop the evil plans of Coalfinger, voiced by Brian Blessed.
With a soundtrack by composer David Arnold (Quantum of Solace, Casino Royal).
More at : Coalfinger.com
Via: Ehrensenf.de
Visit:eon
Nearly any activity consumes energy and therefore forces emissions of CO2.
Of course using green energy is different. However, it is useful to know the emissions generated by different goods or activities.
Kick the Habit is a excellent guide to climate neutrality. Provided and produced by UNEP it is full of maps, examples, graphic and this chart.
The graphic beside gives a descriptive overview and you may easily find a point where to save energy the easy way. The graphic is available in the explorer, so just click and use your mouse (wheel) to explore. All given amount are in kilograms of CO2 equivalent.
Credits: UNEP/GRID-Arendal. Examples of GHG emission amounts generated by different activities or goods. UNEP/GRID-Arendal Maps and Graphics Library. 2008. Available at: http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/examples-of-ghg-emission-amounts-generated-by-different-activities-or-goods. Accessed October 12, 2008.
| Aquecimento Global |
via: ptfolio.com
Agência: McCann
Anunciante: Quercus
Directores Criativos: Diogo Anahory / José Carlos Bomtempo
Redactor: Diogo Anahory
Director de Arte: José Carlos Bomtempo
Tv Producer: Nuno Calado
Produtora: Seagulls Fly São Paulo
Som: Indigo
The Google Earth Plugin turns browsers into full Earth browsers. Well, not supported is UNIX, Apple, but FireFox and Internet Explorer running on Windows 2000 or better. The API of the plugin is well supported and this site will have a progressing amount of features available in 3D. First achievement is the Daily Planet map provided by NASA’s OneEarth server.
The current implentation is far from complete and a lot of further work is ahead. Especially registered users will find out that the plugin does not allow to use the flyout menu any longer and switching maps is a challenge. Please log out in this case or prepare the geoLinks you need in advance. As an another aspect the overlays do not work with Google Earth as base map. However seeing the Planet is no longer flat is exciting. Expect far more improvement in usability and data soon.
The navigation is quite simple: just try all mouse buttons, double click or drag the globe.
geoLink 1515 links exclusively to the North Atlantic Ocean showing the daily status of upcoming hurricanes.
