Google Earth Gets Gordon Brown’s Clap on Climate Change Tracking Tool
British prime minister, Gordon Brown’s credentials as a climate change advocate seemed to get a meditated jerk last week as he went all gaga about a new online climate change tracking tool powered by Google Earth, in a collaboration between Google Earth and the UK government.
Call it green spin or not but apart from giving all the applauds to the geeks at Google Earth, he said this about the new tool designed to let users view satellite imagery, maps, terrain, and 3D buildings, or take a journey across the globe:
“I think this will be a huge tool for making everybody aware of the huge climate changes of our time.” Well expressed for now, at least. I can imagine the hushed silence before the clapping in that room that day.
“Climate Change In Our World”, or so the tool is called, is where you get to see and hear the stories of people, living in some of the world’s poorest countries, who are already being affected by changing weather patterns.
In Nepal, you can watch glaciers melt, first hand or see how people in that mountaneous country are surviving mud and landslides. In Myanmar, where Google has been banned, you can still view the devastation by Cyclone Nargis.
In Bangladesh, you will see how people are living on river islands and even the devastation by Cyclone Sidr. In Mozambique, you will see how droughts, floods and higher temperatures bring more disease to city life, or how people are trapped by drought and debt in India, among others, in rare case studies of how people’s lives are already being affected by changing weather patterns.
Brown launched the tool on 19 May at the Google Zeitgeist conference in London, a product of a collaboration between Google, the UK Government, the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey.
The new tool is a layer that shows climate change and its effects in various regions of the world now, and even track probable changes in the next 100 years or so. It follows a similar project launched by Greenpeace recently.
It has capability to show global temperatures throughout the next 100 years under medium projections of greenhouse-gas emissions, along with reports of how people in the UK and in some of the world’s poorest countries are already being affected by changing weather patterns.
One animation uses leading climate science from the UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre to show world temperatures throughout the next hundred years under medium projections of greenhouse gas emissions. It also shows stories of how people in the UK and in some of the world’s poorest countries are already being affected by changing weather patterns.
The animation contains information on action that can be taken by individuals, communities, businesses and governments to tackle climate change, and highlights good work already underway.
Another animation, developed by the British Antarctic Survey, shows the retreat of Antarctic ice caps since the 1950s, and features facts about climate change science and impacts in the Antarctic.
British environment secretary, Hillary Benn emphasized the role of climate change in world affairs: “Climate change is redrawing the map of the world. Unless we act, its impacts will be felt everywhere, as sea levels rise, crops fail, extreme weather increases and more areas are at risk of drought and flooding.
“This project shows people the reality of climate change using estimates of both the change in the average temperature where they live, and the impact it will have on people’s lives all over the world, including here in Britain.
By helping people to understand what climate change means for them and for the world we can mobilise the commitment we need to avoid the worst effects by taking action now.”
Give it to him, but this launch and the clapping that followed certainly ups the game for “green” Gordon Brown but will he stop taking the heat for the already boiling mess about new power stations that will run on coal and the larger than life bio-fuels debate? Well, it’s up to Google Earth to provide that answer.
Image credit: GISuser.com at Flickr under Creative Commons
Weird headline - perhaps I’m way out of date or your writer is unaware that “clap” is a slang word for one of the venereal diseases?
This is a forum where we share stories from around the world on environmental failures and triumphs; but no writer can stop one from thinking so weirdly…
This is how Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines clap, where no venereal disease is mentioned in the common language usage sense. But I know that for that v.d., clap is not used alone; the correct usage would be the clap, see the definition in Answers.com.
I was only trying to show that Gordon Brown was certainly impressed that his government now has its own Google Earth climate change monitoring tool and he must have clapped with the applauding crowd.
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