It appears to be designed to do photo trend analysis of landsat and other satellite imagery. From the Google Earth Engine page:
A planetary-scale platform for environmental data & analysis
Google Earth Engine brings together the world’s satellite imagery—trillions of scientific measurements dating back more than 25 years—and makes it available online with tools for scientists, independent researchers, and nations to mine this massive warehouse of data to detect changes, map trends and quantify differences to the earth’s surface.
Introducing Google Earth Engine 12/02/2010 08:55:00 AM
Today, we launched a new Google Labs product called Google Earth Engine at the International Climate Change Conference in sunny Cancun, Mexico. Google Earth Engine is a new technology platform that puts an unprecedented amount of satellite imagery and data—current and historical—online for the first time. It enables global-scale monitoring and measurement of changes in the earth’s environment. The platform will enable scientists to use our extensive computing infrastructure—the Google “cloud”—to analyze this imagery. Last year, we demonstrated an early prototype. Since then, we have developed the platform, and are excited now to offer scientists around the world access to Earth Engine to implement their applications.
Why is this important? The images of our planet from space contain a wealth of information, ready to be extracted and applied to many societal challenges. Scientific analysis can transform these images from a mere set of pixels into useful information—such as the locations and extent of global forests, detecting how our forests are changing over time, directing resources for disaster response or water resource mapping.
The challenge has been to cope with the massive scale of satellite imagery archives, and the computational resources required for their analysis. As a result, many of these images have never been seen, much less analyzed. Now, scientists will be able to build applications to mine this treasure trove of data on Google Earth Engine, providing several advantages:
- Landsat satellite data archives over the last 25 years for most of the developing world available online, ready to be used together with other datasets including MODIS. And we will soon offer a complete global archive of Landsat.
- Reduced time to do analyses, using Google’s computing infrastructure. By running analyses across thousands of computers, for example, unthinkable tasks are now possible for the first time.
- New features that will make analysis easier, such as tools that pre-process the images to remove clouds and haze.
- Collaboration and standardization by creating a common platform for global data analysis.
Google Earth Engine can be used for a wide range of applications—from mapping water resources to ecosystem services to deforestation. It’s part of our broader effort at Google to build a more sustainable future. We’re particularly excited about an initial use of Google Earth Engine to support development of systems to monitor, report and verify (MRV) efforts to stop global deforestation.
Deforestation releases a significant amount of carbon into the atmosphere, accounting for 12-18% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. The world loses 32 million acres of tropical forests every year, an area the size of Greece. The United Nations has proposed a framework known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries) that would provide financial incentives to tropical nations to protect their forests. Reaching an agreement on early development of REDD is a key agenda item here in Cancun.
Today, we announced that we are donating 10 million CPU-hours a year over the next two years on the Google Earth Engine platform, to strengthen the capacity of developing world nations to track the state of their forests, in preparation for REDD. For the least developed nations, Google Earth Engine will provide critical access to terabytes of data, a growing set of analytical tools and our high-performance processing capabilities. We believe Google Earth Engine will bring transparency and more certainty to global efforts to stop deforestation.
Over the past two years, we’ve been working with several top scientists to fully develop this platform and integrate their desktop software to work online with the data available in Google Earth Engine. Those scientists—Greg Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science, Carlos Souza of Imazon and Matt Hansen of the Geographic Information Science Center at South Dakota State University—are at the cutting edge of forest monitoring in support of climate science.
In collaboration with Matt Hansen and CONAFOR, Mexico’s National Forestry Commission, we’ve produced a forest cover and water map of Mexico. This is the finest-scale forest map produced of Mexico to date. The map required 15,000 hours of computation, but was completed in less than a day on Google Earth Engine, using 1,000 computers over more than 53,000 Landsat scenes (1984-2010). CONAFOR provided National Forest Inventory ground-sampled data to calibrate and validate the algorithm.
A forest cover and water map of Mexico (southern portion, including the Yucatan peninsula), produced in collaboration with scientist Matthew Hansen and CONAFOR.
We hope that Google Earth Engine will be an important tool to help institutions around the world manage forests more wisely. As we fully develop the platform, we hope more scientists will use new Earth Engine API to integrate their applications online—for deforestation, disease mitigation, disaster response, water resource mapping and other beneficial uses. If you’re interested in partnering with us, we want to hear from you—visit our website! We look forward to seeing what’s possible when scientists, governments, NGO’s, universities, and others gain access to data and computing resources to collaborate online to help protect the earth’s environment.
Posted by Rebecca Moore, Engineering Manager, Google Earth Engine
h/t to WUWT reader John Day
Given the Google penchant for making money by any means this sounds like a good way to reinforce the alarmist message that this planet would be better if we left it.
The idea that any planet should hit a phase in development and stop is stupid. Not only do climates change but the earth’s surface changes all the time. Tides and currents move sediment about, sea levels rise and fall, animal species fail and new ones become viable. It is all part of the natural pattern and we are part of that pattern not some element that should not be there.
Expect more alarmist rubbish from Google building in what they have already pushed out.
Ride shotgun on this magnificent venture into new knowledge, Anthony and all who comment here. It must not be corrupted by vested interests, and I have the conviction that you are the people with the power, knowledge, wisdom and commitment to repel any who would attempt to derail this gift from Google to all peoples of the World at large.
Please embrace this charge.
That’s great, Google. BTW, the large construction site you show in Google maps here in the city center of Braunschweig has developed into a mall that i’ve been using over the last 3 years quite extensively. You should take a look, Google. If you ever happen to visit this place again. With your cloud and all. And can i have a “Larry and Sergey Private Plane Tracker” mode with Google Earth. Thanks. For a more sustainable future.
Daniel Ortega used Google´s maps to justify a claim to land long considered Costa Rican territory.1,2 Google´s new gift will be used as seen fit by the user. Do look that gift horse in the mouth.
1. http://www.nacion.com/2010-11-13/ElPais/NotasSecundarias/ElPais2588954.aspx
2. http://www.nacion.com/2010-12-03/ElPais/UltimaHora/ElPais2611405.aspx
Roger Carr says:
December 4, 2010 at 1:25 am
Such naivety imperils us all.
Will this have access to all the data that Mann et al used to get all them bankrolled or just the “modified” stuff.
James.
Roger Carr says:
December 4, 2010 at 1:25 am
We have the knowledge, wisdom and commitment at least.
“….in collaboration with scientist Matthew Hansen……”
Any relation?
Was reading this full of excitement and all until I came to this sentence…
REDD is how WWF et al will make tens of billions and more. I wonder how much Google will make out of it?
Roger Carr says:
December 4, 2010 at 1:25 am
See
Will says:
December 4, 2010 at 2:25 am
Interesting. I would like to play with this a little before passing judgement, but I think this could be very useful. I have some interesting concepts that I would like to prove out, but data collection is a nightmare. It is possible that this would help.
Control of data is the one thing that warmists often have on their side. Consider the difficulty that McIntyre had getting data from Jones and Mann. Freeing the data is the worst possible outcome for warmists, because anything that Mann hasn’t touched can be used to show that warming is insignificant. Only Mann strips the data so badly that it no longer has value.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic
Sounds like a useful goodie.
It’s easy to take a jaded view of Google Earth, because this Earth Engine will undoubtedly be used to publicize AGW themes.
Yes, Google unveiled this tool at Cancun and are forming partnerships with the AGW community on projects such as “carbon trading” (good luck with that) and forestry monitoring (I’m no ‘tree hugger’, but I think this is a good environmental application)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B13RK20101202
“Google also wants to eventually sell access to advanced aspects of the tool to carbon traders, policy makers, and researchers working in forestry.”
But don’t overlook that GE is a “public”, open tool, which can be extended by anyone to create new overlays and layers using the Keyhole Markup Language (KML). It’s not just for scientists. Anyone with moderate software skills can geocode their own data (business, politics, religion, anything under the sun) and fuse it with Google Earth. (… or pay someone to do the geocoding)
These user-developed overlays and layers can be distributed and used by anyone who has Google Earth installed on their computer, a free download.
So I think these geospatial tools could have equal value for the skeptic community, for examining, explaining and demonstrating some of the proofs and disproofs of climate hypotheses, and putting it in the context of the Earth in a computerized, “user friendly” way. Especially effective IMHO for folks with software development skills, like Steve McIntyre.
Google Earth an “idea fusion” engine, empowered by the Internet.
[My first H/T from Andrew, I’m honored.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_tip%5D
Earth Engine? Sounds like a green mean brainwashing machine to me.
The ultimate WWF Propaganda tool.
No thank you.
I see that the LANDOWNER is NOT among those who can acces the info…seems its govt ngo and anyone else with the bucks to pay??? unis business etc
My reading of the somewhat breathless press release from Google stumbled at the same point as Baa Humbug’s. Redd is proving to be distrous for indigenous tropical forests and is feeding millions of $$ to WWF and other so-called environmental groups. I have to admit that this new Google product has me somewhere between alarmed and excited – it will need a very close and careful watch indeed. Living in the UK, which is now the land of the CCTV surveillance camera, I realise now what a wonderful tool photographic imaging is to assist a police state do its enforcing; The UK has more of these things per acre than any other nation/society and all they seem to be good for is to enable the surveillance of the law-abiding citizenry as the more intelligent of the criminal classes seem to be up to speed with a range of techniques to avoid definitive imaging. And I say this as a civillian formally involved with neighbourhood policing.
Even though most of us make extensive of Google services, its owners/managers are committed one-worlder-Obamaites with little love for America, opportunity for all, or development for the future unless it is for their own elite pocketbooks and freedom to spew carbon as they travel the globe.
Allow me to not give a flying duck about deforestation and co2. Google is NSA is global government mafia.
I went to load google earth onto my mac the other day and before doing so, I found out that google earth loads a program onto your machine that constantly checks for updates and automatically loads them without your knowledge. Given Google’s track record with privacy, I didn’t load it. And I won’t ever load it until they remove this feature. I don’t trust that company.
15,000 hours of detailed analysis in a day. Collaboration. Unparalleled access. REDD. It’s worse than I thought.
…..”New features that will make analysis easier, such as tools that pre-process the images to remove clouds and haze.”
Here we go again with let us “massage” the data for you. “Pre-process” is not correct. The correct term is re-create. And we all know what happens when you do that….
You cannot remove a cloud to show what is under it unless you replace it with something else that did not exist in the original image – period. At that point the image becomes fictional.
Baa Humbug, you are probably right about REDD being a funnel of money to WWF (not wrestling, that would at least be entertaining). My thought was that REDD would fund various third world thugs’ Swiss bank accounts by raising my electric rates or adding to our national debt.
Does anyone recall how Google search engine from one day to the next suddenly could not find “climategate”? From millions to suddenly no hits – like Pravda they simply “disappeared” a term which they found inconvenient or disagreeable.
Are you aware that when you search for something in Google you will see first websites that have paid to be at the top (rather than the most popular sites)
Just remember Google has no integrity. They are out to make money and they will not let the truth stand in the way.
REDD is just one more CAGW-inspired transfer-of-wealth scheme, ripe for abuse, with little or no environmental benefit. The irony is that much of the deforestation taking place is done in the name of producing biofuels, especially ethanol.
It’s almost certainly worse than we think. Can someone still pull the plug in case google’s computer comes alive and wants to take over?
@Jose Suro
> You cannot remove a cloud to show what is under it unless you replace it
> with something else that did not exist in the original image – period.
> At that point the image becomes fictional.
Then you wouldn’t allow doctors to process medical imagery to enhance the resolution of tumors or other pathology? Then a lot of diseases would go undiagnosed.
Yes, it’s yet another kind of “modeling” (groan), but very principled and easily validated with nature. It involves understanding the processes that blur and distort images and performing the inverse convolution (deconvolution). Or making simple assumptions about the distribution of hidden Markovian features and using random fields theory to infer the hidden pieces.
See for yourself. Look at the “before” and “after” results of image processing on page 6: http://www.ensta.fr/~bazeille/fr/CMM06.pdf
Roger Carr says:
December 4, 2010 at 1:25 am
Ride shotgun on this magnificent venture into new knowledge, Anthony and all who comment here. It must not be corrupted by vested interests, and I have the conviction that you are the people with the power, knowledge, wisdom and commitment to repel any who would attempt to derail this gift from Google to all peoples of the World at large.
Please embrace this charge.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1. It’s not new knowledge, but old knowledge presented in Googleform.
2. Vested interests: Google are up to their ears in energy provision: They are investing in alternatives TO SELL ELECTRICITY TO THE MASSES.
3. Gift from Google: A gift would be cheap energy for the masses. This is just a gift to themselves.
4. It’s all about money. What do you think Google’s board of directors looked for when it approved this project? Saving the planet?
@kramer
> Given Google’s track record with privacy, I didn’t load it. And I won’t
> ever load it until they remove this feature. I don’t trust that company.
… then to be perfectly rational one must also investigate each pilot’s track record before boarding an airline flight, because your life is at stake.
Google has “invaded” our computers, society and minds like no other human force in history (up to politics and religion). They could easily muck around inside our computers and cause unimaginable mischief, if they really wanted to.
I think they have handled our private computer bits a lot more benignly than TSA has, for example.
But I don’t trust any computer software blindly. Remember what Reagan said: “Trust, but verify!”
kramer says:
December 4, 2010 at 6:03 am
Lifting data without authorization from your computer in that manner (by way of automatic software updates) would be criminal in the U.S. – hacking, fraud, computer theft, and so forth. Generally if a company has deep pockets they play by the rules as they have too much to lose and too many lawyers and technical experts who’d just love to catch them and get their hands into those deep pockets.
Oh what a spin doctor Deja News has become.
Doesn’t anybody of you recall the deal that Al Gore made with google and CNN to brainwash the American public with Green BS from the Un?
http://www.google.com/landing/cop15/
Like any other tool, how it is used will be key. Fire, for instance, can keep you warm, and the wolves from descending upon you and feasting; on the other hand, it can burn your house down if used improperly.
As such, this new Google venture ought simply to be viewed as a hammer, and we should pay particular attention to wheter it’s used to build useful things, or simply to whack people over the heads with.
Everything in google’s pitch points to the UN and global warming agendas which brings into question the integrity of the service.
Google Earth announces new “earth engine” at Cancun…. scuse me, gotta go throw up
Do you want Google to return “raw page-ranked retrievals” to your browser, exactly in one-to-one relationship to the Web? Then most of your webhits would come from porno sites, even if using innocent-sounding search terms (because porno has a very large “prior probability”).
Of course they put the paid-for retrievals up front. They don’t try to hide it. It’s called capitalism. They make money. The clients make money. Wealth is created. Is there anything wrong with that?
And sure, they structure the results in some preferred order. For example, pick a technical term, any technical term, and I guarantee that the corresponding Wikipedia article will end up in the first few hits. No accident. Wikipedia, the largest anonymously peer-reviewed body of knowledge on Earth, happens to be useful. Google senses that utility (through their feedback instrumentation) and tries to structure the responses in the order most people would like.
Nothing sinister about that. Their ethics policies are publicly posted.
http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html
If they have violated these, unintentionally or otherwise, I think they would be glad to hear about it.
Are they paid (or influenced) by foreign governments to censor local retrievals? I suppose they do (http://sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-censorship.php). Is this any worse than what any other corporation does? or the State Department? (see Wikileaks)
Looking for climategate stuff. Just Google “climategate wuwt” and you’ll probably see this post. Google does its processing in near-real time now, used to take months to craw the web.
That’s good, not evil, IMHO. [Coming from a guy who thinks Bill O’Reilly is a liberal].
If the stuff can be downloaded in raw form – great. A good first project would be to chart the changes in shorelines of the Ganges delta, the atoll coral islands and other areas long trumpeted to be at risk of inundation. Geologists already know that deltas and atolls rise with sea level rise and are eroded down with sea level fall, so this wouldn’t be a scientific project per se but rather a way to open reluctant eyes. If Google can make a few bucks why not – as long as the data is real and is available to all.
O/T but too good not to spread around: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/last+global+warming+conference+ever/3927517/story.html
Enjoy!
I agree with ‘Baa Humbug’ And, I Like the Idea of it But! It’ll end up as corrupted, inaccurate and watered down as wikipedia. A quote from wikipedia “Some articles on Wikipedia may contain significant factual inaccuracies” which is an understatement if you’ve ever tried to use the site as a research tool.
My thoughts on the WWF is that it’s a despicable group that has a lot of staunch views on humanity and are associated with extremists , “Too many people on the planet” & ”I want to come back as a virus and kill most of the population” Etc..
Sorry!! I don’t usually do this much hating on one site, Must be the “anthropogenic global warming” & the “Communist Change” affecting me! 🙂
In the video I liked the cows powering the windmills beside them, get it.
Deforestation is an issue but I thought the world was greening by 6%, maybe google should google it.
Hey. If nothing else, Google are great at making money, and God knows there’s a tonne of money in climate fraud, not to mention control through intimidation and coercion.
And as for the Googles’ “don’t be evil” schtick… they’re in the middle of a nasty lawsuit with Brian Reid, one of the guys who actually invented web search at AltaVista (sorry, Larry and Sergey didn’t do it, they just added a refinement called PageRank and hooked up advertising revenue to make two boatloads of money). Seems that Brian was “an old fuddy, duddy”, “not a cultural fit”, so they fired him just before the Google initial public stock offering.
And you undoubtedly know that Eric Schmidt used to work for Obama. And a former Google VP is on Obama’s White House staff.
Apologies for deviating from the science path, but in the vein of “know your opposition”…
kramer says:
December 4, 2010 at 6:03 am
Lifting data without authorization from your computer in that manner (by way of automatic software updates) would be criminal in the U.S. – hacking, fraud, computer theft, and so forth. Generally if a company has deep pockets they play by the rules as they have too much to lose and too many lawyers and technical experts who’d just love to catch them in order to get their hands into those deep pockets.
One can see that MAN in their Billions are but tiny scratches in a sea of nature!.
@Jeremy says:
December 4, 2010 at 6:40 am
Does anyone recall how Google search engine from one day to the next suddenly could not find “climategate”? From millions to suddenly no hits – like Pravda they simply “disappeared” a term which they found inconvenient or disagreeable.
—
Thank you for bringing this up! Many of us DO remember Google’s “cooking the search results” during Climategate. That is when I started to use Bing and other search engines extensively. I don’t trust Google one tiny bit.
Anthony broke the story on Google’s nonsense here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/02/google-trends-on-climategate-show-public-interest-increasing-but-troubling-questions-loom/
DBD says:
December 4, 2010 at 9:52 am
“O/T but too good not to spread around: http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/last+global+warming+conference+ever/3927517/story.html ”
From the link:
Great writing by Rex Murphy – thanks DBD! But, no, don’t anyone let their guard down. This is where the parasitic zealots and Totalitarians get desperate and possibly even inventive. They never stop, and “it just gets worse.” It seems to me that we are engaged in yet another Evolutionary contest between different hominid types, or between Good and Evil, if you prefer.
Drat
I was so sure that the satellite image of me relieving myself in the woods was gone forever. I suppose right at this moment it’s being analyzed as a demo shot on some climate scientists /bureaucrats computer screen in Cancun.
Hmmm, maybe not so bad.
Hope they get a cheeks up shot.
Jeremy says:
December 4, 2010 at 6:40 am
Does anyone recall how Google search engine from one day to the next suddenly could not find “climategate”? From millions to suddenly no hits – like Pravda they simply “disappeared” a term which they found inconvenient or disagreeable.
Just to be fair I searched ‘climategate’ right now and here are the top 5 hits;
–Climatic Research Unit email controversy – Wikipedia, the free …The Climatic Research Unit email controversy (dubbed “Climategate” in the media) began in November 2009 when thousands of emails and other documents from …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy – Cached
ClimategateClimategate – the truth about the climate change and global warming fraud.
http://www.climategate.com/ – Cached
Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of ‘Anthropogenic Global …Nov 20, 2009 … If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global …
blogs.telegraph.co.uk › … › Environment › James Delingpole – Cached – Similar
News for climategate
Telegraph.co.uk Prince Charles defends ‘climategate’ scientists
11 hours ago
The Prince of Wales, Charles, has come out in support of the British scientists embroiled in the “Climategate” saga, describing their treatment as …Sify – 14 related articles
“Climategate” | FactCheck.orgDec 10, 2009 … In late November 2009, more than 1000 e-mails between scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the UK’s University of East Anglia were …
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/ – Cached
Vicky Pope head of Climate Change at Met Office got stuck at the airport due to unforeseen HEAVY snow while she was on her way to the hot air talks in CanCun! –
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/vicki-pope-cant-get-to-cancun-too-much-snow/#comment-18160
Perfect!
What she needed and needs is better forecasts than she provides to herself; in particular our WeatherAction long range winter forecast and more specifically our two – three days ahead warning that the end November snow and ice in Britain would be much more severe than Met Office short range models would say – see
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=276&c=5
The Met Office are now nervously trying to say more than usual and as normal they try to pass off descriptions of current events mixed with a stack of “maybe”s (remember every “maybe” is also a “maybe not”!) as forecasts.
Their MODELS cannot tell anything useful beyond a week or so and we (WeatherAction) can now see when they will go wrong under the most important circumstances just two days ahead.
It is interesting that their new “maybe cold will carry on past Christmas” suggestion appeared only AFTER our WeatherAction Long Range forecast of a long cruel hell-to-freeze-over winter with few milder breaks. Perhaps Vicky Pope read our WeatherAction forecast on her iphone while she was stuck at the airport!
Have a look at MUST WATCH VIDEOs –
Frozen HELL WINTER forecast for Britain Ireland + Europe
http://bit.ly/hQBp14
November Review & where latest WeatherAction advances came from –
http://bit.ly/gJqjTM
ClimateWars Make Mexico the last UN CO2 junket!
http://bit.ly/i1zMAV
MUST BUY FULL DETAILED LONG RANGE WeatherAction FORECASTS, available via:
http://bit.ly/bNMJ77
Thanks, Piers Corbyn
Wind Rider says: (December 4, 2010 at 8:43 am) As such, this new Google venture ought simply to be viewed as a hammer, and we should pay particular attention to whether it’s used to build useful things, or simply to whack people over the heads with.
Exactly, Wind Rider; so I repeat: Ride shotgun on this magnificent venture into new knowledge…
A Google search returns:
Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face
A warning against spiteful revenge which results in one’s own hurt or loss.
We have Big Oil, and Big Tobacco; are we now approaching Big Search?
Ah… the ultimate flail of a rat in a corner; and pointless, though in a warped way, powerful.
Just a question? If Google is so good what are they doing to help save soldiers lives or is it they only want to control and make money. We are in an economic crisis, two wars, unemploymnet up to 30 % in some areas and what can google do to help or what can google help do to make a fortune??
Our sick and injured vets are not receiving care they were promised and for sure earned. What has happened to America. No one trust the politics nor the government? Who can we trust?? Can we trust Google to help provide jobs,
David
“John Day says:
December 4, 2010 at 7:01 am
@Jose Suro
> You cannot remove a cloud to show what is under it unless you replace it
> with something else that did not exist in the original image – period.
> At that point the image becomes fictional.
Then you wouldn’t allow doctors to process medical imagery to enhance the resolution of tumors or other pathology? Then a lot of diseases would go undiagnosed……..”
John,
I understand your point and agree, as far as image processing goes. I understand it fully as I’ve been doing it for years in my astrophotography – in that discipline, image processing is de rigueur. We routinely use many different and quite sophisticated enhancement algorithms. For example:
From this:
http://www.josesuroeditorial.com/Other/Tests/1138678_nKNKC/11/1115163126_sZt9h/Original
To this:
http://www.josesuroeditorial.com/Other/Tests/1138678_nKNKC/11/1115163084_njvnw/Original
And by the by, they too have their limits……
But, taking something opaque, like a cloud, and replacing it with something else that is supposed to be underneath is not processing, it’s re-creation – the replacement information was not there in the original image. Using your example, this would be akin to using a part of an earlier medical image to replace an organ in a new image because that organ was covered by something opaque in the latter. How could you then diagnose a tumor?
@Joe Suro
> But, taking something opaque, like a cloud, and replacing it with something
> else that is supposed to be underneath is not processing, it’s re-creation
> – the replacement information was not there in the original image.
Ok, I thought you were referring to semi-transparent clouds. Looking around totally opaque objects does sound like some kind of deception.
Hmmmm. Inspired by REDD, forest-centered. Far more important would be oceanic information, particularly SST, because that is where our climate comes from. Ocean currents are involved in Arctic warming. The Pacific equatorial currents and the equatorial countercurrent control the El Nino cycle that has strong periodic climate influences. When the El Nino cycle gets interrupted climate changes happen. When the North Atlantic current system was rearranged at the start of the twentieth century the Arctic started to melt. Plus all the so-called “oscillations” that are poorly defined and in need of more data to pin them down. That is where this resource should be used, not on deforestation detection that is motivated by fear that carbon dioxide is warming up the world.
I share your concerns (as a veteran of the Viet Nam War). But, I have no problem with Google making a profit from these efforts, as long as they are creating tools for discovering knowledge and using this knowledge to solve problems. Their business plan makes most of these tools free for individuals, but large enterprises must pay to use them. (CAGW is the wrong problem, of course, but hopefully these tools can be used by other researchers on other, more realistic problems)
The weapons systems used by our armed forces are manufactured, for profit, by large defense contractors. I support that because those profits are used to create jobs and economic growth to employ millions of workers, mostly in technical jobs and for growth and research, which is a kind of “wealth” that makes us stronger and richer.
Am I saying we need wars to prosper? No, just saying that our nation has prospered because the people have been allowed to use their ingenuity to adapt and solve problems, on whatever scale.
The U.S. government, OTOH, has grown enormously and tends to be parasitic, feeding on this wealth by creating a mind-boggling bureaucracy and welfare system, which perhaps sustains us, but does not make us stronger and richer.
The map lover in me is excited. But
Is the code open, unlike Mann-made global modeling?
Who will verify the integrity of the data-set? Or will it be subject to Hansenian manipulation?
Upon closer examination, the datasets appear to be imagery, which are temporarily available (until Feb or so) for viewing the on-line Earth Engine. But the important piece of this, IMHO, access to the Earth Engine API, appears to be restricted.
http://earthengine.googlelabs.com/#intro
So, no access to tons of “raw data” as some had hoped. Those of you who have a serious interest in this should contact the Earth Engine team and request access to the API.
For the rest of us, there’s always OSGeo, free and open to anyone:
http://www.osgeo.org/
Why so many anti Google comments here. They have probably created the greatest range of free to the end user internet products ever. If you don’t like them just ignore them as there is plenty of competition.
Can someone get Google to pick up the Argo data in (near) real time, please?? The data seems a bit hard to get hold of and there is a lack of academic papers presenting the last few years results still.
@peakbear
> Can someone get Google to pick up the Argo data in (near) real time, please??
If you just want to download the data, you can find it here
http://www.argo.net/TXTdata.html
[Found this using Google query argo data download and it came back as the first hit.]
@peakbear
> … If you don’t like them just ignore them as there is plenty of competition.
This is a little O/T, but I occasionally use the DDG (Duck Duck Go) search engine:
http://duckduckgo.com/
DuckDuckGo is a search engine, like Google.
Use DuckDuckGo for:
• More Zero-click Info
→ Useful info above the links.
• More Privacy
→ We do not track you. Google does.
• More Goodies
→ Instant answers, !bangs & settings.
• Less Spam
→ We ban irrelevant sites.
Try it for a week and give us feedback!
→ Click here to try it now.
→ Can your search engine do this?
FAQ | Tools
“Piers Corbyn says:
December 4, 2010 at 2:25 pm”
Piers, keep bringing it on here. Please?