Web mapping tool models Climate Change (video)

At UC Berkeley’s Geospatial Innovation Facility software developers are building a Web-based mapping tool to help scientists prepare for the changing climate conditions in California.

The team has culled data from various climate research organizations to get projection data of what different climates might look like over a 150-year period. SmartPlanet visits the lab to see a demo of how the tool works.

Polluted by profit: Johann Hari on the real Climategate - Climate Change, Environment

Polluted by profit: Johann Hari on the real Climategate - Climate Change, Environment - The Independent

Why did America's leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen to lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests – and runaway global warming? Why are their staff dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic"? Why are they clambering into corporate "partnerships" with BP, which is responsible for the worst oil spill in living memory?

At first glance, these questions will seem bizarre. Groups such as Conservation International (CI) and the Nature Conservancy (TNC) are among the most trusted "brands" in the world, pledged to protect and defend nature.

Yet as we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organisations meant to be leading the fight are busy shovelling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters – and simultaneously burying science-based environmentalism.

In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate, waiting to be exposed.

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The Oldest trees on the Earth - At risk from Climate Change

The Oldest Trees on the Planet Wired Science - Click here for more images

Trees are some of the longest-lived organisms on the planet. At least 50 trees have been around for more than a millenium, but there may be countless other ancient trees that haven’t been discovered yet.

Trees can live such a long time for several reasons. One secret to their longevity is their compartmentalized vascular system, which allows parts of the tree to die while other portions thrive. Many create defensive compounds to fight off deadly bacteria or parasites.

And some of the oldest trees on earth, the great bristlecone pines, don’t seem to age like we do. At 3,000-plus years, these trees continue to grow just as vigorously as their 100-year-old counterparts. Unlike animals, these pines don’t rack up genetic mutations in their cells as the years go by.

Some trees defy time by sending out clones, or genetically identical shoots, so that one trunk’s demise doesn’t spell the end for the organism. The giant colonies can have thousands of individual trunks, but share the same network of roots.

This gallery contains images of some of the oldest, most venerable and impressive trees on earth.

Pando
While Pando isn’t technically the oldest individual tree, this clonal colony of Quaking Aspen in Utah is truly ancient. The 105-acre colony is made of genetically identical trees, called stems, connected by a single root system.

The “trembling giant” got its start at least 80,000 years ago, when all of our human ancestors were still living in Africa. But some estimate the woodland could be as old as 1 million years, which would mean Pando predates the earliest Homo sapiens by 800,000 years. At 6,615 tons, Pando is also the heaviest living organism on earth.

The photo above of the Pando colony was taken by Rachel Sussman, as part of The Oldest Living Things In The World project.

Image: “Clonal Quaking Aspens #0906-4318 (80,000 years old, Fish Lake, UT)” / Rachel Sussman

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Climate action should boost energy access for poor: UN

Tackling climate change should also include providing low-carbon energy to the poor, UN agencies said Monday, pointing out that almost one third of the world's population remains in the dark at night.

The report, The Energy Access Situation in Developing Countries, is published by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and World Health Organization (WHO).

It notes that 80 percent of people without access to electricity live in the world's least developed countries, led by sub-Saharan Africa. The figure is highest in Burundi, Chad and Liberia, where 97 percent have no electricity.

Minoru Takada, in charge of energy and the environment at the UNDP, said failure to gain access to reliable energy made it "particularly difficult" for such countries to attain the UN's Millennium Development Goals on reducing poverty rates by 2015.

Lack of access to cleaner, reliable sources of energy means that three billion people depend on traditional biomass and coal to cook their food or heat their homes, says the report.

The fuels are not only a significant contribution to global warming because of the partial combustion of the gases.

Particles and fumes from them are also blamed for the death of two million people each year from pneumonia, chronic lung disease and lung cancer.

Therefore, all we need to discuss and resolve now, is how to curb the growth in the population explosion and the inevitable demand for scarer resources, encroachment into wild spaces and rampant consumerism.