Google Earth app shows effects of climate change

The Met Office Hadely Center, British Antarctic Survey, and the U.K. government on Monday introduced a Google Earth application that visualizes the anticipated temperatures changes from climate change over the next 100 years.

The Northern hemisphere today in 2008. Click on the image to download the animation

(Credit: Google Earth)

The animation uses a color scheme to show the differences in temperatures layed over a Google Earth image.

People can also click on icons on the image to get more on how the data was compiled, stories from people affected by climate change, and information on the projected regional impact of climate change.

The initiative was launched by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the Google Zeitgeist conference on Monday.

A projection from the same perspective 50 years from now, showing the highest temperature change (red) in the Arctic.

(Credit: Google Earth)

vnunet quoted British Environment Secretary Hilary Benn saying that the collaboration was done to help people understand climate change better.

"This project shows the reality of climate change using estimates of 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," he said, according to the vnunet report.

"By helping people to understand what climate change means for them and for the world we can mobilize the commitment we need to avoid the worst effects by taking action now."

Updated on May 21 5:00 am PT with correct gender for Hilary Benn.

[Neumenon]

Google didn't develop this technology, they bought it. Perhaps it should be called "Google (bought technology but doesn't really do anything besides sell advertising) Earth"

[youngjm]

This assumes the model is valid.

[Solaris_User]

Why don't you call it Global Warming anymore?

Is Climate Change is the new black, or is it used just because it is less specific.

Ya know, whatever anyhow, none of its going to matter if we don't fix the economy and get control of government inflation.

[amandachuck]

By calling it "climate change" they can get around the messy fact that earth isn't warming in an meaningful long term way, that we are now back to the average yearly temperature of the last 150 years, that April was one of the coolest Aprils ever recorded, that this winter we saw some of the coldest weather ever recorded, and that today, outside my window, it is 73 degrees, and the record for this day is 105 degrees in 1942. The religious sect known as environmentalism can now attribute "shifting" climates to manmade causes, despite the earth's long and storied history of shifting climates over billions of years. Sure, glaciers covered 1/2 the USA at one point, the sea was both much higher and much lower in the past, the african desert was fertile at the time the sphinx was built, but any change from the "norm" unscientifically defined as when all the modern scientists were 13 (the age your brain locks onto the way things "should be" forever), any change from what you remember as a kid, must be unnatural and our fault. Just to be clear, the models are not valid. They are not based in good science, they can't even predict last years weather when fed with data from the years before it. They were descriptive models that nicely layered over data from 1990-2000, but were then used as proscriptive models with wild and unsubstantiated assumptions factored in for good measure.

[totocalimero]

Who do you think you are kidding? Global Warming is an hoax aimed at creating new taxes and at inflating the size of the government so they can control our lives.

I saw it happen in Europe. In order to control the people, make sure you control their finances. The best way to do that is to raise taxes to ridiculous levels so that the average working citizens barely survive. Once the people are taxed sufficiently, they only worry about their daily survival instead of having time to think for themselves.

So, what's next? Allow the United Nations to tax all the people on the planet directly?

[zotenschmied]

just for your info, hilary benn is a he and not a she

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Benn