Google answered my wishes for an animated 3D-Map of climate change scenarios. From Reuters:
The project, Climate Change in Our World, is the result of cooperation between web search engine Google, Britain’s environment ministry and the country’s Met Office. Based on Google Earth which uses NASA satellite images, viewers can run a time lapse series to watch the earth warm under medium case scenarios up to 2100 either from a planetary perspective or zeroing in on countries and even cities. “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,” said environment secretary Hilary Benn.
I tried it. It is still very basic, and needs more local data, to be truly relevant. Nevertheless, it is a step in the right direction, and could be used, not just to show catastrophic scenarios, but also to visualize hopeful possibilities of a sustainable planet.
La Marguerite 
There is no doubt that Earth is a “sustainable planet.” Whether it can sustain humans over a long period of time is a different issue, and I wouldn’t be optimistic. As ecologist Mark Bush noted in his popular ecology text, “If there is one lesson that the geological record offers, it is that all species will ultimately go extinct, some just do it sooner than others.”
In the long history of life on Earth, humans may ultimately claim at least two distinctions. First, they may be the first species to bring about their own extinction, not by destroying the Earth, which we cannot do, but by destroying our ecological niche, which we seem in the process of doing. The average “life expectancy” of a species is about one million years. If you count some of our hominid ancestors, ours may already be in the range of 4-5 million years old, way beyond the average.
Second, we will be the first species to bring about the extinction of a large number of other species of plants and animals. Earlier mass extinctions have been brought about by natural disasters of one sort or another, but as Bush noted, “As a species, humans have an inglorious proven track record of decimating species that we encounter.”
From the perspective of other plants and animals, then, it would be good if the extinction of humans were rushed along a bit. Alternatively, maybe humans could shape up, respect the rest of the natural world, and learn to live within their means. No, I don’t see any sign that this is likely.
Gary, you’re mischaracterising species deaths and the way humans are.
The basic thing is that evolution is a process by which species find a niche and live in it. They find some place where nothing else wants to live, and eat something nothing else wants to eat. They adapt to their environment.
Humans are different. We’re intelligent, so that we can change the environment to suit us. We build shelters and heaters and coolers and so on and so forth. There are animals that do that a little bit, like birds building nests – but nowhere near as much as humans do.
Instead of find a niche and adapting to it, we make everywhere our niche.
Unfortunately, there are limits to that, in available resources and the Earth’s ability to absorb waste. This means that our changing the local environment to suit us affects the wider environment.
Now, there are four basic responses to a widely-changing environment.
(1) deliberately change the environment in some other way – “let’s build giant space mirrors”
(2) stop the behaviour which is changing it – “let’s be zero carbon”
(3) stop trying to adapt the environment to suit us, and try to adapt to the environment instead – “there is no waste, only resources”
(4) give up
Business As Usual advocates tell us that #1 is all we can do. The greenish ecotech champions tell us that #2 is best. The “back to the land” types tell us #3 is best. The typical uninformed Westerner, and many informed and cynical or disillusioned informed Westerners, favour #4.
None of these is the inevitable and inescapable response. Each comes about from the decisions we make. Resigned desperation is not, thank God, the only possible response.
Marguerite: Great post, but I can’t figure out how to get the animated Earth to do anything, e.g., twirl, play songs, show water encroaching on land, show the increase in desert space, or zoom in to see how my backyard will fare. Am I doing something wrong? Is it supposed to work somehow? Or, do I need to visit a link somewhere? Thanks. (Perhaps I’m too used to modern-day toys that do nearly everything for you?)
Gary and Kiashu, great posts. Kiashu, I love your distinction among points (1)-(4). The trick is, discourse and decent reasoning, at least to some degree, are necessary to live together and to respond with some reasonably wise combination of (2) and (3) and (only after that, and as necessary) (1), with as little of (4) as possible. But, we seem to have almost disabled our public ability to achieve awakened awareness, have reasoned conversation, and find that decent mix of “solutions.” People too often seem to think that good reasoning is un-reasonable, or that reasoning is out of fashion, or that reasoning is anti-freedom somehow, or that it’s popular and productive to be completely illogical. As our current political process shows, many people seem to have an aversion to basic math, including at least one of the candidates.
In my view, it seems, we should all be sent back to (a good) high school for four years.
Cheers.
For what its worth Google showcases a selection of interesting “environmental science” kmz files
http://earth.google.com/outreach/kml_listing.html#cenvironment%20science%23s1%23e10
Thanks Steve for the link. I noticed too all the other cool environmental animations, including a world map of biggest oil consumers.
Jeff, it does take a bit of fiddling around to make this work. Make sure you download Google Earth first, then click on link that shows kmz file, it should show as file on your desktop, click on that, and it will appear in layers window in your Google Earth player.
Kyle, I find your classification helpful. My own version is that we need both conservation and ecotechnology to get ourselves out of the mess. One without the other will not work.
Gary, I do see some hopeful signs that we may get out act together. Maybe . . . The problem is time however, and whether we will act soon enough.
Thanks Marguerite for this – once again – most interesting post.
I definitively got to reinstall Google Earth to have a look at this and many other provided by Steve.
Yes.
One other thought on Google. With the exception of Google Map and Google Earth, it seems that Google map apps suffer from completion at local level. I am thinking of Google Transit – written up in this blog before – in particular.
Marguerite — Excellent post. What a great feature for Google to have developed. Thanks for doing the research and sharing it with us! Interesting to hear other people’s perspective on it as well.
Long time no read, Franke. Hope all is well!