What could it be? Something from Los Angeles?
Robert Clemenzi tells us in comments:
Fox5 news in DC just announced that Earth Networks (Gaithersburg, MD) is providing a new service to provide real time CO2 foot print videos for cities. Associated with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, they plan to spend $25 million to “complete” the system. It is unbelievable that, using only 100 sensors, they are able to directly monitor the air over the ocean near LA. They even have altitude data.
===================================================
Here’s the press release:
Germantown, Md. and La Jolla, Calif. – January 12, 2011 – Earth Networks, formerly AWS Convergence Technologies and the owner and operator of the popular WeatherBug® products and services, announced its expanded focus to include additional environmental observations and measurements, beginning with the deployment of the largest global greenhouse gas (GHG) observation network in close collaboration with Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Earth Networks CEO Robert Marshall and Dr. Tony Haymet, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, will announce the news at a press event on the Scripps campus in La Jolla, Calif., today at 10 am PST / 1 pm EST, and is available via webcast through the media center at earthnetworks.com and at http://earthnetworks.com/MediaCenter/LiveEarthNetworksPressConference.aspx.
The immediate goal of the Earth Networks Greenhouse Gas Observation Network is to improve the understanding of GHGs in the atmosphere. By deploying and networking many instruments and combining that data with information from its existing weather networks around the world, Earth Networks will become a valuable source for detailed and reliable global environmental information. The data will be available to inform the research community, policy makers and private industry with more precise environmental intelligence.
Further, the network will enable the independent measurement, reporting and verification of greenhouse gas levels and emissions to support international and regional climate policy initiatives. In embarking on this new and expanded mission, Earth Networks is establishing the Earth Networks Center for Climate Research at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. This new center forms the pinnacle of scientific research collaboration between Earth Networks and Scripps and will be co-directed by Scripps Professor Ralph Keeling and Distinguished Scripps Research Professor Ray Weiss.
Scripps Oceanography, a part of the University of California, San Diego, is one of the oldest, largest and most important centers for ocean and earth science research, education and public service in the world. Scripps scientists are playing a vital role in advising Earth Networks regarding the network design, methods to ensure data quality, and linking the network data to atmospheric modeling experts at research institutions around the world. Looking ahead, Scripps researchers and their scientific colleagues plan to leverage the Earth Networks Center for Climate Research to conduct new, broad and far-reaching climate science. Today, only a few dozen continuous GHG observing locations exist, which limits analysis. In contrast, Earth Networks will initially deploy 100 GHG observing systems worldwide, beginning with 50 in the continental U.S., followed by deployments in Europe and other areas of the world. The density of the Earth Networks approach will make it possible to quantify and map more localized GHG emissions and uptakes (sinks), and importantly, their changes over time.
Earth Networks will initially utilize environmental instruments from Sunnyvale, California-based Picarro. The Picarro GHG analyzers utilize a technique known as cavity ring-down spectroscopy (CRDS) to make precise and reliable measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). Earth Networks will use gas calibration standards from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that insure compatibility with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) scales for GHGs. CO2 and CH4 are the two most important long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Earth Networks is also working with scientific collaborators to apply sophisticated atmospheric modeling techniques to establish carbon and carbon-equivalent footprint reports for considerably smaller geographic regions than is currently practical.
The atmospheric modeling techniques involve coupling greenhouse gas and weather measurements with computer models of regional atmospheric transport to quantify GHG emission and uptake processes on a regional scale. This combined approach enables a better understanding of the complex global distribution and circulation of GHGs in the atmosphere. Earth Networks – similar to its experience with weather networks – anticipates that the initial network deployment will increase substantially over time and become a “network of networks” with several hundred observing systems worldwide.
Press release link
Video animation
http://ghg.earthnetworks.com/GHG3dAnimate.aspx?stationid=SNDGS
==============================================================
And the question is: What good is this beyond some hype on your local TV newscast? “Earth Networks” aka WeatherBug is a TV service. So will our local TV meteorologists and weathercasters now terrorize viewers with giant blobs of CO2 attacking the city?
Bet on it.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
After looking at the live data of San Diego at Scripps site, it appears we’ve got a problem Houston, the ghg concentration and temperature have an distinct inverse correlation. Co2 up, temperature down, methane up, temperature down, methane down, temperature up. OH, NO! Quick, shut the site before too many people can see what is really happening. ☺
LOL.
100 surface measurement points fed into computer models? Do these fools really think that can trump the empirical data form the IBUKI satellite? There is only one plausible explanation for using computer models when empirical data is available, and that would be manipulation of results. Japan may be pressured by the US government to suppress data, but the same techniques will not work on India and China, and they both have space launch capability.
I read this article twice and still can’t see the point of doing this.
Yes, there will be more carbon dioxide and methane around cities than in the countryside. In the former, it may be as much as one or two parts per million; in the latter it may be one or two parts per 100 million. So what! Where are we going to run, when the alarm goes out that a cloud of CO2 of 2 parts per million (ppm) above the current norm of 390ppm is approaching?
This is just another case of the uncontrolled breeding of pointless, expensive, bureaucracies.
Of course, the counter-argument is: “it sounds green, so it’s gotta be good.”
The indoctrination of the masses continues! What happens when the masses turn off the mainstream media?
Surely anything which encourages actual collection of real data is to be applauded?
The obsession with CO2 is unstoppable. There is obviously a psychological need for humans to clutch to a fictional belief. From Santa to the Easter bunny and from Zeus to the Cargo Cults- humans and from Bigfoot to Green Men from Mars, humans seem to need to clutch to things that don’t exist.
Why? Maybe the same genetic makeup that gives us intelligence and creativity also give us irrationality as well.
To think of all the resources wasted on worry about CO2: an invisible life-giving gas in practically unmeasurable quantitie. Resources that could go to real issues such as cancer, hunger, poverty. It’s a shame and a sham.
The sheer determination of the establishment to demonise CO2 continues.
As does the resistance!
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RHx9ZbrmAc ]
REPLY: Readers, this experiment is poorly done and provides no value to the skeptical argument, I suggest you ignore it. For reasons why, see Jeff Id’s takedown of this here
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/01/05/kicking-puppies/
– Anthony
Time to Go Green!
Start covering the sunny side of all tall buildings in the area with trellises. Grow ivy. Sprinkle with eco-friendly recovered grey water as needed.
That’ll take care of the problem.
Carbontracker used to do this ( http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/carbontracker/ ), and did quite a good job of it too. However they stopped, most likely because mapping CO_2 concentrations didn’t turn out to be politically useful. The developed world as a whole shows up on such maps as having an inconveniently low CO_2 level, which isn’t`on message’ in terms of the campaign for carbon restraint.
Harry Bergeron says:
January 13, 2011 at 12:30 am
Golly gosh, I was taught that plain old water vapor was the most important greenhouse gas, 44 times as potent as CO2.
…about that tea kettle you own? It’s banned now. Please turn it into the nice UN soldiers at your local park.
and if you have a furnace — rip out the thermostat. All furnaces are now banned as they produce both CO2 and water vapor. The nice soldiers will be around to throw your furnace and water heater (too much energy) into the scrap bin! Quickly now! Kittens are burning up at the north pole due to the temperature anomalies….
All hail the UN!
As far as scientists are concerned the current weather is just a blip in the AGW theory and they will keep pushing onward and upward until we all freeze to death.
After all they are the experts who should not be questioned.
Even partially-educated thermists realize that CO2 in the lower troposphere has no immediate greenhouse effect — it’s swamped by water-vapor. CO2 around the height of the tropopause is what causes it.
Mike Haseler says:
January 13, 2011 at 12:29 am
I’ve invented one! I call it: Terra Recovered Eco Energy and I’m now looking for $1billion seed funding.
Love it: “Seed” funding. Trust the pun was intended. Good one.
It’s a valuable service to owners of green businesses and buildings. Wander into the reception of a banking or finance office and you’ll probably see a couple of plasma displays showing news and market data. That’s nasty capitalist stuff so unsuitable for an environmentally conscious reception area. Now they can have plasma screens showing this. If the blob suddenly goes red, and starts flowing towards your location, you’ll also know the local CCS project* has sprung a leak and it’s time to get to high ground. All yours for a modest monthly fee and a better way to demonstrate you are a cutting edge technosavvy soldier in the war on climate than some found art from the local commune.
*or some pranksters with fire extinguishers have found the CO2 sensors.
CO2 map rule #1: CO2 maps may only be used in association with heatwave forecasts.
That’s not CO2. That’s smug!
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s10e02-smug-alert
By improving time and space resolution, they hope to get a better handle on the relative contribution of anthropogenic CO2 to atmospheric concentration. I expect they will find no long lasting anthropogenic plumes, only short lived spikes on the top of an ever changing natural background controlled by ever changing source and sink rates of the Pacific. I expect that those spikes contribute less than 1% to the long term average of atmospheric CO2 concentration.
The BBC are going to love this.
The atmospheric modeling techniques involve coupling greenhouse gas and weather measurements with computer modelsof regional atmospheric transport to quantify GHG emission and uptake processes on a regional scale
It is VIRTUAL!
That VIRTUAL fog is killing birds, really awesome!:
http://www.huliq.com/10164/more-strange-bird-deaths-time-northern-california
Even if the tech and sampling are good, won’t it just confirm that the ocean is emitting CO2 heavily?
So we are now having CO2 monitors and online graphics telling us in which areas grass, grains, vegetables and trees will grow the biggest and the fastest. Farming land where CO2 has the highest values will be revalued upwards due to better growing conditions due to more CO2.
OK I’m taking bets. These sensors will be fully operational with unquestionable data during heat waves but somehow the data won’t be available during cold snaps.
On a serious note, would I be correct in saying that during cool air temps CO2 will settle and show up has “high” on the sensors, conversely, during warm air temps the rising air will take the CO2 away and show up as “low” on the sensors.
If I’m correct, they’ve blown their millions.
Michael, Etna is only clearing its throat, that could go on for months/years. The big eruption will eventually happen though, they think it will be bad. I follow the updates from Boris Bencke at eruptions/big think.com.
I believe that this imagery is incomplete to the point of being fraudulent. I can’t help but notice that northern Baja California is depicted on the right side of the image.
This area includes the cities of Tijuana, (that according to Wikipedia has a city population of 1,483.992, and a total metro area population of 1,784,034,) and also Mexicali (population 653,046, and a total metro population of 995,962.)
If I didn’t know anything about the geography of the area I might conclude that Northern Baja California is an unpopulated wilderness, and not home to 2.7 million people!
Do these bustling urban areas produce ZERO CO2 emissions? Or is this an incomplete, and hence inaccurate picture being presented as “science”? After all if the image showed ALL of the CO2 emissions depicted in the frame, one might come to the “erroneous” conclusion that Southern California is just a small part of a larger CO2 producing global community.
Smug Alert
The funniest south park episode ever. As I recall the the story didn’t end so well for San Fransisco