Check this one out, you hear about CO2 all the time, but since you can’t see or smell it, it’s kind of hard to visualize. This model, called Project Vulcan, really is worth a thousand words, but here’s the basic outline for Project Vulcan anyway:

The Vulcan Project is a NASA/DOE funded effort under the North American Carbon Program (NACP)to quantify North American fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at space and time scales much finer than has been achieved in the past. The purpose is to aid in quantification of the North American carbon budget, to support inverse estimation of carbon sources and sinks, and to support the demands posed by the launch of the Orbital Carbon Observatory (OCO)scheduled for 2008/2009. The detail and scope of the Vulcan CO2 inventory has also made it a valuable tool for policymakers, demographers and social scientists.

Here’s a decent article about the project:

The maps and system, called Vulcan, show CO2 emissions at more than 100 times more detail than was available before. Until now, data on carbon dioxide emissions were reported, in the best cases, monthly at the level of an entire state, according to the university. The Vulcan model examines CO2 emissions at local levels on an hourly basis.

The Bad Guys Need to Lose

I’m glad to see material like this new video, produced by dedicated climate researchers, coming out, because the industry sponsored campaign of deliberate misinformation and straight out lies, especially by serious offenders like Exxon, is continuing to do its job of ‘creating controversy where none exists’, in other words, by paying so called ‘researchers’, better, and more honestly, named ‘corporate intellectual whores’, to create alleged ‘disagreements’ and ‘doubt’ about things that are in fact not doubted at all.

Sadly, in especially tech circles, I continue to see otherwise reasonably bright people repeat word for word this deliberately generated misinformation as if they were engaging in some type of ‘critical’ thinking, or ‘thinking’ at all.

This always saddens me, because what is really less critical than to uncritically repeat some misinformation explicitly created only to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt? FUD, that is. A common enough method, but it’s not really cute anymore to see it work so well, among people who should know better.

But this all goes to show that the fact is that modern enterprises have only one legal requirement: maximize shareholder value, even if it destroys the planet. So these organizations will have to be controlled by government action, ideally via some type of global agreements between the countries involved.

Basically, any company that funds this type of nonsense should be banned from ever making any claims about being environmentally friendly again, and of course, any low level researchers who accept that type of employment should be completely banned from all future professional employment.

It’s only when this type of behavior becomes essentially a social taboo, in the strictest, literal sense, that we can expect to see it stop, since all the excuses will simply not be accepted at that point. We are not, however, at this point yet.

And 3 Cheers for the People Working to Solve the Problems

Videos like the one here by the project Vulcan really help to show average viewers just what is going on, and really dramatize the quantities of C02 that are involved, graphically.

Thanks have to go out to the thousands of legitimate researchers who are doing their very best to help solve this situation.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 19:26 and is filed under Our World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.