sorted by: recent | see :
popular
Content Tagged with change + climate
Mapping Climate Change Using Google Earth
How to visualize the colossal amount of data surrounding climate change? Al Gore squeezed a lot of info into 100 minutes and a PowerPoint presentation, but the next step needs to be dynamic, interactive and malleable. With that in mind, two government research groups out of the UK have released climate change-related data using Google Earth Outreach. Earth2Tech has the full story on their efforts, as well as a how-to for viewing the data.
Of Google Maps, Coal and Climate Change
The team at Earth2Tech has put together a nice Google Maps mash-up that shows coal plants that have been cancelled due to concerns over climate change and global warming.
Climate deal in Bali?
More often than not, politics can be annoying… So, a bunch of people finished a big meeting in Bali about climate change and how to deal with it. How did they do?
“This is a real breakthrough, a real opportunity for the international community to successfully fight climate change,” said Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, who served as conference president, at the conclusion of the talks.
Gee, that sounds swell. I have a feeling that Witoelar was prepared to say that even if a big turd had dropped from the sky and landed just outside of the conference hall. The way this breakthrough was achieved was:
The EU and US agreed to drop binding targets; then the EU and China agreed to soften language on commitments from developing countries.
Err, so they reached a deal without binding targets and with soft language about commitments. What kind of deal is that? Certainly not a breakthrough. The real statement to go with a meeting like this is:
“We have effectively managed to hold off any real decision making for two more years.”
NYTimes: “a Greenlandic supermarket is stocking locally grown cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage this year for the first time.”
Remember all those jokes about buying up cheap land in the far north quick before it warms up?
Kellan-Elliot-Mcrea: Laughing Meme
Uncategorized
change
Kellan-Elliot-Mcrea
nytimes
climate
aside
greenland
Racing to save the world
I'm just back from running a marathon at the North Pole. It's only by continuously repeating this sentence out loud that the experience has started to become more real. Certainly, when you are at the Pole -- a place of absolute wondrous beauty, isolation, and harshness -- it feels very surreal. The 24-hour light with the sun always at the horizon, the mind-numbing cold, the lack of sleep -- it all gets to you. Wow, don't I make it sound like fun?
So why, you might ask, did I put myself through this?
Well, a friend and I also ran the Sahara marathon at the end of February as a kick start to launch EarthFireIce, a campaign to raise awareness for the importance of individual action to reduce carbon emissions. By racing in such extreme conditions, the hottest and coldest marathons in the world, we also hoped to highlight two regions that stand to be seriously affected by climate change. People can make simple pledges of action on an interactive Google Maps mashup at our campaign site.
We've frequently been asked how we prepare for such extremes. The answer is that it's very hard. We tried to wrap ourselves in plastic wrap to replicate the Sahara heat, and we sat in a Kriotherapy chamber at -130 C (-202 F) to get used to the extreme cold. Neither experience, I must confess, was that useful. The Sahara, at 42 C (approx. 108 F), simply sapped all my energy. And the second half of that run was one of the slowest and most painful in my life. Watch the video of the Sahara run, and me struggling through it:
The North Pole, on the other hand, was tough because you have to wear those ridiculous snowshoes, and because the terrain varies from hard ice to 2 foot deep powder snow. So it's much more of a slow jog, and thus less exhausting. However, the battle there is with the cold: at -30 C (-22 F), you really feel it despite the act of running.
What's next, you may ask? Well, a lot of rest and relaxation, and back to my day job -- and then, some more events under the EarthFireIce banner, hopefully with lots of others joining us!
