FYI, via Wired: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/scientists-unve.html --- A team of scientists has completed a carbon dioxide emissions inventory of the United States plotted down to 100-square-kilometer chunks. That means that the NASA- and Department of Energy-funded scientists can detail emissions across all 9 million square kilometers that compose the United States. For a full explanation, check out the video ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJpj8UUMTaI&feature=email ) that Purdue's Kevin Gurney put together, which features a number of other excellent CO2 visualizations. Andy Revkin, the New York Times' environment-beat writer, put a memorable headline on a post about the video, calling it, "Breath of a Nation." ( http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/07/breath-of-a-nation-animated-co2-map/ ) The work, known as The Vulcan Project, has already yielded a significant discovery: Previous CO2 estimates that used population as a proxy for emissions overestimated the Northeast's greenhouse-gas generation, while underestimating the coal-heavy Southeast's contribution. Now, given the opposition of the Southeast's congressional delegations to climate-change action ( http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/ten-takeaways-f.html#more ), I'd like to see the new emissions map matched up with House and Senate districts. Image: Courtesy The Vulcan Project. The units are log(million metric tons/year/100 square km.), so sayeth our team of commenters. The data is drawn from 2002. -- Daniel Roth Sustainability Coordinator Office of Environmental Compliance and Sustainability Cornell University www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu Youth Action Team Co-Chair US Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development www.uspartnership.org 607-254-8077 (office) 518-727-6723 (cell) 607-255-8461 (fax) 395 Pine Tree Road, Suite 230 Ithaca, NY 14850 _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
